YMMV / JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure | Phantom Blood | Battle Tendency | Stardust Crusaders | Diamond is Unbreakable | Golden Wind | Stone Ocean | Steel Ball Run | JoJolion | The JOJOLands

A-H

• Accidental Aesop: Do not read other people's diaries or secret files. You might get into unwanted trouble. The entire plot started because Jotaro read DIO's book on attaining Heaven even when he had no use for it, allowing Pucci to figure out how to continue DIO's Evil Plan after reading Jotaro's Memory disc.
• Accidental Innuendo: In its introduction, Whitesnake uses an ability that puts Jotaro and Jolyne to sleep, then coats them in acid to slowly dissolve them. Said acid is thick, white, and gloopy, and when Jolyne wakes up, she (along with Jotaro and the guard) is totally coated in the substance, making it look like a particularly wild orgy just took place there.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Jotaro's actions in this part. Was he holding back on telling Jolyne about DIO since he didn't want her to get into any danger, or was he going to tell her anyway knowing that the time would come one day? There's also the case of whether or not he knew that some of DIO's henchmen were still lingering and that DIO had a backup plan. If so, than this would also explain why he was so intent on recovering the two Stand Arrows in Morioh and sent Koichi to Italy to interrogate Giorno.
  • Pucci's relationship with DIO is often questioned by many readers. The canon suggests DIO's Homoerotic Subtext with Pucci was him tempting him, just to see if he could be the "friend" he was looking for, not tempted by carnal desires, meaning that by all intents Pucci should be asexual... however, their relationship is so incredibly homoerotic, even by JoJo standards, that many fans heavily doubt this and question what exactly was DIO looking for in him.
  • Related to the above, was DIO's friendship with Pucci genuine, or was it more of his manipulative nature and merely saw Pucci as a means to an end? Another interpretation was that DIO intended on manipulating Pucci from the start, but ended up genuinely befriending Pucci.
  • Did Ungalo really fall into a despair-induced coma after his plans were foiled? Given that he was a hardcore drug addict when Pucci recruited him, and due to the panic and dread he must have felt when he heard the news, it's also likely he shot up in an attempt to calm himself, only to overdose. While he claimed to have sworn off drugs after his newfound purpose in life, heavy drug users aren't known for completely shelving their proclivities overnight.
  • The Heaven Plan. Even if the notes detailed the process, the end goal differs depending on if it's directly DIO's will or Pucci's interpretation. In the case of the former, is it a rare act of well-intentions to give others and himself who suffer from the uncertainness of existence a peace of mind due to thinking on the nature of inner peace while trapped underneath the ocean, or did DIO always intend the plan for ulterior motives to give himself even more unrivaled power over the masses due to being aware of how things played out? In the case of the latter, did Pucci base the end goal on what DIO told him, but lacked the internal workings of DIO's mind to actively make it as the vampire envisioned, relying on estimates of what DIO's implied personable façade gave him to work off of, or did Pucci's own subconscious insecurities on how Fate's seeming randomness lead to him unintentionally taking DIO's intended plan off the rails to ensure Pucci's own vision of Heaven by accident? The interpretation relies on how well Pucci knew DIO as a person, and if DIO had any nuance as a character.
  • The scene where DIO is lying shirtless in bed with Pucci may lead one to wonder if they were involved in a sexual way, but the "trustworthy friend" needed for DIO's Heaven Plan explicitly must not be someone with sexual desires. DIO is a very handsome and charismatic man who has seduced many people, and is bisexual, according to Araki. Is he trying to seduce Pucci, or is he using his looks to test Pucci's strength of character and qualifications for being that person he needs for the Heaven Plan?
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The Maximum Security Ward portion is often cited as the biggest drag in the entire part. While it starts decently enough with the Planet Waves battle, it quickly nosedives with two of the most reviled battles in the entire series in Dragon's Dream and Yo-Yo Ma. It does pick up once Pucci finally enters the scene, but by then, it's almost time for this portion of the story to end.
  • A lot of the arcs towards the end are really long, ranging from about 10 to 12 chapters in length. Most notable are the Bohemian Rhapsody and Heavy Weather arcs, which are some of the longest non-final battle arcs in the series. It doesn't help that for many the Stand battles in this part don't have much going on in terms of actual fighting.
• Ass Pull: The conclusion to the Yo-Yo Ma fight relies on several pieces of information that were never established or foreshadowed: that Diver Down can enter other Stands in addition to regular matter, that remote control Stands have "target sensors" that can be targeted or manipulated, affecting the Stand's behavior, and that wiring a brain into these sensors will cause the stand to take on the behavior of the brain. As opposed to the clever manipulation of fight parameters that characterize most Stand battles, this resolution essentially boils down to "give opponent an instant lobotomy".
