Friends and at the same time, enemies.
Seven years has passed and Jonathan and Dio grew up into fine young men with Jojo doing a research about the Stone Mask and Dio graduating with flying colors in law school. Since they are at the right age, Dio decides to do the thing he's been planning for years now, to take over the Joestar estate. Can Jojo thwart Dio's plan?
This episode featured the opening theme of the series and I like it because it feels like the theme was made during the golden years of anime where most titles last for about 100-200 episodes. The song is both cheesy and hot-blooded and the same time and it gets me pumped up with watching the series. Lastly, the opening sequence featured a lot of spoilers to those who haven't read the manga yet. To the actual episode itself, the episode beginning with a game of rugby that showed the strength of a 20-year-old JoJo and his teamwork (?!) with Dio; to be honest I didn't expect that the JoJo will pass the ball on Dio since the guy did a lot of crap in his life that cause me to wonder what happened between those 7 years.
Their teamwork work and during the post-game interview, it turns out that Dio is just faking it and that JoJo is scared at the guy. Well that explains a lot of things! The two were just faking their friendship this whole time! Their so called friendship is tested in this episode as JoJo discovered a letter coming from Dio's father that was inside one of the bookshelves while he is researching about the Stone Mask. It turns out that the disease that struck Dio's father is similar to the disease JoJo's father had right now.
This is when JoJo concluded that Dio is trying to kill his father that led us to an interesting exchange between the two. The exchange between the two is really fantastic and showed a different side of Dio that we first saw in the previous episode. As it turns out, his grudge for his father hasn't died down even after all this years and won't swear honor on his name. For some reason, it feels like I am siding with Dio in this situation since JoJo is unaware to the crap Dio went through before he ended up deciding to kill his own father with a medicine coming from some Oriental, a Chinaman to be exact.
After concluding that there is something suspicious with the medicine Dio is handling, JoJo decided to go to London and find the antidote for the medicine and for three days, his father is under supervision of the doctors that JoJo trusted. As for Dio, he used this opportunity to study JoJo's notes about the Stone Mask and planned a way to make it look like JoJo died because of a research accident. As for JoJo, he is now in Ogre Street and is facing some street thugs.
JoJo's fight with the thugs of Ogre Street is really fun to watch since each thug has its own unique way of fighting. One distinct fighter is a man named Speedwagon who pointed out at the end of the fight that JoJo didn't exert much of his full strength in their fight even if his body can tear their bodies easily. This is when we saw more of JoJo's kindness that he is concerned about the families of these thugs since he is just in Ogre Street not to pick fights, but to find a cure for his father. Everyone will be moved by it but not in a manner like what Speedwagon showed in this episode! He is so moved that he will aid JoJo to the Chinaman who sells Oriental drugs. I am starting to like Speedwagon a bit more aside from his cool bowler hat.
Back to Dio, he is now in London and met a couple of thugs and decided to test the power of the Stone Mask for himself since he only sees it as a torture device. It indeed killed one of the thugs but as it turns out, the thug revived into a different creature, a creature that sucked blood of someone by using its fingers. For the first time, we saw Dio in a situation that he feels he doesn't have the advantage. Seeing him in this desperate situation made me once again, root for the guy but I guess luck is on his side during that time as the creature died because of sunlight.
Since the creature died because of sunlight, it is safe to conclude that the creature is a vampire. Much to my surprise, Dio decided that he will use the Stone Mask for him to reach a phase higher than any other human being. It's quite surprising considering that he is a kind of person that doesn't look like he is dumb enough to wear the Stone Mask. Considering that he is a kind of person who keeps on seeking for power, he is willing to take that risk of possibly dying the dumbest method ever just to obtain immortality and the power to go beyond human.
The episode ends with a good use of the show's ending theme opening guitar plucks that lead us to JoJo revealing that he knows what Dio has been up to. The series is starting to get interesting from this point on.
