Fixing The Justice Fight - Edgy Ella's Extra Epic Essentials - Tumblr

Fixing the Justice fight

Stardust Crusaders is probably my favorite JoJo part, but even to me it’s clear that Araki was still figuring out how to write Stand battles and didn’t exactly think things through when coming up with ideas. This sort of thing certainly does get better with time, but a lot of earlier arcs in Stardust Crusaders suffer from this a lot. I think that this problem is really at its worst with the fight with Enya/Justice.

There are two reasons why the Justice arc bugs me as much as it does. Firstly, something that I think a lot of JoJo fans seem to undersell or completely forget about is that Enya is indeed a major villain in the greater context of the series. She’s the person who taught Dio about Stands and the person organizing Dio’s minions not only against the Crusaders, but around the entire world. Even going outside of the scope of Stardust Crusaders alone, if Enya hadn’t bought the arrowheads from a young Diavolo back in the early 80s, nothing in JoJo as we know it would have been the same (after Battle Tendency) because her doing so directly affected all 4 main villains from parts 3-6, which then lead to (Stone Ocean ending spoilers) the universe being reset, thus giving us the new universe that parts 7 and 8 reside in. All of that can be directly attributed to Enya. So with that in mind, the fact that her fight against the Joestars ended in such an asspull kinda sucks (but we’ll get to that later).

The second reason that the Justice arc bugs me is because Araki did such a good job with the setup of the whole thing and made it genuinely spooky, only to then completely drop the ball when writing the way Justice is defeated. So my issues with the arc aren’t so much as “the whole thing is kinda lame” like with Wheel of Fortune or “the fight itself was well done but the aftermath was tonally out of place” like with Judgement, these issues are specific and directly affect the fight itself. So let’s talk about it.

As I said earlier, the setup for this fight is genuinely great. The idea of making a literal ghost town is fun, creepy, and fits with the theme of the early tarot card stand users being based on classic horror movies. It brings up the question as to why the Crusaders would ever consider staying at Enya’s bed and breakfast, but what’s more important is that the story isn’t trying to trick us, the reader into thinking that everything is normal. We know that Enya’s a stand user, we know that the town’s general eerieness is probably her doing, we just don’t know how because she hasn’t revealed what her stand does yet. So when Hol Horse shows up and Enya shows us exactly how her stand works, seemingly killing our favorite Shitlord Cowboy™ in the process, the stakes are made clear. If the Crusaders want any hope of being able to defeat her, they can’t get a single scratch or else it’s game over. Which is sort of hard to avoid when Enya has, y’know, an entire army of zombies. All of this is made all the more intense by Polnareff unintentionally pissing her off by rubbing it in her face that he killed her son. So when she finally snaps after it’s revealed that Hol Horse is still alive, you’re already on the edge of your seat. Not only is Justice a ridiculously overpowered Stand, Enya is pissed and wants vengeance (unlike, say, Hol Horse, who also had an overpowered Stand but didn’t have a ton of personal stakes in the matter and lacked the initiative to take out the Crusaders himself). And when she manages to get Polnareff under her control (getting his tongue no less, meaning he can’t call for help even if there was anyone who was close enough to hear him), it all only gets even more tense. Just how the hell are they going to defeat her?

All that stuff is done just about as well as it could be done, but unfortunately this is where things start to fall apart.

Of all characters, Jotaro is the one to go down to investigate Polnareff’s disappearance. This makes sense, Jotaro has been shown multiple times throughout the arc to be suspicious of Enya and if anyone were to defeat a major villain like her, it ought to be our main protagonist. But putting Jotaro in that position doesn’t really make much sense when looking at their Stand abilities. Enya even points this out herself; “Can you punch the fog with your fist? Or cut the fog with a sword, or shoot it with a gun?! I don’t think so!” Star Platinum is OP, but it really doesn’t have anything in its arsenal to take down Justice. The obvious work around is to not go after Justice but rather Enya herself a la Yellow Temperance, but no matter how evil Enya is or how big of an impact she had on the series, watching a feeble old person get the ever loving shit beat out of them is bound to make at least some of the audience uncomfortable. Not that I doubt that Jotaro wouldn’t care, but I digress.

