Stone Ocean summary
Jun. 12th, 2006 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaBack to a topic other than my current pressing desire to move to China and escape IT Hell, and that is actually of interest to other people: I'm summarizing what I've read of JoJo part 6 behind the cut, like I said I would. However this is from (my swiss-cheese) memory, so may be somewhat out of order. I'm not even sure where the scanlations left off, so I'll start directly post-Jotaro. ^^;
Stone Ocean, up to volume 69 or thereabouts:
Jolyne is able to bundle Jotaro onto the waiting submarine and thence into the capable hands of the SPW, but allows herself to be recaptured in order to retrieve her father's discs, netting herself an extra five years for attempted jailbreak (as she says later on, "Five years more or less don't really matter at this point."). Meanwhile Hermes wakes up in the infirmary after a fever, in time to see but not prevent one of the janitors from stealing her money. Also her hand has turned into a sticker dispenser. ^^; Through trial and error she discovers that placing the sticker on an object duplicates the object, and removing the sticker causes the duplicates to merge - violently, like snapping a rubber band, so that some damage is incurred. (This is not the only way Kiss can attack: like Sticky Fingers it has a short-range punching humanoid form. But I don't think it shouts anything funny. XD)
Hermes is drawn into a macabrely hilarious battle with the aforementioned janitor, Xander McQueen (er), whose stand power is... suicidal depression. That is, he's so depressed that he tries to kill himself every other minute by some ridiculous method (ex. drowning self in toilet), but he consciously or unconsciously wants to take someone with him - so whatever he does to himself also happens to the person he mentally targets. (McQueen is "evil" because he's insane and self-involved as only the suicidally depressive and passive-aggressive by nature can be, but you have to admit it's a hard-luck story - he's in jail because his gun accidentally went off straight out an nth story window and hit a suicide as she was plummeting from the floor above. XD;;;;)
Hermes and Jolyne discover that McQueen was sent unwittingly to target them - Whitesnake is able not only to remove discs from people's heads but use them to manipulate. He can brainwash his subjects into obeying him by modifying the contents of the memory (or "personality") disc, and use the stand disc to, well, give them stand powers. Sometimes this results in them manifesting the stand "recorded" on the disc, sometimes it awakens the subjects' own latent stand powers, depending onwhat Araki had for breakfast whether they have any. Taking away McQueen's memory disc but leaving him the stand disc is sufficient to keep him alive but harmless. So Jolyne has to get at least one of her father's discs back, because the SPW aren't sure how long he'll keep in the freezer. XD
The opportunity comes when two guards disappear on the outskirts of the prison grounds, and a volunteer party of 5-6 prisoners is sent out to search the swamp, Jolyne and Hermes among them (random note - I'm kind of fond of that warden dude with the puppet). The prisoners are all wearing bracelets that will emit warning beeps and explode if they get too far from the guard leading the party. I'm missing a couple of chapters here for some reason... anyway, shit happens, the guard is attacked and wounded, the prisoners start accusing each other of being the murderer and infiltrating the party ("Do you remember seeing her when we set out?"), one girl gets exploded by the bracelet. Finally it transpires that all the prisoners have been taken over by a black slime thing (think X-Files) that's lurking in the swamp water, able to multiply endlessly wherever there's moisture, as well as take stand-shape in order to move and fight. At first Jolyne and Hermes assume, reasonably enough, that the slime is the stand; then they find out that the slime is the user guarding Whitesnake's disc stash from harm, and the stand, well, you don't meet many plankton colonies with a mind of their own, do you.
(...I've always wondered how that happened.
Whitesnake: Getting sick of carrying this inner tube around - *plonk* - aw, shit, there goes one into the swamp.
Primeval Floridian mud: What... is this light? Who... am I?
Whitesnake:
Whitesnake: I totally meant to do that.)
