JoJo's Bizarre Adventure The ANIMATION - 05

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I always knew I would end up finding this series a little hard to blog after a while (because I know the manga) but I've found a way. This does mean the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure reviews will be a little different in format.

Let's just get some bullet points out there:

• With this episode, 3 out of the 5 volumes of Phantom Blood have been animated. This probably means we'll be seeing Part II in the anime.
• The episode introduced Tarkus and Bruford, two over-the-top (even for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) knights. The first ones name comes from an album by a British rock band and the second is named after a noteworthy drummer.
• Best moments in the episode were with Zeppeli; him running across the river and making kung-fu noises just made my day.

On a more personal and opinionated note, this episode has one of my more favourite types of plots: re-imaginings. Nowadays re-imaginings are wildly popular and as much as I like them, the one type of re-imaging I love most is anything related to England.

It's not an Anglophile thing - I live in England and at times I hate it - but more to do with the history and propaganda of it all. Recalling a specific history lesson all those years ago, the talk of propaganda is really what makes any story involving new takes on British history so enjoyable for me to watch.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has done this throughout the story, but it wasn't until this episode that I truly became aware of it. Probably because of my UK history knowledge covering Elizabeth and not the Jack the Ripper, that I couldn't appreciate the previous episodes' stories for the same reason. Who can blame me Jack the Ripper hardly comes up in school history lessons.

Dio has finally become the ultimate old school villain with his new powers. Him being the final boss gives the series an easily understandable goal and because he's almost reached "immortality" it's clear he's the first and final boss.

Besides that, there really isn't anything else for me to comment on regarding this episode. The only other thing that truly stood out was Speedwagon finally becoming useful. Safe to say that this will be one of his only useful moments in the first half of the series and at least he's dedicating himself to helping out JoJo as best he can.