So after all that buildup, after that tension, after Jotaro himself getting stabbed in the leg, how is Justice defeated? Star Platinum decides he’s Kirby and just straight up inhales and eats Justice. This ability is never brought up before or after this moment. It’s the asspull to end all asspulls.

The term asspull gets thrown around a lot when talking about anime, especially JoJo. I actually think that most moments that the fandom regards as “asspulls” in JoJo are done fairly well. Let’s look at two other huge asspulls from Stardust Crusaders (both coincidentally involving Jotaro) and compare them to the Justice fight.

1. Star Platinum vs. Dark Blue Moon: Star Finger at first seems like just as much of an asspull as Star Platinum’s apparent super breath, with both being out of nowhere solutions to seemingly impossible to defeat Stands, but the big difference is that Star Finger is used after the fight with Dark Blue Moon. Sure, it’s only used once afterwards (twice in the anime, which I really did appreciate) and in the fight directly afterwards, but even that makes all the difference. Also, Star Platinum being able to extend parts of its body by focusing all of its energy in a singular point makes much more sense than Star Vacuum Cleaner.
2. Star Platinum vs. The World: Yup, you saw this coming as soon as I mentioned asspulls. Congratulations, pat yourself on the back. Jotaro/Star Platinum being able to enter Dio/The World’s stopped time is considered to be one of the biggest asspulls in the entire series, if not all of shonen manga. But it doesn’t bother me for a couple of reasons. First of all, the entire fight is built around the fact that Jotaro is able to move within Dio’s stopped time. It would have played out much differently and been much shorter if that weren’t the case. It’s also thematically significant. Dio invaded Jonathan’s world and stole his body, and now Jotaro has invaded Dio’s world by stealing his ability. It’s cosmic irony, something that JoJo has done in spades since day one. And contrary to popular belief, there is some foreshadowing to Jotaro being able to stop time if you squint (particularly in the fight against Daniel J. D’arby). None of this can be said about Star Platinum sluuuuuuuuurping up Justice.

That’s not to say that these are the only asspulls in the series and/or any other asspulls are completely exempt from critique, these are just some examples.

So, with all of that said and done, how would I have had the Crusaders defeat Justice?

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that everything before Star Platinum deciding he’s really thirsty goes the same as it always does. So we leave off on Jotaro getting stabbed in the knee and falling under Justice’s control.

In order to properly assess Justice, we need to know what exactly makes it so strong and then see if there are any weaknesses or flaws that the Crusaders could exploit.

Justice is as terrifying as it is not because of its ability to control people after they only get a scratch, but because of the army of zombies that Enya uses it to summon. Without the zombies, all the Crusaders would really need to do would be to run the hell away from her. There’s no harm it can do so long as they don’t get hurt, so as long as they keep their distance, they’re safe. Even if Enya is apparently able to fence with Silver Chariot with a pair of scissors and is able to chase down Polnareff on his way to the bathroom (wow that sounds cursed out of context), at the end of the day she is an old lady going up against a group of buff bara men. They’d all be able to effectively utilize the Joestar Secret Technique if it weren’t for the fact that they also had a bunch of zombies to deal with. Compounded with the fact that it’s game over for them if they even get so much as a single scratch, and Justice functions more like a Colony Stand like Bad Company or Harvest. The difference is that her army is comprised of fully sized humans rather than smaller units, and when factoring in that you lose if you get so much of a single scratch, a lot stronger too.

So in order to defeat Enya, we need to get rid of those zombies from a distance first.

Actually, of all of the Crusaders, Avdol would probably be the one best suited to fighting Enya. Magician’s Red gives him the range advantage, his flames would completely disintegrate the zombies, and he could even cauterize the wounds sustained by the other Crusaders, which would presumably free them from Justice’s control. That second point is by far the most important as that’s probably the best way to get rid of the zombies, and certainly the best way that any of the Crusaders could get rid of them. They could even add in some bullshit about how the smoke generated from the flames could interfere with Justice’s fog, thus making it easier to defeat in some way (like it becomes more solid or makes it harder to control the corpses/injured Crusaders/Entire Equine).