• Awesome Art: The poster advertising the final batch of episodes looks utterly beautiful, with the characters adorned across a moonlit Kennedy Space Center really pushing home how grandiose and dark the original continuity's Grand Finale truly is.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: The anime adaptation was heavily criticized for how its distribution was handled in the west. The Netflix release broke the tradition of the series premiering new episodes every Friday, instead opting to release episodes in batches across long stretches of time. The first twelve episodes were dropped on the exact same day while said episodes continued to air on a weekly basis in Japan. Many found this decision to be unnecessary and detrimental, especially since Komi Can't Communicate, which premiered on the service two months prior, did release episodes weekly and found success in doing so. This decision was criticized even further when the second batch would be released on September 1, 2022, six months after said announcement, and a whopping ten months after the first batch was released, during which period every other season prior had already finished airing.
• Badass Decay: Jotaro suffers this hard. First, he spends the majority of the part in a coma, and when he finally returns, Pucci unceremoniously kills him.
• Base-Breaking Character: Anasui's Abhorrent Admirer schtick towards Jolyne makes him one of the most divisive characters in the part. He has fans who think he's funny (especially since he always gets blown off whenever he makes a move), but many people also loathe him for it due to how it can be seen as sexual harrassment being Played for Laughs. Others dislike this aspect of his character, but appreciate his Character Development over the course of the story, with his antics diminishing after the gang escapes from prison.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • When Pucci discovers D an G unconscious, he puts a regular CD into the then-dying Guccio's head to play Handel's "Messiah" while praising it in an over-the-top and pleased manner that contrasts with his usual serious demeanor before and afterwards. And once F.F. enters the picture, Pucci goes on acting like it never happened.
  • Just before C-Moon appears, there's a brief scene dedicated to two women outside the Space Center bathrooms clinging on to dear life and screaming for help as toilet water drips on their faces. Jolyne and Emporio manage to jump onto the same level, and Jolyne brushes off their situation by saying that it doesn't look too bad, then they're forgotten entirely as C-Moon makes its entrance. It's an unusually out-of-character bit of Heroic Comedic Sociopathy for Jolyne, who's been shown before to be willing to rescue civilians in the line of fire, though she might not have much of a choice here.
• Broken Base:
  • The ending, big time. Was the universal reset an emotional sendoff to Parts 1 through 6 that acted as a satisfying conclusion to the long saga? Or was it a cop-out that made the wholesale slaughter of the protagonists pointless and felt like a contrived means of concluding the initial continuity? The base is split even further on how to interpret the ending, with two common interpretations and no middle ground. Some believe that the universe reset again after Pucci's death, and that the main cast we see in the ending is just another set of Alternate Universe counterparts. Others believe that the old universe (or at least an identical Alternate Universe) was restored, and that the main cast we see is the original cast, albeit with their experiences of Part 6 gone. Part 7 doesn't elaborate on it and instead moves to a different continuity, and even Word of God has been ambiguous at best^note Though Araki has interchangeably described Jolyne using both her original name and her new name of Irene, implying that the second interpretation has at least some basis. The anime adaptation also appears to believe in the latter interpretation, as it concludes on a montage of scenes from each part of JoJo before closing off on a similarly-styled silhouette of the reborn cast, thus implying that all the past parts, including Stardust Crusaders, still took place as usual and that only the events of Stone Ocean were changed as a result of Pucci becoming Ret-Gone, and that Jolyne/Irene's name change symbolizes her liberation from the Joestar curse towards a more peaceful life.
  • Stone Ocean has quite possibly the strangest, most out-there stand powers in the entire franchise. While some applaud them for being among the most creative abilities yet, there's a lot of contention as to whether Araki took it too far, with many feeling that some of them are so kooky that they don't make sense, with Heavy Weather being the most cited example. It's to the point where Stone Ocean is often accused of having the weakest Stand fights in the series.
  • What ethnicity is the Ambiguously Brown Enrico Pucci actually supposed to be? The fandom is surprisingly very split about it, due to Weather Report's (and by proxy, Pucci's) ethnicity being a major plot point. On the one hand, most people can agree that Pucci certainly looks like a black man, as he's consistently portrayed as having been very dark-skinned since birth, with features and hairstyles more typically associated with black Africans, and was born in the Deep South, which has a very high African American population. On the other hand, the rest of his family are light-skinned and considered white/white-passing, which results in a racist detective lynching his biological brother Weather Report on the false assumption that the latter's black adoptive father is his biological one. That the detective is willing to work for Pucci in the first place is seen as evidence Pucci is not black but just a very unusual-looking white man; however, given the KKK's historic hatred of Italians and Catholics, for which there is zero ambiguity that Pucci is both, this creates even more Fridge Logic. On the other hand, another camp does consider Pucci to be at least partially black and feel that none of the above is incompatible with his family being mixed, resulting in Pucci inheriting more African-looking traits while the rest of his family inherited mostly European ones. That young Weather Report is described as tan-skinned and that the possibility of him being biracial is still considered plausible despite his white appearance are considered evidence that the Pucci family is more mixed than they are initially presented as.
    • The anime adaptation gives Pucci's father the same skintone that Pucci himself has, eliminating the plothole of where Pucci got his appearance from. While the question of the racist detective working with a dark-skinned Italian Catholic remains unsolved for the foreseeable future, the camps have narrowed down to two: one camp believes Pucci and his father are exceptionally tan ethnic Italians and that there is no contradiction with the KKK harassing Perla and accusing her of being a white Category Traitor, while the other camp considers it proof the Pucci siblings are all Afro-Italian Americans and that Perla and Domenico are multiracial but white-passing.
