JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc

Episode 3

See, this is what I get for saying that Jojo's was too boring and serious last time. I get the Oingo Boingo Brothers. Whoops! I mean the Zenyatta Mondatta Brothers! Well, we all know what their real names are, even with the subtitle changes. These two are extremely fond of declaring their names out loud, and their Engrish is not subtle. Heck, if you've ever seen an Oingo Boingo album cover or even just their logo, the art inside the brothers' magical manga is pretty telling too. Anyway, this whole experience has taught me that I should just complain about Jojo's not being silly enough every week, even if it isn't true, because this was easily one of the best Stardust Crusaders episodes yet, and it was 120% purestrain stupidity. More like this, please! Or maybe not. Maybe there can only be one pair of Oingo Boingo Brothers, as this episode sends them off with their very own ED song (that describes their "adventures" beginning to end, in all their embarrassing brevity.)

So what's the joke I keep dancing around with this episode? Well, I wasn't wrong when I said last week that the Egyptian God stands will be more powerful than the Tarot stands. The brothers' stands of Khnum, God of Creation, and Thoth, God of Knowledge, are intimidating in power and possibility. Khnum is a shapeshifting stand that allows the older brother to turn himself into anyone or anything, relative mass permitting (and it doesn't affect his clothes.) Thoth is a future sight stand that doodles events to come in a grotesque (yet hilarious) art style in the younger brother's blank-page manga. It is always completely accurate and cannot be changed, but it can only see an hour or so into the future. The problem is that both of these stands are only useful with creative application. Two more competent assailants could use these powers to dispatch the Stardust Crusaders before they knew what hit them, but these brothers are shockingly stupid and a little too fond of counting their chickens before they've hatched.

But it's not just the villain brothers who have a bad case of the stupids. With Avdol and Kakyoin in the hospital, and Jotaro on his way to visit them, our heroes are down to their most intellectually challenged members as well. Polnareff and Grandpa Jojo are by no means craftier than Oingo & Boingo, and it quickly becomes obvious that without Iggy around to save them, (the only one who seems to know what's really going on,) this battle of double indum-nity could have landed butter-side down for our heroes. Of course it doesn't, but in light of the dark struggles and close calls on the horizon, having the team's two biggest goofs take out two Egyptian God stands in one episode purely by accident is a nice twist on expectations.

It's not just a dumb episode, though. Mostly it's a hilarious one. The older brother's rubber-face is exploited for maximum comedy potential throughout the episode, making it very hard to pick just one screencap for this writeup. The animation and music also contribute massively to the screwball tone, playing the show's recurring "~menace~" sound effects for laughs, alongside some squirrelly and spring-like background music that moves from sounding like a spiral of dread to a bouncing cartoon coil depending on how well the brothers' assassination plots are going. This is JJBA at its most self-aware and fun-loving, and while it's hard to imagine pulling a twist this goofy again, I hope it's not the last we'll see of the silly side of Jojo's before Part III is over.

That's three Gods down and six to go, with Dio waiting behind them on the final boss chair. Next week is the God of Death himself, Anubis! This one probably won't be such a cakewalk.

Rating: A

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.