奇妙萌可 第二季

Stardust Crusaders (2014) is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure : the Animation (2012)'s sequel. But if you think about it seriously, there are a thousand things that are different between the two seasons, and which make undoubtedly SEASON 1 > SEASON 2. To some extent, you could speak of a DIFFERENT anime.
I took a quick look on the reviews of other websites a moment ago : senscritique (barely), anidb (clearly) & anime news network (surely) all agree with me on which season is better, only douban doesn't and that can be explained easily : the community of douban does not understand SHIT to anime. All hail anidb !

Since I consider Jojo's Bizarre Adventure the Animation (2012 = season 1) as the best shounen anime of all time, this review is mostly going to be a comparison between the two, a comparison between the Master and the student.

Characters : Stardust Crusaders' has the worst Jojo so far. His look is definitely GAR, but the "R" in here is getting too much closer to an "Y". The chain on his neck, the hat on his head and that stupid cape make his design far less enjoyable than the two first ones.
Personality wise, he is an empty shell, and this hurts even more since they had 24 episodes to develop him, whereas they had far less for the two previous Jojo's who had to share out the 24 episodes.
When the two first Jojo's had a few first episodes to lay down some background (usually without much fights or as an appetizer) and stories in order to introduce the protagonists, their values & skills (honesty & raw force for the first, naughtiness & smartness for the second), this one only gets the bare minumum. The end result is that there will be no empathy for the character during the whole show. This 3rd Jojo's has almost no dialogue lines : he looks cold, avoids to talk, does the job (i.e. the killing) when necessary and contains all his emotions. The "Yare yare" (Good grief) that he keeps on repeating in every circumstance is DEFINITELY not cool...
This goes to the extent that we might at some point doubt who is the main character... since this one does not get so much attention when the stories unfolds, & the creator focuses more on the other characters. This is also a big difference with the first season, in which one Jojo's is the boss & the others are only there in a support (Zeppeli the teacher) / secondary (Zeppeli the descendant) / commentary (Speedwagon) role and usually end up dying or beat up.
In Stardust Crusaders, there are actually TWO Jojo's simultaneously. One plays the role of the Dark Powerful Silent Protagonist and the second of the Experienced Funny Talkative "secondary" character. + 3 other characters that actually get a lot of attention and a bit of development (especially Polnareff) : Avdol (the Wise & Temperate guy) whose Stand skills are Power & Fire, Kakyoin (Common Sense & Stabilising member of the group) whose Stand skills are Flexibility & Variety, Polnareff (the Silly & Funny guy with whom the viewer will often adopt the subjective point of view : i.e. Avdol's death) and whose Stand skills are Precision & Velocity. Of course the characters are created so that there is an Equilibrium & Complementarity in the group, and so that no one is powerful enough for overtaking the Protagonist's role. Classicaly, who will face the new bad guy depends on the powers that they each have, and on how powerful is the enemy. Sometimes they will face altogether some enemies which is pretty cool in terms of interaction and symbiosis.

Development (structure & fights) : Far less epic than Stardust Crusaders for many reasons. One of them is that there are too many enemies (representing for some weird reasons a card in the Tarot game, which is not adding anything to the show - except perhaps selling the fucking cards later ?). On average, each new enemy has a two-episodes span life, including half an episode of silly jokes and progress in the map, a cool or stealth entrance, the fight lasting 1 episode with a couple of predictable twists and then a conclusion with everyone being happy and teaching the bad guy a good lesson. It's almost a pokemon-like structure... The worst is that Dio never appears in any fight... He is far away "waiting" for the characters in the darkness, raping bitches and looking strong & cool with the Jojo's family star on his back. This again reminds a lot of the old european cartoons of the 90's, in which the main antagonist keeps sending small fries without moving his ass, while he's posing and showing his best evil laughter. The show is structured in a way that we know at each episode that the bad guy is going to get his ass kicked and that a new one is coming next and so on... If the characters were not road tripping from Japan to Egypt and if we didn't know that opponents are limited in number (Dio will necessarily run out of those FUCKING Tarot cards), the anime would have been simply BORING. Hopefully the road trip enables to see different settings and is helping for building the jokes (toilets in India, 讨价还价 in Arab countries, rigorous rules in Singapore etc...). It goes without saying that the MYSTERY of season 1 (related to the Mask, to the ancient cultures evil forces etc.) is completely absent. In the first season, the stakes were generally much higher : badass & super dangerous enemies (including Dio and the mask's embodiments) with some depth & backstory would show up and give a real hard time for the protagonists (causing heavy injuries, deaths and big emotional fuss). In Stardust Crusaders, everything is too easy and taken lightly. Except once, all superficial injuries disappear at the end of the fight and, opponents come one by one and end up begging for their lives without any dignity.
And that leads us to one of the main points of this review : if you think about it in another way, one could argue that Jojo's is less of a shounen with serious fights than a funny comedy with loads of gag (adding the traveling adventure aspect, and it starts having a couple of common points with One Piece). This is not necessarily a critique, since the show is REALLY super funny, but mechanically less Epic and thrilling.