  • While the Sons of DIO are all relatively well-liked on their own merits, fans are divided on their status as children of DIO. Some find this an cool idea that was well-executed, while others feel that having them be directly related to DIO was a bad idea, since it robbed Giorno of the unique quality that made him stand out; the fact he had the traits of Jonathan and DIO. Then there's the 3rd group that like the concept behind them, but feel that it could have been executed better. A good example is thinking that the fact that they're DIO's sons wasn't explored enough and that they could be replaced with unrelated mooks without changing their roles or characters that much.
• Catharsis Factor: After everything he did, especially killing the rest of the main cast and resetting the universe, it's extremely satisfying to watch Emporio, of all people, finally pull one over on Pucci, reject his futile attempt at begging, and brutally beat him to death, causing him to scream in rage and agony upon knowing his long-awaited plan will ultimately fail and be All for Nothing. Even better is the deed is done by Weather Report, the Stand of the person Pucci screwed over the most, at the behest of the son of the woman Pucci killed for her Stand.
• Common Knowledge:
  • No, there is no actual scene where Jolyne masturbates. Her first scene in the manga is her complaining about a guard catching her masturbating. The anime comes slightly closer by briefly flashing back to the moment before she does it and explaining that the moonlight somehow got her horny, but it's still never shown.
  • It is incredibly common for people to believe that Jotaro's time stopping abilities put a taxing strain on Jotaro's heart, which is why it sees significantly less use and why its duration has been shortened in Part 4, and a common misconception that it weakened even further in Part 6. This is not stated or indicated anywhere in the manga or anime, but instead seems to have been conflated with Code Geass's Rolo, who did have a massive strain on his body for every time he used it and fans had justified the apparent weakening of the power with Jotaro not regenerating his heart, while ignoring that Jotaro's use of the power is indicated to be 5 seconds once more.
  • No, the universe reset doesn't kill anyone directly. If you were still alive when Made In Heaven reset the universe, you'd keep the memories you had before. It's only if you were already dead when the reset happens that your soul would be left in the original universe, replaced by a counterpart in the new one. Additionally, the universe shown in the ending (whether it's the original or a third) was not directly caused by Made In Heaven—Pucci explicitly died before Made In Heaven's universe even reached the battle of Cape Canaveral, as evidenced by humanity lacking the precognition he wanted to give them. Nor does it have anything to do with the next part.
  • No, Anasui's initially feminine design being replaced with a masculine one isn't because (s)he and Jolyne were intended to have a lesbian relationship before Shonen Jump blocked Araki from doing so; Araki revealed in a 2019 interview that he wanted Anasui to go past the standard definitions of gender, with this gender change being a way he intended to convey it.
• Complete Monster: Kenzō is an egotistical former cult leader who was arrested for drugging and burning alive over 30 of his followers, and now hires himself out as an assassin. His preferred method of murder involving hitting pressure points that result in his victims drowning in their own fluids, Kenzō introduces himself to Jolyne by killing dozens of prisoners in the area with his drowning technique and then tries to kill her. Kenzō afterwards delivers a painful, vicious fight to Foo Fighters, laughing at their pain and trying to murder them in the agonizing method of an electric chair for sheer sadism.
• Contested Sequel: Stone Ocean as a whole is arguably the most divisive and contested part in the series. Some fans love it for its general craziness, main cast, sympathetic main villain, and consider its ending emotional. Other fans consider it one of the weakest parts, citing a bizarre plot, mostly forgettable minor antagonists (with some like Dragon's Dream and Yo-Yo Ma being outright disliked), fights that are considered a step down from the ones in Golden Wind, and an ending that's too brutal to enjoy.
• Crack Pairing: Foo Fighters x Mikitaka from Part 4, based on both characters being non-human Stand users with a tendency to act silly due to their lack of knowledge about humans.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Anasui gets this from fans who prefer to ship Jolyne with other characters. It's not hard to find fanworks of him being a Butt-Monkey or rather just plainly ignored. To be fair, he did brutally murder his previous girlfriend for cheating on him, and Jolyne doesn't show much canonical attraction to him.
  • Jolyne's mom is not treated nicely by some diehard Jotaro/Kakyoin shippers, although some are more sympathetic, partially because the idea of a now 40-year-old Jotaro pining after a long-dead teenager would get uncomfortable, and partially because he treats her (as far as we can tell) in a standoffish, dismissive manner, which makes her cry in almost every scene. It turns her into a bit of a woobie.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Pucci gets this treatment as much as DIO. It does help that he is more sympathetic than other antagonists and there are some fans who found his motivations more understandable than the protagonists. But then again, we are talking about the guy who killed all but one of the main cast. Not to mention, he's typically a Manipulative Bastard who uses others as Unwitting Pawns and discarding them for various reasons, as well as having killed countless people, including Emporio's mother, in order to build up his arsenal in preparation to fight the Joestars.