There is, in fact, a giant stash of discs hidden in a tire on a disused tractor in a shed on the edge of the swamp. After they defeat Foo Fighters (the Swamp Thing, hereafter known as F.F.) Jolyne convinces her fairly easily to guard the discs for Jolyne's sake and not Whitesnakes, since F.F. wants to keep the things from harm mostly because she owes her conscious existence to them. ...F.F. is a she because she then takes over the body of the girl who went explodey and starts following Jolyne around. "Healing" in this arc consists of F.F. plugging the wound with goo and Jolyne stitching it up with thread; it's not quite as convincing as in part 5. ^^;
In the aftermath of the fight you find out that Whitesnake's user is the prison chaplain (there's the word I was looking for). 67 volumes without any wonky Catholics, it had to end sometime but it was a good run.
The discs in the inner tube are all stand discs, taken from various users - apparently of secondary importance. Star Platinum is tossed in among them, indicating that the enemy's true target is in Jotaro's memories, somewhere between the oceanography and the cigarette tricks no doubt. Nevertheless the good padre doesn't want Jotaro resurrected. He can't fight Jolyne himself, because he's at pains to keep his identity a secret (Whitesnake's range is about twenty metres, enough that he can remain unseen even when giving orders to underlings), but he sends assassins to attack Jolyne and retrieve the disc. Picks likely candidates from his casebook as spiritual counsellor. =_= I'm sorry but there's something entirely wrong and questionable about the entire process that I can't put my finger on. Wait, maybe it's that part where Milaschon comes to update him on the progress of her rehabilitation and he tries to show her how to eat cherries without detaching the pit from the stem instead. No wonder the poor girl suffers a relapse.
Anyway, Milaschon's stand ability turns out to be one of those annoying gambling ones (Marilyn Manson, the Debt Collector), because she's a kleptomaniac. Am I forgetting something? ...Emporio, right. XD Emporio is the slightly creepy little boy in the baseball outfit. He was born a stand user in the prison where he's lived, hidden, all his life; his stand ability is what pseudo-technically could be called "kinetic psychometry" - he can interact with the "memories" recorded in objects/places as if they were real, and allow others to interact with them, ex. hold conferences of war in rooms of buildings that were knocked down before the prison became a prison. He sort of adopts Jolyne, because he knows "something awful" is happening in the prison and wants allies to help put it to a stop. With him are Weather Report, who has amnesia because his memory disc was removed by Whitesnake, and Annasui, who... is just kind of there. Because it's more interesting than jail. I guess.
Jolyne puts a phone call through to the SPW, who tell her that they're always watching (tm) and if she can get into the central "garden" of the prison in oh twenty minutes from now they'll have someone there named "Savage Garden" to pick up Jotaro's stand disc. She enlists Emporio who enlists Weather Report to help her get there, because you have to go through the men's wing. Along the way they're attacked by one dude named something Wrangler whose stand power is to nullify gravity on 1) anything within a given radius, or 2) you, if he spits on you. (...) He sort of reminded me of Ghiacchio/White Album, actually, in that he somehow came across as the intellectual nerdist of the assassin group. Maybe it's the dorky protective suits (like, if you have the power to nullify gravity and you bother to make it so that you can keep your shoes tied to your ankles, you are a nerd). Also like White Album: aaarrgh long-drawn-out and annoying why will you not just DIE. You even get the embarrassment of Our Heroes as this was where Jolyne really needed to pee in the middle of battle. XD; What made it immeasurably worse is that Weather Report was completely business-like and explained why your body tries to get rid of water in zero grav (learn something new every day from reading manga) then told her to go do her business around a corner, since he was in control of all the moisture in the room anyway and would ensure it didn't make a mess (Weather Report's stand ability is exactly what you think it is).
Repeat lesson from JoJo: peeing = big deal for girls, not so big deal for guys.
Wrangler is a tough fight but they manage to kill him off, not without getting badly wounded. Weather Report drags himself behind some barrels, and Jolyne attempts to use Wrangler's ID card to get through the final door to the "garden". However in the interim the padre saw Jolyne's phone call to SPW in the electronic log and heads down himself to make sure everything is all right. So when the door opens they come face to face, and Jolyne pulls up short because she can't bring herself to beat up an innocent priest. orz||| STUPID MORAL JOESTARS, not that it would have done her any good in the long run. She tries to persuade him to allow her into the garden for a minute instead ("My father's life is at stake") and... he lets her, because a) he realises someone else is in the room somewhere and doesn't want to risk exposure, and b) he's left another assassin in the garden anyway. ^^; Jolyne is nearly killed by the second assassin, a simple guard with a gun, before Weather Report plumbs his stand to the very limits of its definition and calls down A SHOWER OF POISONOUS FROGS FROM THE SKY. This takes care of the guard but strands both Jolyne and the padre in a pile of frogs (......), and in the ensuing confusion Jolyne is able to send the Star Platinum disc off with "Savage Garden", who turns out to be an SPW homing pigeon. Not, insofar as I can tell, a stand user.