Other aspects : Aesthetically speaking, IMHO the first season's added effects were clearly better and engaging. They would for important moments, freeze the picture for a "cool phase" and add layers of colors and geometric forms all around in order to emphasize a situation and making it classy, usually during fights. This technique has sadly almost been abandoned in this anime... I thought it was brilliant in the first season. In the same spirit, moments when the colors of a given setting would start to beautifully distort and change are also less common in the sequel. The sceneries depicted were also more elaborate and beautiful in the latter.
Otherwise the animation of this sequel is really well-made, even though the artistic value is a bit inferior to the predecessor.
The music (including OP and especially the masterpiece song for the ending) is not as good as season 1 but still fits what's happening in the screen overall. The references to the rock n' roll & heavy metal world are also very rare compared to the first season, since the creators focused their references into general knowledge (geography, cultural aspects and bit of history) while describing the place where the characters stopped during their road trip.

Wish they do a sequel with more epicness, and with DIO !!!!!!! for God's sake.

之前看了第一部，很喜欢大乔和DIO间宿命的感觉。看了第三部引入了替身的设定，实在是太棒了。除了HXH最近给我带来看得停不下来的感觉，再次停不下来的就是JOJO了。准备补漫画，被剧透一脸血，不敢看第六部徐伦妹子TAT

EP1：
OP画面太好看了，歌也好听。转眼间二乔都老了，外孙空条承太郎又叫卖鱼强的高中生上线。祖传195身高，一种不良少年的气质。在监狱里白金抓子弹这幕真的很棒。

EP2：
花花上线，被弹幕透了结局一脸血。平川的声音我真的很喜欢，适合角色。第一次看花京院在画布上画了承太郎的腿一道，然后承太郎就受伤了，以为花京院能力和画画有关.........顺便吐槽花京院出场批那么条长白围巾。
承太郎说的“我不良但我是个好孩子”简直笑喷。承太郎抬花花回家，好吧，我本来不想腐的。

EP3：
拔花京院肉芽的这幕咳咳，基情四射，承太郎这霸气总裁的风范，肉芽侵入体内还是如此冷静精确，OMG就是喜欢这种主角（摇头.....)
大家决定去埃及打Dio，ED前那个定个画面太美（五色战队什么2333）

EP4：
飞机打怪，第一个怪比较轻松干掉了，二乔不愧交通工具杀手属性。一伙在香港，波波出现。刚开始看没有很喜欢波波....不得不说越看到后面越喜欢。

EP5：
银色战车和卖鸡小子雷德对打，了解波波的故事。准备坐船。印象最深的是波波的超难度姿势！

EP:6：
船长是替身使者，白金使出一阳指解决战斗！

EP7：
这话我很喜欢啊，外面没猜到是这样的替身能力。船上恐怖气氛很浓，承太郎遮住小丫头眼睛不让她看到船员死状，还是温柔。
每一次看到Dio的背影，不得不说大乔你的肉体好美......

EP8：
感觉从这话开始波波的“为什么中招的总是我”的旅程。玩偶凶残，波波和战车不共享视力真是弱点，把镜子击碎然后干掉对手这招不错。波波虽然逗，但在战斗中智商还是不错~结尾里“花京院是叛徒”留下个悬念。

EP9:
黄色节制的一话。花京院的鬼畜rerorero不断循环。黄色节制的侵蚀肉体的能力和香草冰的吞噬差好远。

EP10：
倒吊男和皇帝。
波波碰到仇人决定单独行动，阿布德尔为了救波波受重伤。让人感慨如果这都不是爱的情节，据说这里荒木确实想让阿布便当的。
和倒吊男的战斗是第三部第一次让我觉得很紧张看得停不下来的战斗。
波波流着眼泪说“这真是让我困扰啊’'，很感人。

EP11：
倒吊男死得大快人心，算dio手下人渣到极点的一个了。

EP12：
二乔智商上线的一集，女帝的替身有点恶心。波波的头发是可以接钥匙的！

EP13：
车的替身。

EP14：
这集比较喜欢，开头就像个鬼城。最近准备补一下漫画。

EP46：
昨晚刚看。花京院的从来没有朋友这一部分比漫画里补充得更完整了一些。法皇结界的画面做得很漂亮，颜色亮眼。‘世界“的时停让花京院的死几乎就在一瞬间，法皇结界的崩塌也遇见着死亡的结局。”最后的绿宝石水花“简直泪奔。
DIO爷的时停效果做得酷炫，欧拉对无用的名场面让我从悲伤变成了看弹幕笑疯.......
泡面番啊，没怎么看又结束了。第三部漫画已补完，期待下周动画！
有消息说要做第四部，棒棒棒！！

EP47：
倒数第二集。OP做得好。