English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders “Death 13, Part 2”

“Nine, Ten Never Sleep again…”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

As Team Joestar camps out in the middle of Saudi Arabia awaiting rescue, Kakyoin start’s piecing together the clues he left behind from his dreams, but it isn’t until the 3:38 mark is when his suspicions are further confirmed after witnessing the baby kill a scorpion that had crept into his basket with such skillful precision, but the baby manages to hide the evidence in such a way, that the rest of Team Joestar doesn’t believe him. And after attempting to convince everyone with the “Baby Stand” message he carved on his arm in the previous episode, things aren’t working in his favor.

As Kakyoin tries to attack the killer Baby himself, he’s quickly knocked out by Polnareff who believes he’s gone batshit crazy and ties him up while everyone else falls asleep, only for Team Joestar to be teleported in the Death 13’s amusement park, which Polnareff begins to remember while a good portion of the episode is spent on them searching for Kakyoin, only to be subjected to Death 13’s random & surreal methods of dream torture that seems wacky at first, but in different ways, everyone is put at an extreme disadvantage such as Joseph’s robotic hand growing in disproportionate size for example as everything in the colorful scenery begins to laugh at them like a scene out of Evil Dead 2 while Death 13 comments that they could’ve had a chance to beat him if they activated their Stands in advance before sleeping.

Just when all hope seems lost, We reach the third act when Kakyoin makes his grandiose entrance and this time with his Hierophant Green Stand as it’s revealed that he kept his stand active while getting knocked out which allowed him to bring it into the dream world and be a match against Death 13. As the murderous Stand attempts to manipulate the dream world to his advantage, Kakyoin counters this in a clever scene by entering through Death 13’s ear, forcing him to heal all his wounds and accept defeat. The next morning, as everyone else forgets what happened in the dream, Kakyoin decides to spare the baby and leave him in a nearby town. But to ensure that the evil Baby doesn’t attempt to kill them again, he secretly punishes him in a comical-yet disturbing scene involving feces that even left me sick to my stomach… And so the episode ends when Team Joestar crosses the Red Sea via-speedboat, with Joseph making a detour towards an island to meet someone extremely important to their journey which leaves Polnareff just as curious as we are at this point.

Our Take

Uh… Wow! This was a pretty intense episode. While it was nice to see Kakyoin have a moment to shine and kick some ass, I’m torn between laughing and cringing at how nasty yet deserving that was. I know Adult Swim censored the feces, but the fact it happened at all made me close to throwing up. Despite being a decent Freddy Kruger homage, Death 13 as a Stand isn’t very practical in terms of combat. The series has already established in past episodes that Stand powers are only more active if the user is in close proximity to an object or a person, but baby’s powers all hinged on waiting for its target to fall asleep before going in for the kill, and if their victim was a Stand User, also hinged on the User not summoning their Stand before sleeping.

I’m usually not keen on hypotheticals but what would happen if the baby did manage to kill all of Team Joestar? what would he do in the middle of the fucking desert? How would he survive? Of course, we see a lot of enemy Stand Users with powers that all differ in limitations, but not being able to summon your Stand when your enemy is awake is a very one-sided battle. And While it was still an excellent episode in terms of action and suspense, I can really do without the crude & disgusting method of Kakyoin’s punishment to the baby.

I’m still curious & hooked enough to see what happens next. Knowing Joseph, he wouldn’t take a detour for nothing.