JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean – Episode 37 Recap & Review

Maiden Heaven (2)

Episode 37 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Part II begins with Emporio shooting a bullet in a different direction. Ermes had put one of her stickers on it to allow the group to propel themselves toward it. Everyone huddles up and grabs a hold of each other as Emporio removes the sticker.

Unfortunately, Pucci moves at incredible speeds as Ermes fears her Stand’s ability isn’t as fast as Pucci’s accelerated time. This means he can easily catch up to them before the bullets connect with each other. Anastasia asks Emporio to shoot another bullet at the swamp area and to place a sticker on it. Emporio complies, and the gang heads in a new direction.

Pucci’s unbelievable speed allows him to catch up to them. Anastasia claims Pucci may have inconceivable speed, but his Stand can only attack them one at a time. Anastasia tells Jotaro that he’ll act as bait. He wants him to seize the chance to stop time and finish Pucci off as soon as Pucci’s attack hits Anastasia. Jotaro remarks that Anastasia’s plan is brilliant but feels Pucci’s bluffing and plans to attack him first.

Anastasia refutes his claim and says he submerged Diver Down into Jotaro, Ermes, Jolyne, and Emporio’s bodies too. This will protect their insides from Pucci’s attacks. Anastasia remarks that he’s been lucky before, so he believes he can prevent Pucci from dealing a fatal blow to him. He also brings up marrying Jolyne and is shocked to hear Jolyne say that she’ll consider marrying him.

Pucci reaches a rock and plans to attack Anastasia. However, Emporio shoots another kiss-marked bullet at the ocean to send our heroes into it. Once in the ocean, Anastasia tells the others to huddle up. Jotaro realizes it was smart to head for the ocean since it gives Pucci’s position away. Emporio looks toward the sky and realizes Maiden Heaven’s speeding up time faster than before.

We receive a brief narration of how everything besides living things is accelerating in time. Meanwhile, everyone prepares for Pucci to strike them. Anastasia reminds Jotaro to wait for his signal. Pucci attacks Anastasia and Jotaro stops time. Before Jotaro could strike, he discovers that Pucci somehow forced Jolyne to penetrate Anastasia’s body with Stone Ocean.

Jotaro plans to attack Pucci but realizes that Pucci had a barrage of knives planning to strike her down. This leaves Jotaro in a tight spot as he recalls the same knife trick Dio used on him in Stardust Crusaders. Jotaro pushes Jolyne aside to protect her from the knives as time starts again. He attacks Pucci but fails to hit him. Pucci knows that the Joestar bloodline has always prevailed before an enemy.

However, it’s their bloodline that serves as their weakness. He tells Jotaro that his weakness is Jolyne. Pucci murders everyone except for Emporio, who screams at the horrid sight in front of him. Pucci plans to murder Emporio and claims that he was the one who killed his mother. Before Pucci could murder Emporio, Emporio’s lifted into the air and successfully dodges Pucci’s strike.

Pucci’s bewildered but realizes Jolyne saved Emporio. She strikes him with Stone Ocean and throws a knife at his eye. Pucci heads into the ocean to find Jolyne. Jolyne says she used her thread to grab a hold of a Dolphin to increase her speed. Emporio is riding the dolphin she attached her thread too. While Pucci can accelerate time, living things are unaffected.

She knows time acceleration can’t affect the distance he can swim or his stamina. Jolyne tells Emporio that the Dolphin will take him to dry land, so he can escape. She plans to stay behind and hold off Pucci for as long as she can. Jolyne cuts the thread and prepares to fight Pucci with everything she has. Pucci strikes Jolyne as everyone worldwide notices the strange time acceleration phenomenon.

Time speeds so fast that corpses start rotting and buildings start decaying. Eventually, Emporio finds himself lifted into a reality where time and space are distorted and only living things are unaffected. Emporio falls into something in space alongside other humanoids. The episode concludes with Emporio being transported to the Green Dolphin Street Prison.

The Episode Review

This episode encapsulates the bizarre yet spectacle nature of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean. While it doesn’t outright say that Pucci succeeded in his mission, he likely defeated our heroes. This unexpected turn of events had me on the edge of my seat throughout the entire runtime of the chapter. While there were some unneeded additions, this episode fulfilled my expectations.

In previous installments, our heroes always defeat the villains, but this was one of those occasions where their combined effort wasn’t enough. At the same time, Pucci makes it clear that his intentions aren’t evil, as he wants to use his power to reshape the universe into something happier for humanity. On the flip side, he’s not against ranking casualties to achieve his goal. If this is the end for Pucci, he went out with a bang.

Besides that, the animation and visuals saw a massive overhaul compared to the previous chapter. Everything looked fluid, from how the ocean’s waves splashed around our heroes to how our characters moved on the screen. The punching and Stand sound effects were a delight to my ears. Seeing Emporio fly in space among other living organisms made my mind melt with our gorgeous everything looked.

This is one of those episodes that’ll go down as one of the best from a visual and catastrophic standpoint. Overall, this episode delivers wonderful tension, epic clashes, and various mind-numbing visuals that’ll last with fans forever. I’m looking forward to seeing how the next episode plans to wrap up this sixth entry of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.