Tramuzgan's top 15 fights in JJBA

I've been a fan of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for a while. It's one of the things that trigger my autistic need to sort and itemize (not unlike the movie lists I wrote on this forum before), so I thought, why not get it out of my system? This is mostly for my friends or any potential fans on this site to read, so I'll be writing it with the assumption that you've already seen the whole thing. There will be no spoiler warnings, or any hesitation to refer to the rest of the series for context or comparison, or any quarrel with using series terminology.

The fights will be ranked by just how much I personally enjoyed watching them, be it due to scripting, storytelling, creativity, showmanship, or technical execution. They will also be judged within their given context, as they are, after all, meant as parts of a series. Finally, I'll be ranking the animated versions only.


My favourite part of the series is Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable. Its easygoing approach, which started with an inviting setting and characters and basically let the stories tell themselves from that point, ended up making it the most immersive and the most consistent of all the six parts we'll be looking at here. This fight here is one of the part's high points, and a good summary of many of the things I like about it.

The context is: the group is being stalked by Red Hot Chili Pepper, a stand that can reach them wherever there's electricity, so they meet up on a meadow to discuss important information. To their surprise, RHCP followed them by hiding inside a motorbike one of the characters rode there, so they must catch and neutralize him before he reaches the power grid. Okuyasu, the dumb teen with a dead brother to avenge, insists on taking him on alone.

What this fight exemplifies is how basically, the whole series feels like how it'd be if the real world was invaded by this one fantasy element called Stands (Wells' law. See, I can read Wikipedia too). The problem in a lot of media, and what turns me off a lot of japanese media in particular, is when the characters feel phony and constructed from the outside to suit some kind of tediously explicable goal. That's not the case here. Okuyasu isn't a metaphor, a stand-in, a representation, a feeling, a social caste, a memory, an opinion, a personal trauma, or a political message. He's a dude. He's just a dumb and impulsive teen. The others are the same way: Josuke is just the amicable cool kid, Hazamada is just an embittered incel, Otoishi (RHCP's stand user) is just a dropout with big pipe dreams, Kira is just Peter Lorre's character from M. What would you do if you were a dropout with big pipe dreams, and one day you woke up with magic powers?

That extends to the technical aspects of the fight too. The powers in question are extremely specific, require a bit of brains to use to their full potential, and most importantly, they interact with the setting. RHCP gets weak when he loses access to electricity, so that's something to consider for the entirety of the fight. It's crucial. It's like the Art of War, spiced up with fantastical what-if scenarios. While, true, that is what shonen cartoons usually attempt to do, here it's bolstered by the believability I mentioned above, the creativity of the powers, and the commitment to keeping their logic consistent (there are some exceptions to this, but they're usually not that bad, unless their name is King Crimson.). The best stands in the series, as far as the main characters go, are those with one easy-to-understand ability that lend it both combat use, and an assortment of random utilities. Examples include Diver Down, Sticky Fingers, Crazy Diamond, Stone Free, and yes, Okuyasu's The Hand. They're a ton of fun because of all the inventive ways they get used, and even liberating to watch. What would you do if you could do what these guys can? If the world was your playground like it is to these guys, how would it feel?

Hell, the user's ability to utilize these powers is a common element in all these fights. Okuyasu, despite all his righteous anger, loses. But not to set up RHCP as so super scary, you guys, or to turn Okuyasu into a joke. That's just what would happen if two guys with these personalities and these superpowers clashed: the dumb and impulsive guy would be at a risk of making fatal mistakes, which is what he did here. Despite that, I never lost respect for him. Hell, I even gained some. Look at him, sticking his head out to avenge his brother despite knowingly being way in over his head. What a legend. We even see some character growth for him in the next showdown with RHCP, showing slightly better critical thinking skills. He took his lesson to heart.

Yes, all of these are Araki's general strong points which continued well into Steel Ball Run (and Jojolion too, as far as I know. I haven't read it yet.), this is still a good example of them, one of the first times they came to light to this degree, and just a strong plot point of DiU.

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I'm the Yugoslav cinema guy. I dig through garbage. I look for gems.

While Part 4 is my favourite, Part 5 had its strengths as well, and this is the fight that endeared me to it.

This is still the early part of Vento D'Oro, when they still had one-on-one fights to establish each character individually, so they could move on to more complex team-based fights later on. However, what this one has that the others don't is that it doesn't just establish the hero, it establishes the villain too. Unlike the previous enemies, Formaggio is an actual character with a personality and relationships, and a member of La Squadra Esecuzioni, the team of one-off villains that will be showing up from that point on. What I find cool is that they have their own bond and their own interpersonal chemistry, just like the heroes. Formaggio is even given his own flashback detailing how he interacts with the other team members, just like we already saw Narancia do. The plot of Vento D'Oro being as breathless as it is, it got really good at portraying its characters in the same way as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - through music, appearance, actions, and small cues in the tiny breaks we get between the action. You know I loved GBU for that reason, and it's Vento D'Oro's big selling point for me. It complements the already established talent for making believable, organic settings and characters.

Here we have Narancia, the group's aggressive nutter, being hunted by the confident show-off Formaggio, whose stand Little Feet allows him to slowly but surely shrink objects and people. He's a common sight in jojo - a guy with a presumably lame power who's shrewd enough to make good use of it. We even see his squad mates making fun of him in the flashback, and that not getting to him at all. Something about him shows me he enjoys proving them wrong, be that his appearance, his playful battle style, or his theme music (I urge you to look it up on youtube. It oozes so much confidence and swagger, and is way too good for a simple one-episode villain). While the fight itself does have some pacing issues, it is also filled with cool and creative set pieces. Formaggio shrinking himself to hide from Narancia while Little Feet's powers kick in, the ticking clock element of the first half, the notion of using a pay phone to call for help, Narancia losing his cool almost instantly, Formaggio pulling the mother of all sicko moves by trapping his shrunk opponent in a bottle with a deadly spider, or the way Narancia wins by going ballistic and setting everything on fire. Based and ooga boogapilled.

