JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Episode 24

Stardust Crusaders is done for the summer, and it's primed to go out with a bang: literally! Episode 24 is an excellent example of Jojo's superb musical score and sound design, elements that are just as responsible for the infectious power of the show as the visuals if not more so. Like the previous two seasons, this final airing of Stardust Crusaders' opening theme has been jazzed up with comic-book sound effects to match the visuals. Rather than having punches and whooshes awkwardly layered over the regular song, the sound effects are blended in with perfect harmony and rhythm, resulting in a new sound for the opener that's so much fun I wish we'd gotten it every week.

The superb sound work continues with the bouncy, syllabic punctuation of one of the show's funniest jokes, courtesy of Polnareff, Kakyoin, and their manly bond (based around potty humor, as are all bonds in JJBA.) It continues right into the warbly atonal tension of an underwater battle with The High Priestess, who was of course not quite dead, as this episode's title makes clear. When the whole fiasco is finally over, the show delivers us a triumphant reprise of the theme song as the crusaders make landfall in Egypt, and the narrator recaps all the hardships they've overcome so far. Rather than slowing the action down, the recap seems celebratory, as if prompting applause, and breezes right into a moving goodbye phone call to Grandma Suzie from the Joestars, scored by sincere and sweeping strings normally uncharacteristic of the show, right before cutting into the final reprise of Walk Like an Egyptian. It's odd that so little happens in this episode--half of it is recap and new material to compensate for the early conclusion of the battle with the High Priestess--and yet it feels like one of the strongest episodes because the tone is so pitch perfect and carries across the triumph of a season-long voyage so well.

All around, it's a great example of turning a handful of change into a gold mine through the subliminal power of sound and score, and that's before the equal parts tense and amusing stinger for next year's season that sticks a cherry on top of the sonorous sundae. As a Speedwagon helicopter buzzes over the desert, guitars chop in and chop out, building to something ominous (and the giant kana for "menacing" on the screen don't hurt, either.) The cloaked figure riding in the back of the chopper stirs, and the episode freeze-frames on a vague closeup of its eye, as the escalating guitars fade down into the echo of...a tiny puppy panting? It's spooky and funny all at the same time, and prior Jojo's fans will appreciate the aural in-joke amongst the foreshadowing.

This episode covers all the bases of Stardust Crusaders' appeal through a variety of scenes. We see the gleeful humor, the visceral action, the looming schemes of an impossibly evil Dio, and the optimistic heroism of the Joestars and friends. It's a wonderful way to cap off the season, and really makes me want the show's soundtrack more than ever. We'll have to wait until January for more, but start to finish, Stardust Crusaders has proved that even 20-year-old adventures based in schlock and sensations tied firmly to their own time can still resonate with a modern audience when the execution is this damn good.

Rating: A

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders 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.