After this you have afanservice chapter that explains what the padre is up to. It involves Dio. This is a good place to stop as I'm wanting my dinner. XD
Randomly: aww, bless!
Stone Ocean, up to volume 69 or thereabouts:
Jolyne is able to bundle Jotaro onto the waiting submarine and thence into the capable hands of the SPW, but allows herself to be recaptured in order to retrieve her father's discs, netting herself an extra five years for attempted jailbreak (as she says later on, "Five years more or less don't really matter at this point."). Meanwhile Hermes wakes up in the infirmary after a fever, in time to see but not prevent one of the janitors from stealing her money. Also her hand has turned into a sticker dispenser. ^^; Through trial and error she discovers that placing the sticker on an object duplicates the object, and removing the sticker causes the duplicates to merge - violently, like snapping a rubber band, so that some damage is incurred. (This is not the only way Kiss can attack: like Sticky Fingers it has a short-range punching humanoid form. But I don't think it shouts anything funny. XD)
Hermes is drawn into a macabrely hilarious battle with the aforementioned janitor, Xander McQueen (er), whose stand power is... suicidal depression. That is, he's so depressed that he tries to kill himself every other minute by some ridiculous method (ex. drowning self in toilet), but he consciously or unconsciously wants to take someone with him - so whatever he does to himself also happens to the person he mentally targets. (McQueen is "evil" because he's insane and self-involved as only the suicidally depressive and passive-aggressive by nature can be, but you have to admit it's a hard-luck story - he's in jail because his gun accidentally went off straight out an nth story window and hit a suicide as she was plummeting from the floor above. XD;;;;)
Hermes and Jolyne discover that McQueen was sent unwittingly to target them - Whitesnake is able not only to remove discs from people's heads but use them to manipulate. He can brainwash his subjects into obeying him by modifying the contents of the memory (or "personality") disc, and use the stand disc to, well, give them stand powers. Sometimes this results in them manifesting the stand "recorded" on the disc, sometimes it awakens the subjects' own latent stand powers, depending on
The opportunity comes when two guards disappear on the outskirts of the prison grounds, and a volunteer party of 5-6 prisoners is sent out to search the swamp, Jolyne and Hermes among them (random note - I'm kind of fond of that warden dude with the puppet). The prisoners are all wearing bracelets that will emit warning beeps and explode if they get too far from the guard leading the party. I'm missing a couple of chapters here for some reason... anyway, shit happens, the guard is attacked and wounded, the prisoners start accusing each other of being the murderer and infiltrating the party ("Do you remember seeing her when we set out?"), one girl gets exploded by the bracelet. Finally it transpires that all the prisoners have been taken over by a black slime thing (think X-Files) that's lurking in the swamp water, able to multiply endlessly wherever there's moisture, as well as take stand-shape in order to move and fight. At first Jolyne and Hermes assume, reasonably enough, that the slime is the stand; then they find out that the slime is the user guarding Whitesnake's disc stash from harm, and the stand, well, you don't meet many plankton colonies with a mind of their own, do you.
(...I've always wondered how that happened.
Whitesnake: Getting sick of carrying this inner tube around - *plonk* - aw, shit, there goes one into the swamp.
Primeval Floridian mud: What... is this light? Who... am I?
Whitesnake:
Whitesnake: I totally meant to do that.)
There is, in fact, a giant stash of discs hidden in a tire on a disused tractor in a shed on the edge of the swamp. After they defeat Foo Fighters (the Swamp Thing, hereafter known as F.F.) Jolyne convinces her fairly easily to guard the discs for Jolyne's sake and not Whitesnakes, since F.F. wants to keep the things from harm mostly because she owes her conscious existence to them. ...F.F. is a she because she then takes over the body of the girl who went explodey and starts following Jolyne around. "Healing" in this arc consists of F.F. plugging the wound with goo and Jolyne stitching it up with thread; it's not quite as convincing as in part 5. ^^;
In the aftermath of the fight you find out that Whitesnake's user is the prison chaplain (there's the word I was looking for). 67 volumes without any wonky Catholics, it had to end sometime but it was a good run.