Overall, at this point in the series, it was a fresh fight and a good sign of things to come. Although, Vento D'Oro was only capable of living up to this new standard half of the time.

Wanna talk about an underrated fight? The battle between Rohan and the ''rock-paper-scissors kid'' comes and goes with virtually no impact on the larger story, but it's such a quirky little diversion that I can't help but sometimes still think of it.

It's got one of the funniest setups too - we follow Rohan on his day-to-day life, going about his business, but being bugged by some kid who dresses up like Polnareff to play rock-paper-scissors. We all know being bugged by a kid is one of the most ungodly scenarios out there, because what are you supposed to do about it? A small sequence of comedic misadventures, showing Rohan as a turbo autist with no tact (wow, he's literally me), and Ken finally wins a round, initiating a twist which makes things go from 0 to 100 really gosh-diddly-darn fast. Now Rohan is trapped in a game of RPS where he loses 3 rounds, he will lose his life force as well as his stand.

While the technical aspect of this fight is a bit silly, it does have a cool little self-contained story. See, Ken believes RPS is a game of mental fortitude, not luck, and wants to beat Rohan because he's what Ken wants to grow up to be - a person admired by many. What follows is a short little musing on making something of yourself as an individual, comparing yourself to other people vs attempting only to surpass yourself, the importance and mechanics of blunt determination, and how we relate to our idols. The little moment of the two seeing eye to eye at the end was really adorable. Like Rohan met a kindred spirit he can impart his wisdom on, and Ken learned a lot and can become a more complete person for it. It's a shame we never got to see him as an adult in any of the future OVAs.

As I've already implied, JJBA doesn't often have anything to ''say''. Its pretenses to any ''message'' are nil. But here, it tried, and actually succeeded. It used the basis of its characters, it didn't overstep its boundaries, it took care to remain as fun and imaginative as it's supposed to be. Those are the things that separate a good story that just happens to have a moral from a bad story that barks insipid fortune cookie messages at you (On this note, this is why I'm hesitant to address JJBA as an ''anime''. It's just a minor matter of semantics.).

Finally, Ken brings with him another excellent theme song. An excitable game show-esque tune which perfectly punctuates both his power and his personality.

Part 3, Stardust Crusaders, introduced the concept of stands to the series. The fights wouldn't immediately reach the level of quality present in parts 4 and 5, but this one here was one of the first signs of it doing so.

This fight is exceptional in the part it comes from because it's one of the few that was given personal stakes. The rest of SC was pretty much a villain-of-the-week deal. When the character of Jean Pierre Polnareff was first introduced more than a few episodes prior, he informs us that he's looking for a man with two right hands who raped and murdered his sister years back. We are even given another clue about him not too long before the showdown actually occurs, that his stand utilizes mirrors as weapons. So, that little buildup gives it extra weight.

It's a big step in the right direction in technical terms as well. J.Geil's stand is one of big strengths and big weaknesses, and defeating it is a conundrum that takes our heroes in interesting directions. He only exists within reflective surfaces, he's invincible while there, but if the surface is shattered, obscured, or otherwise disabled, he has to bounce to another one. He travels at the speed of light, but can only go in a straight line and is vulnerable if you know where he's going. This leads to a series of solid twists and turns, and ideas like the stand (Hanged Man) jumping into eyes when there's no mirrors around is the exact kind of loophole-based creative thinking that makes JJBA such an entertaining action series.

Finally, there's flashes of the character chemistry that would define JJBA in the future too. Like Polnareff reciting a badass revenge vow to someone he thought was J. Geil yet when he's face to face with the real guy, he's too angry to do it again. It's more than just an early version of what would be done better later, though. J.Geil is a really over-the-top evil guy, which is something that the series would indulge in again twice, but I'd argue it was done the best here. Steely Dan is kind of... whatever, and while Cioccolata was entertaining, I still wish Araki stuck to the original plan of giving that fight to a turncoat Fugo. The lack of personal stakes really made the legendary seven-page beatdown feel flat and unwarranted. Here, though, the rapier rush that ended the fight was satisfying given how long it was due.

That's to say nothing of the irony of a rapist getting penetrated to death.

This is a very popular fight among fans, and I can't help but agree. Being the penultimate fight of Stardust Crusaders, you knew what to expect at this point. Basically, you expect pro wrestling - loud, charismatic heroes and villains, send-off lines, last-minute victories, touches of silly humour. That's not what you got. Instead, you got a fight that might as well have come out of part 5 with how dirty and violent it is.

It was a real touch of genius to pit the two clowns of the group - Iggy and Polnareff - against the most serious villain short of Dio himself. The situation is made clear immediately, as the fight opens on Vanilla Ice killing Avdol, who acted as the voice of reason to the hot-blooded Polnareff. Combined with the fact that he uses a stand which can't be harmed via direct combat (he can turn into a flying ball which erases anything it touches, but has to peek out every now and then to see where he's going), and for the first time in the series, you have a fight that feels unwinnable.