  • Donatello Versus, not unlike his father DIO, is classically handsome with a beautiful outfit compared to the Gonk Ungaro and Fashion-Victim Villain Rikiel as well as a genuinely pitiful past. These factors have caused some fans to overlook his cruel and bastardly personality in favor of treating him as a straightforward Jerkass Woobie.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gwess has a dedicated following of fans who consider her underrated and underutilized, wishing to see her role as Jolyne's flunky more than what was shown, and considering her a great Starter Villain for her eccentric Bitch in Sheep's Clothing personality.
  • Rikiel is quite beloved among the fanbase for inheriting his father's determination and being the most sympathetic of DIO's sons (with the exception of Giorno).
  • Pucci's second Stand, C-Moon, despite appearing only in one arc before transforming into Made In Heaven. Its powers of being a Gravity Master makes its battle with the heroes among the most fun and creative ones in the franchise, especially when most of Part 6's fights were considered underwhelming by many in comparison.
  • The Made In Heaven-universe version of Jotaro gained quite a bit of memetic popularity once the anime was released, if only due to how much of a Gonk he is compared to the more traditionally handsome Jotaro. Fans have largely taken to calling him "Qtaro Kujo" as a callback to Jotaro's fake sign-in name in Stardust Crusaders.
• Estrogen Brigade: Despite the series' predominately male fanbase, Stone Ocean is very popular with female fans due to it being the only part with a female protagonist and featuring a mostly female cast.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Enrico Pucci is a very intimidating priest, who's adaptable to circumstances, charismatic, and has a rather unique power-set in Whitesnake, who in itself, is very threatening, even before becoming the more powerful C-Moon and Made In Heaven. He manages to come closer than any main villain to achieving his goal in the original continuity and only loses at the last second to extremely contrived circumstances and lack of foresight. It also helps that the imagery used for him and Made In Heaven during the climax is both gorgeous and terrifying at the same time.
  • Whitesnake also counts under the idea of being its own person separate from Pucci, given that it's a sentient Stand. In contrast to Pucci's quiet, collected nature, Whitesnake's melodramatic and looming presence makes it quite the fearsome Stand and one not to be messed with. The times it speaks in the anime are outright terrifying, since it's either speaking in a whispery lull, or a frightening roar.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Blaming Pucci's escape during the Heavy Weather fight (and ergo, Weather Report's death) on Jolyne can cause this. While she isn't entirely out of blame, since she was in the car guiding Donatello and showed up at the wrong time, Donatello himself was the one driving it. Furthermore, the erratic condition of Heavy Weather's powers made everything very hectic, which unfortunately caused the car to crash. Effectively, it's another point on how "gravity" affected people in the worst way, much like Weather and Perla.
  • It's also easy to piss off the fandom by claiming that Pucci won at the end of the part. While he didn't technically get defeated by the heroes during the final battle, his demise at the hands of Emporio in the new universe prevented his ideal version of "heaven" coming true, thus rendering his killing of the cast a Meaningless Villain Victory. So, Pucci didn't really "win" in the end.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Enrico Pucci is known as "Gay (Black) Priest" to fans due to his very sexually-charged ambiguous relationship with DIO and his Ambiguously Brown appearance.
  • Ermes is called "Aniki" (older brother) by the Japanese fandom, based on her masculine appearance and mannerisms.
  • "Part 6 Giorno/Discount Giorno" for Sonny Likir, a Green Dolphin Street Prison guard whose hair has numerous blond curls on his forehead in a style similar to Giorno's.
  • "Anasimp" for Anasui, because of his endless attempts to win Jolyne's love.
  • "Yo Mama" for Yo-Yo Ma due to his name being very easy to misread as the former, with many fans jokingly voicing their disappointment that it wasn't the Stand's official localised name.
  • "Qtaro Kujo" and "Wasp Jolyne" for Jotaro's and Jolyne's Made In Heaven doppelgängers, due to the former's Gonkish appearance, and the latter wearing a wasp instead of a butterfly on her shirt.
• Fanon:
  • The general assumption is that Jotaro met his previously-unmentioned wife in college, and that she's a marine biologist like himself (albeit one who probably gave up her career to devote herself to raising Jolyne).
    • Since she was never given a canon first name, fans sometimes refer to Jolyne's mom either as "Dolly" (since Jolyne is named after a Dolly Parton song), or "Marina" (after Jotaro's fascination with the ocean).
  • Many fans like to generally assume that Jotaro's post-Reset Button name, if he got one at all like Jolyne and Anasui did, is "Qtaro", a reference to the Sue Donym that Jotaro gave to Enya in Stardust Crusaders. With the anime's release, however, fans have nicknamed the Made In Heaven version of Jotaro "Qtaro" instead due to his memetic popularity.
  • At one point, Jolyne reads a comic◊ with an art style that resembles Thoth, leading fans to theorize that Boingo grew up to become a successful illustrator.
  • Based on his memetic outburst in the Bohemian Rhapsody arc, Anasui is widely assumed to be a big fan of Disney.