The discs in the inner tube are all stand discs, taken from various users - apparently of secondary importance. Star Platinum is tossed in among them, indicating that the enemy's true target is in Jotaro's memories, somewhere between the oceanography and the cigarette tricks no doubt. Nevertheless the good padre doesn't want Jotaro resurrected. He can't fight Jolyne himself, because he's at pains to keep his identity a secret (Whitesnake's range is about twenty metres, enough that he can remain unseen even when giving orders to underlings), but he sends assassins to attack Jolyne and retrieve the disc. Picks likely candidates from his casebook as spiritual counsellor. =_= I'm sorry but there's something entirely wrong and questionable about the entire process that I can't put my finger on. Wait, maybe it's that part where Milaschon comes to update him on the progress of her rehabilitation and he tries to show her how to eat cherries without detaching the pit from the stem instead. No wonder the poor girl suffers a relapse.
Anyway, Milaschon's stand ability turns out to be one of those annoying gambling ones (Marilyn Manson, the Debt Collector), because she's a kleptomaniac. Am I forgetting something? ...Emporio, right. XD Emporio is the slightly creepy little boy in the baseball outfit. He was born a stand user in the prison where he's lived, hidden, all his life; his stand ability is what pseudo-technically could be called "kinetic psychometry" - he can interact with the "memories" recorded in objects/places as if they were real, and allow others to interact with them, ex. hold conferences of war in rooms of buildings that were knocked down before the prison became a prison. He sort of adopts Jolyne, because he knows "something awful" is happening in the prison and wants allies to help put it to a stop. With him are Weather Report, who has amnesia because his memory disc was removed by Whitesnake, and Annasui, who... is just kind of there. Because it's more interesting than jail. I guess.
Jolyne puts a phone call through to the SPW, who tell her that they're always watching (tm) and if she can get into the central "garden" of the prison in oh twenty minutes from now they'll have someone there named "Savage Garden" to pick up Jotaro's stand disc. She enlists Emporio who enlists Weather Report to help her get there, because you have to go through the men's wing. Along the way they're attacked by one dude named something Wrangler whose stand power is to nullify gravity on 1) anything within a given radius, or 2) you, if he spits on you. (...) He sort of reminded me of Ghiacchio/White Album, actually, in that he somehow came across as the intellectual nerdist of the assassin group. Maybe it's the dorky protective suits (like, if you have the power to nullify gravity and you bother to make it so that you can keep your shoes tied to your ankles, you are a nerd). Also like White Album: aaarrgh long-drawn-out and annoying why will you not just DIE. You even get the embarrassment of Our Heroes as this was where Jolyne really needed to pee in the middle of battle. XD; What made it immeasurably worse is that Weather Report was completely business-like and explained why your body tries to get rid of water in zero grav (learn something new every day from reading manga) then told her to go do her business around a corner, since he was in control of all the moisture in the room anyway and would ensure it didn't make a mess (Weather Report's stand ability is exactly what you think it is).
Repeat lesson from JoJo: peeing = big deal for girls, not so big deal for guys.
Wrangler is a tough fight but they manage to kill him off, not without getting badly wounded. Weather Report drags himself behind some barrels, and Jolyne attempts to use Wrangler's ID card to get through the final door to the "garden". However in the interim the padre saw Jolyne's phone call to SPW in the electronic log and heads down himself to make sure everything is all right. So when the door opens they come face to face, and Jolyne pulls up short because she can't bring herself to beat up an innocent priest. orz||| STUPID MORAL JOESTARS, not that it would have done her any good in the long run. She tries to persuade him to allow her into the garden for a minute instead ("My father's life is at stake") and... he lets her, because a) he realises someone else is in the room somewhere and doesn't want to risk exposure, and b) he's left another assassin in the garden anyway. ^^; Jolyne is nearly killed by the second assassin, a simple guard with a gun, before Weather Report plumbs his stand to the very limits of its definition and calls down A SHOWER OF POISONOUS FROGS FROM THE SKY. This takes care of the guard but strands both Jolyne and the padre in a pile of frogs (......), and in the ensuing confusion Jolyne is able to send the Star Platinum disc off with "Savage Garden", who turns out to be an SPW homing pigeon. Not, insofar as I can tell, a stand user.