I may just be saying that because of how it was executed. Previous stand battles, being a new thing, were tainted with lots of BS logic and contrived victories. This one isn't. The advantages and disadvantages are clear as day, and the threat of death is not an empty one. Both Avdol and Iggy die, and Polnareff gets pretty brutalized, losing a few fingers and sustaining a crippling leg injury. At one point, he even fully accepts he's going to die. It's pretty heavy shit, and a testament to how good Araki can be at writing action stories.

Finally, Polnareff himself sells all this exceptionally well. His anger actually translates into his fighting, he gives the fight some of the best dialogue in the series, and - no BS - I'd say he was given the best vocal performance in the entire series.

Oh yeah, Battle Tendency time.

A fight with one of the Pillar Men (or, as they're colloquially known, ''the Aztec gods of fitness'') that was awaited since their first appearance, we've seen Joseph have his life put at stake and seek out training at a moment's notice just to stand a chance. Wham, his opponent, is a warrior who lives to test his mettle, and is openly excited by the prospect of facing this conniving opponent who may give him the challenge of his life. Joseph thinking - ''Am I a match for this guy?''. Wham thinking - ''Is this guy a match for me?''.

The final result did not disappoint.

We've been shown from the start what kind of fighter Joseph is. He fights dirty. He plays mind games. There's always a new scheme cooking in his head. This is the crux of his character, and what carries him through the series - but against a guy like Wham, even that is pushed to its limit. One good hit or two good hits are not enough - no matter what kind of damage you inflict upon him, he'll bounce back and find a way to put you on the ropes. Yes, even damage to his morale. He's like an olympian. Nothing can break his spirit.

The fight itself is lengthy and varied enough, with a chariot race segment and an on-foot segment, the mechanics of the battle shifting with the damage inflicted between the two parties. All the good stuff that keeps you watching. Finally, this battle is unique in the series in that it is the only instance off the top of my head where it's an organized match between two parties that respect each other and would not be enemies if left to their own devices. Wham - and this battle - are very well-liked in the fandom, and it's easy to see why. An absolute bro who died doing what he loved the most, and with a final salute to boot.

Another surprise hit from Diamond is Unbreakable. Terunosuke is another villain of the week who just comes and goes, sure, but he's so much better than he has any right to be: embodying both the creativity that marks the best stand battles, and the liberating feeling that draws me to JJBA and DiU in particular.

Here's what I'm talking about: Terunosuke wields a stand called Enigma, which allows him to trap objects and people inside folded pieces of paper, if he can detect what their unconscious sign of fear is (be it touching your chin, blinking twice, squinting, etc.). Like Formaggio and his Little Feet, it's a lame power which he needs to apply some brains to make good use of, and by God, he does. The creativity with this power on display is up with the series' best. What makes it even better is that since it's a power the relies on scaring others, it's built in a way that's kind of scary to us, the audience, as well. Terunosuke keeps a creepy sense of showmanship, working perfectly with his unusual elf-like appearance, and you can tell he's having a ball doing all this. It gave me a rush of memories of being a little kid and coming up with ways to spook others.

Other ways this fight exceeds expectations is: once Enigma grabs a hold of someone, we get an immensely trippy image (like the one shown above), and reality-bending imagery like that is usually reserved for the main villains like Diavolo or Pucci. He is also given moments of temporary victory which characters of his calibre usually don't - him being one of the very few characters to actually defeat the main character of his part (if, again, only temporarily).

I like Enrico Pucci, but he has the bad luck of coming from a rather underwhelming part. Stone Ocean certainly had potential, but after so long, thw whole concept of the stand battle had grown a little stale. You can tell Araki tried to keep it fresh by thinking of wackier abilities and upping the brutality, I just don't think he succeeded. Plus, the new grimdark tone... really not my bag. The reason I'm going on this tangent is because I said I'd be judging these battles in the context of their stories, so the fact that you have to wade through some boring stuff to get here drags the fight down a bit.

That being said... it is also the final battle of the original continuity of Jojo, and in that sense, it's certainly a worthy finisher. It learned the right lessons from its predecessors and upped the ante in the way I wish the whole part would have done.

It unfolds in two stages, both of which are triggered by Pucci attaining a new apocalyptically powerful stand. Stage one belongs to the gravity-altering C-Moon, stage two belongs to the time-accelerating Made in Heaven. The whole deal is part of a really convoluted scheme he has cooked up with his buddy Dio years ago, in a perverse attempt to trigger enough universal resets for people who managed to live through the entire circus to gain intuitive knowledge of their future - and make peace with it, leading to eternal happiness.

Again, why am I going on that tangent? Because it shows what's unique about Pucci. All the big bads thus far - Dio, Diavolo, Kars, even Kira in his own placid way - they've all been egotistical characters. Driven by personal desires. Pucci - he's a man of faith. Given entirely to a cause he believes to be larger than himself (he may be wrong, depending on how you view it, but that's what he believes, and that's what informs his character work). It does make a huge difference. Any other JJBA villain could be described as a pro wrestling heel, but Pucci feels almost devoid of personal presence in this whole ordeal. Like he's only here as a conduit for something else. That, to me, heightened the sense of insecurity in the possibility of winning. When a villain gets really powerful, can the hero stop him? Sure, why not? They're both just dudes, after all. Here, it's a bit more complicated.