  • All that is stated of Pucci's ancestry is that his great-grandmother is from Venice, but it's widely assumed by fans that his family must be Sicilian to resolve the often-debated contradiction of why Pucci looks like a black African despite having an explicitly "white" family (and is explicitly not regarded as a Chocolate Baby), since Sicilians tend to be dark-skinned by Italian standards and many have African ancestors from whom Pucci could've inherited those features. The anime adaptation would put his father as dark-skinned, which could just confirm his possible Sicilian heritage.
    • On a similar note: there isn't an explicit reason why the violently racist detective wasn't hostile to Pucci, despite his appearance; a fact considered as one of the most infamous JoJo plotholes. As such, the most widely-accepted headcanon is that the detective simply ignored Pucci's race due to his priestly status, although this one is still not without its own issues due to the KKK's violent hatred of Catholics. A further headcanon is that, regardless of if the detective might've hated Pucci, he was wealthy and far too respected by the community to dare take action against compared to Wes' working-class background. Also could've helped that he's benefiting off him regardless.
  • Gwess is often thought to be Cioccolata's daughter due to the fact that they're both Ax-Crazy, wear green, keep Human Pets, and have a habit of saying, "Good, good, good, good, good, good!" She would have been 12 during the events of Golden Wind, which gives the theory more plausibility.
  • It's a common theory that after the ending, Emporio is adopted by either Irene and Anakiss, or Jotaro's counterpart in the new universe.
  • A fan theory is that Donatello Versus' backstory being a Holes reference is due to him being unwittingly affected by a dormant Bohemian Rhapsody's effects when he was a child, causing his life events to follow that of the novel's protagonist.
  • In fanfics that take place before the events of the main story, Weather Report is often portrayed as a fatherly figure to Emporio. Sometimes Anasui is, too (especially if the author is shipping him with Weather), but this is rarer.
  • In fanfics where the Sons of DIO are given happy endings, Ungalo is often portrayed as a comic book fan as a child and would grow up to be a successful visual artist.
  • A common explanation for Ungalo being uglier than his half-brothers is that his mother used drugs and/or alcohol while pregnant with him, giving him fetal alcohol syndrome or something similar.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: At least in the West, Jolyne/Ermes is far more popular than Jolyne/Anasui, which is canonical post-Reset Button, in part because it parallels the other popular Bash Brother ships from previous parts, like Josuke/Okuyasu and Jotaro/Kakyoin. Foo Fighters is often included in as a One True Threesome.
• Fans Prefer the New Him: While fans were sad to see the Chicago Cubs references on Emporio's uniform go in the anime, his Green Dolphin Street Prison redesign was indubitably seen as a suitable replacement, if not better than the Cubs uniform in the context of the story with him being born and raised in the prison walls. If nothing else, it was definitely seen as an improvement over his blank blue circle redesign.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Character designs were pushing it in Part 5, but by this point, there was essentially no limit to what could be considered clothing in JoJo. Special mention goes to Lang Rangler's brown leather getup including a helmet that covers part of his eyes, Miumiu's heavy wrinkled sweater resembling brain folds with a pair of eyes, Rikiel's cow-patterned jumpsuit with a chin hood and head suction cups, and D an G's multi-colored toga that might as well be a rug.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Pucci rivals DIO and Kira for being the JoJo villain with the most amount of memes made surrounding him, with many jokes made about his ethnicity, his sexuality, and his Catholicism. He also lends his way to many more miscellaneous memes, however, including the fourteen phrases ("kabutomushi" in particular), his Ass Kicking Pose during Heavy Weather, his concepts of Fate and Gravity, his fedora making him look like a cowboy, and many more.
  • Following his debut in the anime, Thunder McQueen has been subject to many memes, including "KYS", "skrt skrt"^*Actually "しくしく (shikushiku)", a Japanese onomatopoeia for crying, Whitesnake saying McQueen's name, and the comparisons between his name and Lightning McQueen.
• Franchise Original Sin: Stone Ocean has some issues in both story and production, but had their roots in previous parts, with the problems being more apparent in this part.
  • The use of increasingly bizarre abilities in the combat. Stands from the beginning always had complex abilities mixed in with the ones that were easier to understand, but comprehensive enough to stage a fight against. The issues really begin to take hold in this part as the majority of the Stands, notably Dragon's Dream, were so unorthodox that it was harder to have engaging battles that made sense to follow.
  • Stone Ocean frequently is derided for having forgettable one-shot villains, but this is nothing new to the franchise. All the way in Phantom Blood did the main part's Jojo had to deal with bland, unremarkable minions that contributed nothing beyond giving a short fight. In Stardust Crusaders, most of the Stand-wielding minions (except Hol Horse, Enya, Vanilla Ice, and the Glory Gods) had little to no characterization beyond being malicious dicks, especially Gray Fly, ZZ, Arabia Fats, and Kenny G, the latter two not even having lines. It's also worth noting that many of Stone Ocean's villains at least have their own backstories and motivations outside of working for Pucci.