But unfortunately, Avdol’s dead. At least that’s what Polnareff (and the audience) thinks at this point. Jotaro could even point this out to him mid fight, which would only further increase Polnareff’s guilt about the whole thing, thus making the Judgement arc hit just a little bit harder. The fact that Hol Horse is also there as this is all going down would not help matters.

It’s worth pointing out that the Stardust Crusaders OVA actually does bring Avdol back during the Justice fight. However, this ultimately doesn’t amount to anything because Avdol’s presence doesn’t really change the way the fight plays out and Star Platinum still uses its sucky suck to defeat Justice. The most Avdol does is light a cigarette for Jotaro.

With Avdol presumed dead, Jotaro and Polnareff under Justice’s control, and Iggy still vibing in New York, that leaves us with Kakyoin and Joseph to defeat Enya. Hermit Purple could theoretically hold off a few zombies for a while, but that’s about it. They also technically aren’t undead so Hamon likely wouldn’t be effective on them either (though if it was, I wouldn’t be complaining). So Kakyoin’s up to bat.

At first, this should seem like a no-brainer. Just use Emerald Splash! It seems ideal; a way to attack a large group of enemies while keeping out of harm’s way. That’s usually the case, and after all, no one can just deflect the Emerald Splash. However, since these zombies don’t feel any pain, taking some gems to the face probably wouldn’t do much. If anything, it would fill them with even more holes, which would only make them easier for Enya to control. So now what?

It’s possible that Kakyoin would use Hierophant Green’s ability to possess people against Enya and try to possess her in order for her to call off Justice, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not only is it implied that Kakyoin really doesn’t like doing it, but it also seems like it takes a lot of time to set up, time that he doesn’t necessarily have while also avoiding a horde of zombies. So that’s out of the question, too.

The best way for Kakyoin to defeat Justice wouldn’t be to attack, but to defend. Hierophant Green can unravel itself into a bunch of tentacles, right? So therefore the best way of dealing with the zombies would be to lure them all into a enclosed area (let’s say the bathroom that Polnareff is stuck in, but really anywhere in the hotel would work) and then create a barrier using Hierophant Green’s tentacles, completely blocking out any attacks from the zombies. Remember, any damage inflicted onto Hierophant Green’s appendages does not transfer over to Kakyoin when they’re unraveled like that (or else Kakyoin would’ve lost his arms/legs when Dio…well, y’know, cherry donut), so that’s the best way they could deal with the zombie problem. But it’s not like they could just stay like that forever, so the next thing to focus on is getting rid of Justice. Here’s where we take the obvious approach and attack Enya directly.

Kakyoin and Joseph are the two smartest people in the group, and Joseph in particular is a master of manipulating people and pissing them off. Enya has just lost her son and is out for blood. Between the both of them, they’d probably be able to figure out a way to trick Enya into pursuing them (which is ironically exactly what J. Geil tried to do against Polnareff), trapping her in their saferoom with them. With no zombies left to help her and her only weapon being a pair of scissors, she’s left defenseless against a pair of Stand users who outrange her. Be it from Hermit Purple or more of Hierophant Green’s tentacles, she’s getting strangled and suffocated until she passes out. The zombies revert to inanimate corpses, everyone else is freed from Justice’s control, the Crusaders bring Enya along with them in hopes of trying to wring more information out of her, Steely Dan kills her, and everything continues as normal.

Sure, the outcome of the fight is ultimately the same as it always was, but that sounds a lot more interesting and exciting than Star Platinum giving that good succ, doesn’t it?

Once again, I don’t mean to say this to shit on Stardust Crusaders or JoJo as a whole, but just because you like something doesn’t automatically make it devoid of any criticism. What we got out of the Justice arc was disappointing, especially considering the affect that Enya had on the series, and this is just one way that I thought of to improve it.