The character work is unique (and solid on the heroes' part too. Say what you will about part 6's jobros, but Anasui is a legend.), but the technical narrative of the fight is more of a final homage to what made the series work thus far. It took some cues from the final fights of parts 2 and 4, everyone participating in the fight, and th villain gaining some power that revolves around harnessing some basic element of our reality. The Made in Heaven segment made me feel like things have gotten real to the extent that I haven't felt since the fight with Kars, the time acceleration shown through civilian life was one of the loopiest sequences in the series, the setting of the Kennedy Space Centre has a great sense of space which holds the fight together, and the way Jolyne outfoxed C-Moon's surface inversion ability by turning her body parts into moebius strips is a genius move that cannot be described in any other way than ''troll physics''. Like I said, all the best of Jojo in one package.
There are some unique elements to it, this being the ''final'' final fight. For example, the main jojo gets killed. It's not Jolyne that finishes Pucci, it's a scared and desperate Emporio. It's an incredibly hype moment, and it leads to Pucci dying the most ungraceful death of any major JJBA villain, but it makes it loud and clear that this is it. That's all, folks. No more Jojo. It even shows you an ending driven by those universal resets where alternate universe versions of these characters are living their own lives, perhaps mirroring how even though Jotaro, Jolyne, Joseph and all the rest are dead and never coming back, their spirit lives on - differently in each one of us.

Maybe I'm overthinking, but that's how I saw it, and I found it simply adorable.

If you like Part 3, that means you can vibe with its schtick of being animated WWE. That also means you'll be hyped for this battle from the very start. It's Wrestlemania 1987 - the ultimate face vs the ultimate heel. I wouldn't keep hammering the same point over and over again, but it invites the comparison so hard, I can't help myself.

From the onset, you see that the two have similar powers (the difference of Dio being able to stop time forming the crux of the technical narrative), and they really do act like a face and a heel. Look at Dio, so insufferably smug. Look at his poop-eating grin, listen to him soliloquize about ''you puny humans''. Even at the end, when he transforms into what it'd look like if you got Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Him from the Powerpuff Girls, it's simultaneously the silliest and most hype way you could think of to advance this fight. More so than giving him this unforgettably manly, yet unforgettably fruity new look, it turned up Dio's scenery-chewing prowess even further, making sure this is a fight you will not be looking away from. Definitely has the charisma to be named after one of my favourite singers.

And Jotaro? Jotaro was shown thus far to be the ultimate badass (owing much to his main influence, Clint Eastwood), so you can't wait for him to shut Dio's big mouth. This, though, is the first time in the series he's seen losing his cool, and his character work is pretty dynamic throughout the fight. He's given moments of victory, but also fatal mistakes which he needs to walk back on. Hell, the whole fight is dynamic. Much more than you'd think was possible in a match between le punchy ghost and le time stop punchy ghost. A standout moment was the protracted sequence in which Jotaro has to play dead (and almost actually dies), and the but where he gets in a good punch and destroys enough of Dio's brain to disable his legs and give him nausea. Both of their vocal performances deserve praise in how well they punctuate the whole thing - both sound as excited for it as the audience is supposed to be. I initially wasn't too on board with these battle cries like ''ora ora ora'' and ''muda muda muda'', but they got to shine here with how they're framed. Dio crying out ''Muda muda muda muda - eight seconds have passed - wryyyyyy - I'll flatten you!'' still reverberates in my brain.

And no, Jotaro being revealed to be able to stop time at the end was not a complete asspull, alright? It was alluded to when Jotaro started moving in stopped time, and when he said The World and Star Platinum are the same type of stand. It is only a partial asspull.

This is the first ''proper'' fight in the series. With where the series would eventually go, it's easy to forget where it started. The first three episodes were more of a period melodrama about two adopted brothers. It's a rather competent one, mind you, and provides good context to what would be a more typical action series later on - the connecting tissue being this brilliant conclusion to the first act.

Thus far, we've been wondering where Jonathan and Dio's relationship was going to go. One a naive but righteous young gentleman, other a highly competent sociopath, we've seen signs of both the former standing up for himself, and the latter improving his behaviour implying his brother was right to believe in him. So, Dio doing what he ended up doing wasn't a given. It carries a slight air of tragedy. We've been shown - and told of - the fact that as evil as Dio is, he is still human. So him openly - in his own words - ''rejecting his humanity'', turning himself into a vampire, and going berserk on everyone is a heartbreaking disappointment to both Jonathan and anyone who was hoping they'd be able to live a happy and peaceful life. The silver lining, though, is that you don't have to hold back against a monster.

This is before stands. This is before even hamon. The thus far reserved and self-doubting Jonathan goes forward with nothing but a heart full of courage and a decorative spear he picked up from the wall. You really get the feeling that he's surviving by the skin of his teeth against an enemy who doesn't take him seriously (and really has no reason to). He does win in the end (if not definitively), but it comes as such a huge cost, it's something you would absolutely never want him to repeat. What happens is, in the duration of the fight, the Joestar mansion catches fire, and through a series of risky moves and strokes of dumb luck, Jonathan manages to impale the vampire onto a sharp part of a statue, leaving him to burn. It's an epic and dramatic visual, but once the adrenaline rush subsides, you realize what this really is - it's Jonathan's loss of innocence. You've seen him prove he's more than just a pampered weakling Dio took him for. Sure. But his noble father is dead. His inheritance burnt to ashes. There is no more set path to follow, nobody left to guide him.

Jonathan is alone.

Phantom Blood wouldn't reach these same heights again, but that's fine. Araki was still finding his voice as a storyteller. The real greatness was still to come. But damn, talk about first impressions.

If I had to describe the writing of these shonen cartoons to a newcomer, I'd call it - martial arts melodramas. They wear many different skins, be it mafia, tolkien fantasy, murder mysteries, or whatever else, but combat is the language they speak, and the martial arts melodrama comparison is written into their DNA. If there is any fight in JJBA that shines in that department, it's the one showing a self-contained character arc of the mamma's boy and wannabe-tough guy Pesci.