  • The use of 2D Visuals, 3D Effects in the anime had existed since Part 1. In those cases, they were minimal features that didn't overall affect the quality of the fights due to most of the focus being on the 2D animation. When they did focus on Stands with 3D effects eventually in Part 4 and 5, such as Harvest and Aerosmith, it was briefly in the case of the former, and in the case of the latter, it blended well enough with the animation and was unique enough that it wasn't overused. The problems really began to creep in the first 12 episodes of Part 6, when the 3D was beginning to be brought to the forefront with technical issues becoming apparent. While Manhattan Transfer was well-rendered, Whitesnake at times and Lang Rangler's 3D stand out as not being smoothly animated as with previous parts, and the issues were more apparent with the situations requiring them to be featured prominently in their fights.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Whitesnake has "GΔCT" written all over its body to represent the four nucleobases that bond DNA. Astute geneticist readers will notice that the delta sign (Δ), where A should be, is the sign of gene deletion, A.K.A. a missing genome, foreshadowing that Whitesnake and C-Moon aren't the "complete" forms of Pucci's Stand.
  • When Pucci's C-Moon is active, he was briefly able to move in Jotaro's stopped time to dodge the spear Jotaro threw at him. This is because gravity can affect time, an effect known as gravitational time dilation.
  • When discussing his idea of Heaven, in which all people will already know their futures ahead of time, Pucci argues that Jesus was always fated to die on the cross as an example of the power of inevitability. He is citing Biblical doctriness in which Jesus was able to prophecize his eventual torture and crucifixion, while nevertheless going to it willingly.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Stone Ocean is perhaps the least popular part in Japan, given how it strayed away from the shōnen tropes of previous parts, while still demonstrating some of the issues inherent with a weekly shounen format. In the United States, however, it has a much larger fanbase, with many seeing it as a worthy precursor to Steel Ball Run. A lot of elements in Stone Ocean are also more appealing to Americans such as the fact that it takes place in Florida, and is a prison battle story much like another manga that is more popular in the United States. Jolyne herself is also one of the most popular characters in the United States with about as large a following as Joseph and Josuke, two of the other most popular JoJo protagonists among Western fans. It helps that she's a very atypical female protagonist: She's openly flawed, crude, and has a chronic masturbation problem, which makes her stand apart from many other female protagonists, who are often portrayed as "too innocent" for sex and rarely given any significant flaws.
• Growing the Beard: There's a split between when it manages to do so. A few argue it was when Whitesnake was introduced, creating a goal for Jolyne to get behind, with the introduction of fan favorite, F.F., following soon afterward. Some argue begins to become interesting once the group finally leaves the Green Dolphin Street Prison and the fight with the Sons of DIO and Pucci being more engaging than those of the prison.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • It can get uncomfortable reading the Highway to Hell arc, which focuses on a suicidal inmate named Thunder McQueen, since his namesake, Alexander McQueen, committed suicide in 2010.
  • The series is set in 2011, and Father Pucci mentions going to a Michael Jackson concert. However, in real life, Jackson died in 2009, two years before the series events as well six years after Stone Ocean ended. Understandably, the anime left out the Michael Jackson reference.
  • Weather Report shooting himself under Bohemian Rhapsody's influence becomes harder to watch after his backstory shows that he actually tried to commit suicide multiple times out of despair after his sister died, only failing because his powers bungled each attempt.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In 2008, a fan-made their own opening of Stone Ocean, set to "A Cruel Angel's Thesis", the opening to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Over 13 years later, the anime adaptation of Stone Ocean was finally announced, and the fan's wish came true. One can only wonder where this fan is now, and how they reacted to the news. Not only that, but the anime's dub cast Shinji's voice actor from the Netflix redub as Emporio.
  • Kira Buckland has gone on record of stating she's a big fangirl for Stone Ocean, and of JoJo as a whole, and that it was her dream to voice Jolyne in official media. As of the anime's English dub, she got her wish.
  • Casey Mongillo, Kira Buckland's roommate, has also been a long-time fan of JoJo, and they attempted to audition for the voice of Narancia in the Part 5 dub, but unfortunately got turned down for making him sound, "too androgynous." Come the Part 6 dub, and they finally were given a role in the form of Emporio, which is a major step up in honor, given that Emporio is the one who ultimately saves the day in the end.
  • Yong Yea is known for his YouTube commentaries on video games, but he's never hidden the fact that he's a huge anime fan. Like the above two actors, he's always wished to be in a JoJo anime, but he expected, at most, to be a one-episode background character. His video detailing how he got the role of Pucci and his reaction to the news is especially heartwarming and shows how the casting was literally beyond his wildest dreams.
• He Really Can Act: Yong Yea has had limited voice acting roles and is mostly known for his video game commentaries on YouTube, and while him being cast as the dubbed voice of Enrico Pucci was mostly accepted by fans due to him being an avid JoJo fan, when the first third of Stone Ocean was released on Netflix, some felt he sounded a bit awkward compared to the other dub actors. However, many agreed that he came around to the role during the final third as he effectively sold Pucci's increasing Sanity Slippage, grief over his late sister and turn to villainy in his flashback, and pure rage when he has his Villainous Breakdown at the end of the series.
• He's Just Hiding: Since F.F. is the only one missing from the universe post-reset, many fans did not like the fact they could be Ret-Gone from that universe, and would like to think that another version of them is just not present in the epilogue. The anime adaptation sways a bit on this direction, as unlike the manga, they do get to appear in the last shot alongside everyone else.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A rather memetic example of this is the suicidal janitor Thunder McQueen, who, while named after fashion designer Alexander McQueen, also has a name strikingly similar to Lightning McQueen, whose movie actually released several years after Stone Ocean.
