JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc

Episode 20

I'm not sure it was wise to follow the emotional high of last week's deadly confrontation with such a minced-up transition episode, but I guess david production wants to stagger the thrills leading up to the final battle with Dio. This episode cripples most of the momentum from the past several weeks, but it was the same way in the comics, so I guess it can't be helped. At least it's only crippled and not dead, as we get all lingering puzzle pieces into place before the mighty final battle at the end of the road. This is a tripartite tie-up episode with a farewell to fallen comrades, a silly status update on the other Jojos in Dio's hideout, and Suzi Q's Bizarre Adventure.

So the good news is that Polnareff isn't dead after all. The bad news is that his salvation came at the cost of Iggy's life, as the little dog uses the last of his soul's energy to sandblast his friend to safety. Vanilla Ice's monomania has opened up a fatal flaw in his plan to kill Polnareff, as light spills into the thoroughly swiss-cheesed room while he curses Iggy's ultimate sacrifice. After all that terror and trouble, it takes just the tiniest push from Silver Chariot to melt Vanilla Ice in the setting sun. Polnareff still isn't happy about being saved so many times at the cost of his friends' lives, but he's able to say goodbye to images of his fallen friends in the clouds before staggering off to find the others.

Cut to Suzi Q having old lady adventures in Japan: taking pictures of yakuza without their permission, dragging her pet turtle around, and all other manner of whimsy. It's a sharp step down from the emotional highs we've been riding for the past several episodes, and unfortunately for Suzi, we're not as happy to see her as we might have been in a more mellow patch of the story. It doesn't help that her subplot only tells us something we already knew; she knows Holly and Joseph's lives are in danger, and their attempts to hide this from Granny Su have always been futile. You don't know a guy for fifty years and a gal for her entire lifetime and fail to notice them hiding something this major. When she decided to visit Holly, she knew full well she would be visiting her daughter on her deathbed. Grandma Su's hidden strength and boundless trust in her loved ones is heartening, if not completely predictable, and I mostly just wish it came earlier on in the show or took up a shorter runtime.

As for the other Stardust Crusaders, they're still tooling around Dio's mansion encountering nothing, and that nothing's name is Nukesaku. (This roughly means "The Idiot," if Google is to be believed, but don't quote me on that. I think it's pulling from some aspect of Japanese language punnery that I'm not aware of.) Nukesaku has such a weak and bizarre power that Dio basically turned him into a vampire out of pity, or perhaps in the interest of giving him some small use. Anyway, he was warned not to engage the Joestars in battle, but being The Idiot, he doesn't listen, and thus approaches our heroes with guns blazing. Nukesaku has the frightening ability to...!

Well, he can make a woman's face and body appear on the back of his own, like an old timey jester on a pack of cards. If he remembers to turn his hands and feet the other way, it's almost convincing? Unfortunately, Nukesaku always forgets that part, so the unamused Jotaro turns him into a squealing compass to lead the way to his master Dio. Unfortunately, it looks like Polnareff has already found this master vampire, leaving him once again alone with an enemy too impossibly powerful for Silver Chariot to handle. They should have never split the party!

So yeah, this episode is little more than transition material between the two biggest fights of Part III, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't let the air out of Jojo's tires a little, even if its three separate parts were nice vignettes on their own. Next week, it'll finally be time to bring the noise, so enjoy this cease-fire while it lasts.

Rating: B+

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.