Pesci accompanies his fellow assassin and mentor figure Prosciutto on a mission to kill the hero's group and kidnap the girl they're escorting. Right off the bat, you're shown the dynamic between the two - Pesci is nothing short of a dumbass, and you'd understand if nobody would want to be seen around him, but the hardened veteran Prosciutto sees the potential in him and wants to bring it out. He speaks bluntly, imparting concrete wisdom on both the realities of an assassin's work and on where his naive partner fits into it all. Pesci is timid, easily loses his cool, but is willing to learn. He doesn't hesitate to ask his partner whenever he's unsure of something, and takes his lessons to heart. He even referers to him as ''big brother'' (a saying in kawaiiland for a friend you look up to. In Yugioh GX, Syrus refers to Jaden the same way.). Like any any good martial arts melodrama, their personalities translate into their fighting aptitude. In the first half of the fight, Pesci wusses out in crucial moments, while Prosciutto has to carry him on his back. That, and he initiates the fight by poisoning an entire train full of people just for the sake of getting this one group - an extreme move that only a guy like him would have the balls to do.

The fight is split up in two parts, the setup is against Guido Mista, the always-reliable and easygoing dude who lives life on autopilot, and the second half is against Bruno Buccialati, the protective leader of the group and guy you don't want to tango with. The reason this is important is that it's an indication of both the character's strengths. A short encounter between Prosciutto and Buccialati is almost a fight between equals. Soon, after the former's defeat, Pesci is made to feel so scared and cornered, his ''big brother'' no longer there to carry him, that he has no choice to man up and act like the assassin his mentor always saw he could become. Now with the mental fortitude to back up his power, he becomes a threat to even Buccialati.

It takes place on a train, not unlike a shootout in a classic western. The cramped space plays a part in the battle choreography, and what's interesting is that each character has his own way of circumventing it. Mista can ricochet bullets in mid-air, Prosciutto has a rather morbid power of releasing a senescence-inducing poison gas, Buccialati can open zippers in whatever he touches, and Pesci has a fishing line that phases through solid objects. It's a well-oiled machine of a battle and not a single aspect of it feels phoned in.

I love its sheer explosive energy, I love the theme songs of the characters, I love how many varied set pieces it crams in, I love how tough Prosciutto is, I love the swagtastic designs of the characters and their stands (The Grateful Dead is easily in my top 5), but most of all, I love how the character arcs remain organic. At the end, when Pesci thinks he's going to win, he unknowingly reverts to his old cowardly personality, meaning he doesn't just die, he dies dishonourably. It's rather sad, but hey, just because we saw a glimpse of what he could become doesn't mean that his growth is complete. Rome wasn't built in a day. A man isn't built in a day either.

I never saw this fight in english, but if they didn't give Pesci a Joe Pesci voice, I'll be damn disappointed.

Best fight in Vento D'Oro? Why, yes, if I do say so myself.

Outside of the already mentioned style of character development, the main selling points of this part are its complex team-based battles and its excellent directing. This fight excels in all three, and forms a whole that demonstrates what the entire part would have looked like in an ideal world.

The directing? It doesn't deviate too hard from the established beats of Jojo fights, beginning on a short mystery before the enemy reveals his stand's true nature, then moving on to 40 minutes worth of mind games as we're used to. Illuso's Man in the Mirror is a stand that can pull people inside a parallel mirror dimension which houses no living beings otherwise. You can imagine how isolating and desolate that location feels, what doesn't help is that the fight takes place in the ruins of Pompeii. The proceeding plot is filled with moments of confusion and defenselessness that would make any lesser man panic, and the soundscape totally does it justice. Illuso's theme is manic, artificial, and overbearing. The crystalline sound effect of Man in the Mirror pulling people in coupled with the well-animated accompanying visual truly sell how out-of-the-ordinary it all is. The theme of Fugo's stand Purple Haze going out of control is suitably alarming, his rush attack animation is messy and visceral, and moments of Abbacchio getting in a good punch are punctuated with Moody Blues' usual piercing beep, letting us breathe a sigh of relief. Easily the high point of the series in terms of sound design and visual storytelling.

The team-based choreography? Not unlike Vanilla Ice or Terunosuke Miyamoto, Illuso is a one-off villain shown to be a cut above the rest. Abbacchio admits in multiple instances that they may have to leave Fugo to die, and is even willing to lose an arm if it means getting the mission done. This fight, unlike the others, comes on early in the series. We still haven't sampled fully what each of these people is capable of (hell, it's Fugo's debut fight). Previously I had mentioned a 2 on 2 fight, but that doesn't do Vento D'Oro justice - its true strength lies in these desperate struggles where characters bounce in to help and still just barely manage to scrape by. It's not afraid to do so lest its characters end up not looking cool. Getting in a good action sequence takes priority over building up iconography, and get in a good action sequence it does: it's choreographed like an extended puzzle, everyone attempting to find some loophole in the seemingly impenetrable Man in the Mirror. Fugo is a damsel in distress for a good stretch of it, it takes the experienced Abbacchio to ''break the ice'', and the quadruple-digit IQ madlad Giorno to go on to play him like a fiddle. You may not know it yet, but you don't beat Giorno in a battle of wits - or a battle of daring.
Its set pieces are all fun to watch and build on top of one another, thanks to the quickly well-established rules. There are no asspulls, you're left to rack your brain over how to win just as the characters are, and you could even take it as a challenge to predict where it's going to go. The final beatdown, with how much it took to get there, is also one of the best in the series. Illuso finally cornered and on the receiving end of Purple Haze's lethal virus, he doesn't just die. He dissolves like a piece of tissue paper. By far the most brutal death up to this point, fitting for a man as dangerous as him. Any other death would be beneath his dignity.

