Warning: Contains spoilers for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean.It took until the final installment, but JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has finally lived up to the hype. 2021 saw the long-awaited premiere of part 6 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean, but the anime has unfortunately been marred by a variety of problems. Stone Ocean receiving a batch release on Netflix as opposed to a weekly release was seen as a bad sign by many people because it would kill its hype, and the finished product didn’t do much to make up for it as the anime was routinely criticized for falling short of its predecessors in terms of art, animation, and other vital areas.
The first two parts of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean had their share of problems, but luckily, the final batch release finally allowed the series to live up to the hype. In addition to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean finally reaching its most dramatic heights, the art, animation, and music all saw vast improvements over the previous batches, making it a far more engaging experience than before. It’s unfortunate that it took Stone Ocean so long to come into its own, but at the very least, it was able to finally play to the strengths of the franchise at the very end.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Fixed Its Music Problem
The first noteworthy thing about part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean is the vast improvement in the music. The first part of Stone Ocean had a great soundtrack, but the problem was that nothing was changed for part 2. The score was mostly unchanged from part 1, a problem further exacerbated by it taking almost a year for part 2 of Netflix's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean to be released, and worse was how there wasn’t a new theme song for part 2; not only was Ichigo’s “STONE OCEAN” still used, but the visuals were hardly even changed, even though they didn’t even make sense for the events of part 2.
Part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, however, managed to fix a lot of the problems with its music. There’s finally a new theme song, “Heaven’s Falling Down” by Sana from Sajou no Hana, and it does a perfect job of capturing the somber tone of the final third. The soundtrack of part 3 is also great thanks to its mixture of new tracks, like the score that plays when Pucci attains Heaven, and old tracks, like Stardust Crusaders' Jotaro Kujo’s theme being used in the final battle. Add in “Roundabout” being brought back to bookend the franchise, and it’s hard to find any fault with the music.
Stone Ocean’s Story Lived Up To Its Source Material in Part 3
Another thing that part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has going for it is its story finally hitting its peak. While the story in the first two parts wasn’t bad, it often struggled to reach some of the highs that JoJo usually goes for in terms of both action and drama, which wasn’t helped by many of the principal characters often going long periods without being seen. The story also fell back into the monster-of-the-week format that was already tiresome in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, and with how confusing Stands like Dragon’s Dream and Jail House Lock could be, it made the anime hard to engage with.
Fortunately, the final installment of the anime was an improvement on all of those fronts. In addition to doing a better job of balancing out the cast, the fights were all executed far better than in previous batches thanks to more engaging villains and strategies than in the previous batches. The drama also saw a tremendous uptick with story beats like the tragedy of Weather’s life and the ultimately bittersweet conclusion of the series, a far cry from what the first two batches usually dealt with. The last third of Stone Ocean’s story is some of the franchise’s best, and it does a lot to sell part 6’s true strengths.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Finally Got The Art & Animation It Deserved
The biggest boon provided by part 3 of David Productions' JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean was its art and animation. While JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure doesn’t always have stellar art and animation, the first two batches of part 6 were criticized for having art that looked bad more often than not and animation that often looked rather stiff. Worst of all, however, was how the anime would often use ugly-looking CGI models for characters and Stands like Manhattan Transfer, Lang Wrangler, and Whitesnake; JoJo had always used 2D models in previous parts, so seeing it suddenly use such bad-looking CGI was certainly distracting, to say the least.
Thankfully, the third batch managed to fix all of those problems. While there were still occasional uses of CGI, it was done far more sparingly than before, resulting in 2021's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean being easier to watch. Not only that, but in addition to the art and animation being more consistent, it was also greatly enhanced to be some of the best in the series, the Sky High fight and the battle with Pucci being particular standouts. The last third of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has some of the best action and story in the franchise, and it’s great that the anime made sure that the visuals could match that.