  • Pucci's race was a matter of debate for decades, seeing how he was Ambiguously Brown while Pearla, Weather, and their parents were all white. And that the KKK Detective attacked Weather on the grounds that his step-father was black (though believed him to be his actual father), but did not attack Pucci himself. Come the anime, Pucci's father has gotten a Race Lift, seemingly confirming he's not simply tan.
  • Before the anime was announced, it was very common for fans to make jokes, memes, and fanart comparing Enrico Pucci to fellow villainous Sinister Minister Kirei Kotomine from the Fate Series, resulting in Kotomine's voice actor Joji Nakata being a very popular fancast for Pucci. Fans eventually got their wishes when Joji Nakata voiced him in the official Ultra Jump Stone Ocean commercials as well as Eyes of Heaven. Come the anime adaptation, Pucci was recast again, but this time as none other than Tomokazu Seki, who famously voiced Kotomine's partner-in-crime Gilgamesh, and whose resemblance to DIO and similar levels of Ho Yay towards Kotomine were one of the main reasons people started comparing Pucci to the latter in the first place. These castings also had the side effect of accidentally making Pucci's first voice actor being Show Hayami in All Star Battle a lot funnier, since he played Tokiomi Tohsaka, the last member of Kotomine and Gilgamesh's triumvirate in Fate/Zero.
  • The scene◊ where Jotaro is covered in Whitesnake's white illusory acid is similar to Randy Marsh's infamous post-masturbation scene in South Park.
  • The second batch of episodes for the anime was set to release on September 1, 2022, which was four days before NASA initially planned to launch the Artemis I spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, the exact location where the final act of Stone Ocean takes place. There were even reports of the countdown clock being frozen in time, as if Jotaro had been using Star Platinum: The World.
  • In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, the father of Miyuki Shirogane is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, so naturally, DIO references were made up the wazoo, including the idea that Shirogane is another son of DIO. Fast forward to this, and Shirogane's actor, Makoto Furukawa, voices Rikiel, truly making Shirogane as DIO's son.
  • Anasui killing Pinnocchio becomes this with the final episodes of the anime adaptation releasing in 2022, a year when two less-than-favorable Pinnocchio movies were released.
  • The final battle, set in 2012, features a scene where The Creation of Adam is destroyed by the effects of Made In Heaven, cracking into pieces and decaying. The movie 2012, released years later and also taking place in 2012, feature a similar scene where the painting cracks apart and is destroyed by the apocalypse.
  • One of the most notorious cases of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot in JoJo history is the lack of a meetup between Giorno and Pucci after Stone Ocean seemingly hinted at it happening. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would have Miles Morales be voiced in Japanese by Giorno's VA, Kensho Ono, whereas Miguel O'Hara, the film's antagonist and a fatalist who believes in accepting tragedy as an inevitable part of one's life, just like Pucci, would be voiced by Pucci's VA, Tomokazu Seki, leading to numerous JoJo fans joking that they would finally get their belated Giorno vs. Pucci faceoff in these films.
• Ho Yay:
  • Jolyne/Ermes in some of the post-chapter sketches, and even in one of the manga volumes, who are shown in physically intimate poses together.
  • DIO/Pucci. While most of DIO's male henchmen were practically infatuated with the guy (including one who appears in this part), Pucci was the most fanatically loyal of his henchmen. There's also a flashback where DIO is in bed with Pucci.
  • Gwess uses her Stand to turn Jolyne into one of her dolls, forces her to speak in a "cute" manner, and after her defeat swears eternal loyalty towards Jolyne.

I-W

• Inferred Holocaust: There are several major disasters that would probably amount to a death toll that makes DIO's rampage in Cairo and Cioccolata's rampage in Rome look like child's play. Bohemian Rhapsody is shown to have left at least Tokyo in ruins following Kenshiro's battle with Raoh, and countless other people were probably killed when their lives followed the story of their favorite characters (unless Put Back saved them). Heavy Weather's shown to have affected hundreds of people, and it's ambiguous whether Weather's death would restore them if they entirely dissolved into snails, not to mention the hungry snail-eating beetles. Then, there's the mass casualties at the Kennedy Space Center as C-Moon's power manifests, which is estimated in-universe to be between 1,000 to 2,000 people. Finally, while the universal reboot doesn't directly kill anyone, the time-accelerating effects of Made In Heaven would have severe repercussions beyond what was already shown. However, it can be presumed that most of these people were reincarnated in the new universe, as with the main cast (including those who were killed before Made In Heaven was activated, given that Weather Report was also reincarnated).