The character development? This is the moment that simultaneously brings Fugo, Abbacchio, and Giorno to life. Ask any JJBA fan what they know about these characters. Giorno as the devastatingly intelligent but reserved idealist, Abbacchio as the jaded veteran who would go to Hell and back for his leader, but whose cynicism and mistrust can be poison, and Fugo as the repressed, angry nerd who shows great compassion but also comes across as sacred of his own feelings. Where did we learn all that? More specifically, where did all that become important? The chemistry between the three heroes is electrifying. Giorno is still in the stage where he has to prove himself to the group, and more so than his sheer competence, he shows that he can be of personal worth to everyone in the group. His idealism overpowering Abbacchio's cynicism (there's a great exchange in which the two debate over whether they should leave anyone to die. I just love how Girono doesn't just say ''no'', he says ''with all due respect, no''. There's no animu ego-stroking to him, he just says what he believes and follows through on it. Why would there be? He lets his competence speak for itself.), and his willingness to cooperate with Fugo and see his usefulness despite him being, like I said, a damsel in distress, show how he's way more than just a try-hard noob that one may have taken him for up to this point. You can see Fugo tearing up on the inside when expressing his respect for the man he is now privileged to call a friend. It's wonderful. All of it.

As I said, Part 5 would not reach the same heights again. The final fight seriously faltered in terms of giving Giorno a proper punchline, and they ditched the character of Fugo altogether. Araki said he planned to have him turn on the group out of fear of betraying the boss, which would have been an excellent piece of tragedy fitting for the character, and the much-memed 7-page muda a scene actually worth talking about. Alas, it never happened, but at least we'll always have this masterpiece of a fight.

Yes, unironically Joseph vs Straits. Remember, these are being ranked within the context of their story. This is the debut of the fan-favourite Joseph Joestar, and he endeared himself to me instantly. Here's two things to consider:

1) Each of the nine heroes of JJBA is made to contrast with the previous one. Joseph is a smarmy chucklefrick - Jotaro doesn't know what laughter is. Josuke wears his heart on his sleeve - Giorno is cautious like a predator. You get the picture. This is the first time we've ever gotten a taste of that idea that kept JJBA fresh for so long, and it went forward with confidence, creating a scenario that caught everyone off-guard.

2) While I'm no expert on shonen anime, I do know there's one conundrum they all face, which is power creep. You have to keep escalating the scale of these fights, but how do you go about it? Shows like Bleach start with fights against common monsters, move on to more important participants in supernatural thing de jour, and end on a battle against the super duper megagod of the universe. That necessitates the heroes to keep getting stronger, and doing so believably. While Jojo doesn't really do that as much, since the switching of main characters and settings let it have more intimately-scaled and self-contained parts, this one directly follows up on Phantom Blood - it took Jonathan a lifetime to take on one vampire, Joseph smashed one in the first episode. And the difference between the two is not physical, it's psychological.

In the 10 or so minutes we're given to get to know Joseph, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking he's on the same level of competence as his grandpa. He's more hot-blooded, sure, but you could chalk that up to his upbringing. He lives in a noisy 1930s New York, not a refined 1880s british villa. When he is jumped by a vampirized Straits - a returning minor character from Part 1 - and you see he came prepared with a tommygun, you wouldn't be blamed for still holding on to the same impression. But when he drops his catchphrase - ''your next line is...'' - and proceeds to surprise both his enemy and the audience at every turn, you begin to see who this man really is. Always keeping us in suspense over what he's going to do next, his sharp cunning allowing him to punch far above his weight. He would eventually directly say this style was inspired by magic tricks. He uses whatever prop he can find in his environment, and taunts his opponent as means of distracting him from whatever trap he has set up. You can never fight him on autopilot. You can see why Wham would be so excited to tango with this guy.

I'd say this is the moment that sold me on JJBA as a whole. The entire schtick of mind game-based fights started here, and as much as I like Jonathan, Joseph is really the one who first exemplified the charisma and sense of presence future characters like Josuke, Polnareff, or Abbacchio would display. And more than that, if it pulled off the idea of power creep so well in this first bout, how could you not be excited for where they're going to take it next?

About that...

Where do you even begin with this absolute blast of a battle? Can you imagine if at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy had to fight the ghosts?

Battle Tendency did rip off many ideas from the Indiana Jones movies, everyone knows that. The plot revolves around some ancient macguffin which the bad guy gets at the end, and like I mentioned, the hero is a scrappy dude dabbling in things far above his paygrade, and the idea works just as well in a battle anime as it does in an adventure flick, because hey, it means more interesting bad guys to beat!

Kars, the leader of the Pillar Men, outwits our heroes and completes his ambition to become the ''ultimate life form'' (we soon find out that means an organism which contains the abilities of all life forms on Earth - Kars screwed over biology in the same way Pucci screwed over physics), and decides to kill Joseph as both a way to celebrate and to avenge his close friends Wham and Esidisi. The first way this battle shines is in how well it sells Kars' adrenaline rush. His transformation sequence is visually energetic and doused in overwhelming colours. He gets a moment to revel in his new abilities, even bathing in sunlight for the first time in his life and commenting on how incredible it feels. We are given time to drink in the gravity of this event. For example, the characters comment on how strange and horrifying this sight is, and when Kars decides to grow wings, the process is shown step by step, just so there's no doubt as to what's going on. That's nothing to say of Superkars' theme song - a mix of apocalyptic chanting and ear-piercing dubstep (yes, dubstep). It feels like your first time on pre-workout. It feels like your blood has turned to nitrous oxide.