After this you have a
Randomly: aww, bless!
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 12:40 am (UTC)Maybe the part where it is a MASSIVE BETRAYAL OF TRUST? I mean, it's bad enough that he's exploting his knowledge, but to do it from a position of spiritual authority, to people who already have little reason to trust authority and lots of reasons to turn to religion in solace, is worse.
Um, this may be a stupid question but how did Emporio get into to the prison? Was his mother a prisoner or has he just been living, Phantom-of-the-opera-style, in the basement after being abandonned by Gypsies.
A SHOWER OF POISONOUS FROGS FROM THE SKY
Old Testament! I wonder if he can do the other plagues too.
So using these memory-disks on formerly nonsentient things gives them life but with some degree of conscious will, while using them to re-write normal people's personalities makes them do what the padre says? Or is it less like control, more like suggestion.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 03:30 am (UTC)Actually, even if the memory disc is stuck in an animal (like a frog...) it would normally just bring it under Whitesnake's control. It's made very clear that F.F. is a truly freakish event, a evolutionary great leap forward, and Jotaro only wishes he were here to see it. XD
As long as it's a meteological event, no matter how freakish, Weather Report can accomplish it (blood and locusts are likely within range XD). He can also do you a proverbial tempest in a teacup.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:13 am (UTC)It... it's all so clear to me now. Like primeval floridian mud! orz
Wells, it's good knowing what F.F. stands for, finally. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 02:43 am (UTC)It is all clear. Like the primeval floridian mud you describe. (What is floridian?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 03:04 am (UTC)Er. Florida? XD
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:36 am (UTC)Damn you, Sabina, how can you laugh at poor Jotato's wangsty coma?!?! He's not some kind of sexy, sexy, sexy side of beef you keep in your freezer! XDDDDD
And my guess is that that dude is named Lang Wrangler - it could be Wrang Wrangler, but Helmut Lang + Wrangler jeans = Araki's idea of awesome, probably.
By the way, Araki sure is versed in American urban legends; he used that one story about the murderer licking the girl's hand for part 4, and now he's using this one (http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.htm) for poor Xander's emo past. XD;
The thing with Pucci's method of selecting victims reminds me of that part in "Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan" when he was being all Japanese-tourist at a church, slipped inside the confessional to take even MORE pictures, and then is mistaken for a confessor by some dude who goes into the other side. He knows it's sooooooo wrong, but..."PEOPLE'S LIVES == NETA FOR MY MANGA~" so he stamps out that naughty conscience for a few minutes. XD; So it looks like Araki is totally aware of how wrong it is to abuse people's trust like that, yet at the same time, that very wrongness is what makes it so *awesome* and *evil* to him. Actually, I totally get what he means.
(And hey, neither Josuke nor Koichi were there to lecture OR beat up Rohan, sooooooooo....)
How do you feel about Weather-tan?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 03:44 am (UTC)Really I expected nothing but wrongness from the padre to begin with, I mean he's a major JoJo villain. XD And a Friend of Dio and a Soldier of Christ, so there you are.
I was reading someone's essay this morning re: how true artists are all going to Hell, because they place Art above morals. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 04:16 am (UTC)I still gotta laugh at that scene you will get to eventually when Annasui sees Jolyne hugging Weather. XDD Annasui doesn't get that hugging Weather-tan is like hugging...um...not Jotato...um...not the girls...uh...it's like hugging Weather-tan, then. XD (Well, you'll have to see what happens after that, anyways.)
Pucci is a Friend of Diorothy, you mean? >D
It's interesting how Araki seems to like his heroes being Moral and Good, but not necessarily Nice. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 05:02 am (UTC)YES that was what I was aiming for, the linguistic center in my brain just couldn't quite make it there. (Possibly for good reason.)
P.S. Amazon shipment just got in with SBR 8. :D