Joseph doesn't back down, though. He immediately jacks a nazi fighter plane and proceeds to throw down with Steroid Tweety mid-air. You can feel the immense pressure he's working under. His MO thus far has been: try one scheme, and if it doesn't work, try another. He's used to walking on tightropes, but this is like walking a tightrope outside while it's windy. The margin for error is nigh non-existent. That's because Superkars has the first properly complicated power in the series. He has the power of all life, so he can fly, he can shoot quills like a porcupine, those same quills can turn into piranhas, he can grow a protective shell like a crab. ''Therefore'' is the key word, like it would be in the future of JJBA. Again, Joseph remains Joseph throughout the whole battle. There's no Star Fingers or Gold Experience Requiems to pull him out. There's only his wits, his luck, and the aid of his nazi cyborg buddy Rudol von Stroheim.

That is exactly what I meant when I said Jojo wasn't afraid to let the support characters come to the hero's aid. Despite this being Joseph's battle at its core, Stroheim is given a superb jobro moment - in the moment they slam Kars into a volcano with the fighter plane, he carries Joseph while jumping down with his cyborg legs, being destroyed in the process. What a guy. You can imagine how proud Hitler was when he heard of this.

The combined forces of the two also form a good counterweight - the only worthy counterweight - to Kars' bombast. The king of smartasses and the perpetually screaming wehraboo wet dream vs a bodybuilding god. Cocky anime hip-hop and mechanical germans quoting Nietzsche vs audial roid rage. Bugs Bunny powers and german engineering (the best in the world) vs action National Geographic. This may only be the second best fight in the series to me, but it is the most bombastic, by a country mile.
(On that note, while Stroheim sounds excellent in japanese, I urge you to give the english Joseph a listen. He's so wonderfully smug. Each second of his voice makes my life beautiful.)

Final point: this is the best sendoff to the given hero in terms of fighting aptitude. We are shown in the fight against Straits what Joseph can do, it was tested against Wham, and here we see its certain outer limits. Kars, in a sense, wins. Joseph was put on the ropes and saved by a stroke of dumb luck, which was driven home in a moment when he's out of tricks and attacks Kars with hamon in a final desperate move. Him, who has the answer for everything. If that wasn't bad enough, he's even hit back with hamon, as intense as the surface of the sun, and his flesh starts to melt. If you didn't crap your pants when that happened, you can't be human.

So yeah, this is the best sendoff in that sense because while Jonathan, Josuke, and Jolyne were tested to their limits, and Jotaro and Giorno are shown to be ever so slightly overpowered, Joseph is the only one who was treated to both. If you want to see how to write a story of fighting competence, there you go. Joseph Joestar is your guy. Plus, him lucking out and taking his last God-given moment with this invincible being to troll him - actually convince him that this was all part of his plan - is the kind of big dick move every man dreams of pulling off at least once in his life.

If Joseph vs Kars was the best send-off in terms of the protagonist's fighting aptitude, then this is the best send-off in terms of the story as a whole. It sounds like a given that my favourite fight would be the ending of my favourite part, but I don't think I would like DiU to the extent that I do if it wasn't for the high quality of this battle. So many of the plot threads and themes are paid off here, all without feeling forced.

To begin with, the first phase is more or less a wrap-up to the murder mystery aspect of DiU. Hayato, the son of the man whose identity Kira stole, is trying to expose him. Not to get into the unwatchably disgusting preceding sequence (probably the only major flaw of DiU), Kira is given a new, utterly broken ability named Bites the Dust - a curse he can plant on Hayato which will turn back time one hour if he was ever to expose his identity, but still doom everyone who heard it to die. Not unlike Man in the Mirror, the challenge lies in finding a loophole to exploit. You definitely can't call for help, but what else can you do? It's one of the few times a non-stand user participates in a battle like this, and it's just perfect. What a legend this kid is.
It also wraps up the story arc of Kira's ''new family''. We see him infiltrate the Kawajiri household after taking on the likeness of the father Kosaku, but while his son is suspicious of him, his wife can't get enough of him. The real Kosaku is implied to have been a loser, but the new one is smart and capable, he handles both angry landlords and stand users, he can cook better than his wife. The time they spend together gives a sort of plausible redeemability to this serial killer, shining a light on his positive qualities that inevitably come with being human. That's all well and good, but it ended on him targeting a child, and you can't really walk back on that. Now he deserves whatever befalls him.

The moment Josuke walks in the picture, the more traditional boots-on-ground segment begins. It starts off halfway humbly, as a normal scrap in an alleyway (though with a great performance by Kira and another heroic moment from Hayato), but quickly evolves into a fun and creative shootout. Josuke hides inside an abandoned house, and in a stroke of genius, uses his repairing ability to create homing broken glass projectiles, while Kira uses his established remote-controlled floating bombs (to heavily simplify it). It's a well-paced bit that puts all the powers at hand to good use, and it's deceptively simple for a final battle. It's the only one in the series where the hero and the villain are on equal ground. Outside of Bites the Dust, which has by now been deactivated, there's really nothing overpowered about Killer Queen. Yes, Josuke has friends to help him, but so does Kira. His cat helps him create those remote-controlled bombs, and the earthbound ghost of his father helps him guide them. He has his own life too, it's only natural he'd have something to show for it.

You could show a minute-long clip of this fight to an outsider and he wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's not the final battle at all. It would seem like just some random teen fighting a creepy thirtysomething wagie, but that's not how you view it when you know the context, because you know who these people are. I said how DiU chose to tell its story - started with the characters and setting and let the plot tell itself - and the core theme it ended up with is community. It makes sense that that's where it'd go with Josuke as its hero - the guy whose unconditional kindness and amicability towards people (not any specific type of person, just people in general) make him the beating heart of any town, school, or friend group. Kira is the opposite - more so than anything, he's a menace to society. It's not just a teen vs a wagie, it's the community incarnate busting its ass to incise its own cancer.
That, of course, comes to light more literally as other characters come along to join the party. Okuyasu turns out to be alive and, although still the same charming dope as before, gives a little monologue displaying how he finally learned to make decisions for himself (Josuke cries tears of joy when he sees him, and it's so damn touching. For him to do that in the middle of fighting for his life. If you ever formed a friendship like theirs, you succeeded in life.). When he attempts to activate Bites the Dust again, he is stopped by Koichi and Jotaro, who are by now like Batman and Robin. Hayato says to his face that his luck has nothing on the ''heart of gold'' that guards this town (referring to no one specific person). Kira continues his thoughts on how he wants a peaceful life, which used to be relatable, but at this point in the story it comes across more like self-centred whining, increasing his hateability tenfold. Reimi (the ghost of his first-ever victim) confronts him immediately after he dies, delivers a furious tirade from the depths of her heart, and finally gets her revenge by throwing him into what she presumes to be Hell. By far the most protracted, tortuous end to a villain despicable enough to back it up, in a part that got there through two seasons worth of careful, committed, high-quality work.

Did I mention that Killer Queen is my favourite stand?

Honourable mentions

The Chariot Requiem chase

There were some cool moments leading up to the end of Vento D'Oro. Them crossing paths with both Diavolo and Polnareff at the Colosseum was suitably epic, we got to see the funny baguette man from Part 3 as more mature and still maintaining the courage he attained in the fight against Vannila Ice, Diavolo finally coming out in the open gave an impression that we were past the point of no return, Chariot Requiem had created a properly loopy body-switching scenario that our boy Giorno was capable enough to navigate, King Crimson's time skips provided some quality jump scares, it had some damn 2001: A Space Odyssey-level visual spectacle, and we even got one final act of selflessness from Buccialati. Good stuff, it's just that the technical side of things is jumbled and arbitrary. That Gold Experience Requiem plot point especially. Giorno deserved better than that.

You gotta love how when Diavolo is confronted by Mista, he calls him ''You fu˘king peon''. Like he's genuinely offended to be breathing the same air as him.


By far the most disappointing fight in the series. The setup of the boss' identity almost being revealed through a comedy of errors is genius, as is the whole character of Risotto Nero. He is the leader of La Squadra Esecuzioni, with the personality of an edgy Buccialati and my favourite character design in the series, hands down. That paired with his theme song fueled by righteous vindictiveness even made him a small influence on a major character from my old urban fantasy novel. Someone, create a story where Risotto and Buccialati go out for a beer.

It's just a shame that Metallica is a garbage stand whose power boils down to ''I point at you and you die'' to which the only proper response is ''haha you killed me but I refuse to die!''.


A great fight, just not great enough to make the list. It did to the movie Speed what all of Battle Tendency did to Indiana Jones, and got a solid, action-packed deal out of it. Highway Star's humanoid form is one of my favourite designs, and this is the fight that spawned the ''Okay, master! Let's kill da ho! Beeeetch!'' line from Koichi's Echoes. I got no complaints, it's good, I just think there's 15+ fights that are better.


You'd think any fight with Kira would instantly make my list, but while it certainly was a good introduction to many parts of his character, the main focus is on Koichi and Jotaro, and they're not exactly my favourite characters in part 4. They don't really ignite any sort of spark for me.

But on the other hand... the fight was very well choreographed, so let's give it a mention anyway.


A little piece of slapstick comedy which let the old Joseph act out his ''foxy grandpa'' act in a proper fight and actually win, which is something I felt was lacking in part 3. It's another early example of a weak stand being used creatively, and Joseph won in a pretty clever way. Again, good fight, just not list material.


You gotta love a fight that goes from action to horror to comedy at the drop of a hat. Oh! That's a baseball!


Here's the first properly impactful character death in Jojo. While not the first truly emotional battle in the series (that would be Jonathan vs Dio), or even the best, it deserves recognition for being a good sign of things to come, and well put together and exciting on its own merits.


The fights in Stone Ocean were maybe stale, but they were by no means bad, so let's give one of them a mention. Lang Rangler provided us with a good one. Although the connecting tissue was lame, this is a cool zero-gravity throwdown where the heroes are first faced with the issue of orienting themselves, then after a while the stakes are upped again when the ZG effect goes on to create a localized vacuum (I'm pretty sure that violates more than one law of physics, but this ain't Jojo's Sensible Adventure. Some suspension of disbelief is expected.). The technical execution is rock solid, and sometimes I can't get enough of Jolyne's tomboy growls. I need me a pet Jolyne.

Plus... It's a guy in a homemade superhero suit named Lang Rangler who spider-mans around walls and has a stand called... I'm dead serious here... Jumpin' Jack Flash. If you don't find that at least a little amusing, you have no soul.

Gyro Zeppeli vs Ringo Roadagain

Look, I know I said animated battles only, but if you need any reason to go read Steel Ball Run, make it this one. Trust me when I say that it's truly something special if it can still impress me after 4 years of bombarding myself with stand battles. Welcome to True Man's World indeed.