• Iron Woobie: Foo Fighters initially only swore loyalty to Pucci because of the fact that he inadvertently gave them sentience, but after being spared by Jolyne, they pledge loyalty to her instead and takes on the identity of former prisoner Atroe, going by F.F. Because Atroe was already a Bully Magnet, F.F. is constantly ostracized by the other prisoners, and yet they always find ways to make their experience as a human more bearable. In their dedication to protect Jolyne, they constantly undergo Body Horror through leg amputation, getting put into the electric chair, and having their face melted off by acid. Eventually, they're confronted by Pucci, the man who gave them life, and he actively dehumanizes them before attempting to murder them. Pucci eventually succeeds, and F.F. admits in their final moments that all they ever wanted was to be accepted as a normal person after inhabiting a human body, thanking Jolyne for letting them live their best life.
• It Was His Sled: Due to how shocking it is, the most discussed aspect of Stone Ocean tends to be its ending, which has Pucci wipe out nearly all of the heroes before resetting the universe. Ironically, a big part of how this became so widely known is because of a misconception: some fans falsely believe that Steel Ball Run and the following parts take place in the universe created by Pucci, despite them taking place after a full Continuity Reboot in a wholly-separate universe, and go on to spoil Stone Ocean's ending when trying to explain why these parts are set in a rebooted universe.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Pucci is often considered the most sympathetic main villain in the entire franchise. It all comes full circle in his backstory where it turns out that the only reason he turned to villainy is that at birth he was convinced his twin brother died and no one ever told Weather the girl he liked was their sister. And, manipulative as he may be, he does have a goal that is rather sympathetic, that being to get everyone to know their own futures and prepare for them, possibly coming off the fact that he couldn't stop his own tragedies.
  • While Rikiel is Affably Evil and Ungalo is utterly unsympathetic, Donatello Versus fits well into this trope. He's an utter narcissist who is willing to kill children for the crime of getting in his way, but he was also arrested at 13 for a crime he didn't commit, and went to a prison where the guard frequently beat him, nearly causing him to die. Considering all the shit he went through, it's not too surprising that he turned out so rotten.
  • Weather Report: Born Domenico Pucci and being Switched at Birth, he grew up as Wes Bluemarine and falls in love with his birth sister. Pucci discovered his identity and hired a private investigator to split the two up. The investigator, a KKK member, lynched Wes because he believed his adoptive black father was his birth father, causing Perla to be Driven to Suicide. Wes finds out that Pucci ordered the hit and vows revenge, only to have his memories stolen. Upon regaining them decades later, he set out to finish what he started, not caring who gets hurt along the way, only to be murdered in cold blood by his long-lost twin.
• LGBT Fanbase: Stone Ocean genderflips the situation the usual cast of predominantly (if not entirely) male cast and features mainly strong women in a prison setting attracting a lot of Les Yay from the fans. Also helping is the fact that one of the protagonists switches from presenting as female to presenting as male between his first and second appearances, which Hirohiko Araki confirmed was the result of him "[going] beyond the standard definition of genders," attracting a sizable number of trans fans as well. Foo Fighters being referred to with either she/her or they/them pronouns and having a good and solid sense of their identity enough has also caught the eye of nonbinary/trans fans as well.
• Magnificent Bastard: Enrico Pucci is a charming priest who was plunged into despair after racists murdered his sister due to his own mistakes. The extremely unfortunate set of circumstances that brought about her demise drove Pucci to hate the idea of an unforeseen future and "fate". Coming to idolize DIO, Pucci collects the man's thoughts and plans for a new way of life called "Heaven", and, after handily pulling the strings of everyone in Green Dolphin Street Prison—taking time to try to genuinely help the prisoners there even as they attempt to rob him blind—Pucci uses his upgraded Stand "Made In Heaven" to begin his final plan. Aiming to force every human being to live out their whole lives, and see the entirety of the universe's lifespan, then relive their lives knowing their and everyone else's fates, Pucci intends to enable them to never be surprised or broken by life's events, knowing beforehand all that will happen. Pucci is easily the most well-intentioned and genuinely caring Big Bad in the franchise, wanting to simply end the pain that comes with not knowing one's fate, and even while dying a torturous death tries to ensure his "Heaven" will carry on, even at the cost of his own life.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Jotaro's Gonk replacement in the Made In Heaven universe is often jokingly said to be stronger than the original Jotaro, and often gets inserted into situations where Jotaro loses to instead win those fights.
  • The dolphin Jolyne and Emporio ride to flee from Pucci. On top of its terrifying power, Made In Heaven is stated to have a speed of infinity; therefore, fans were quick to point out that this one random dolphin was still somehow able to outswim Pucci while carrying two people, one of which would be the one to later deliver the final blow to the priest. Memes about the sheer speed of this dolphin soon followed.
• Memetic Loser: Anasui is often depicted as a Butt-Monkey in fanworks, with his advances towards Jolyne failing in a comedic way and/or generally be portrayed as The Friend Nobody Likes, and when Jolyne does return his affections it's usually just a Hope Spot, with it being setup for a joke about Jotaro being an overprotective Knight Templar Parent. Eyes of Heaven furthered this by making Jolyne have unique intros and DHAs with Ermes and Weather Report, but not him—and he still doesn't escape Jotaro's wrath, as Jolyne's father's reaction to him ranges from confusion (if one picks the Jotaro from before Jolyne is born) to extreme hostility (if one picks the Jotaro from when Jolyne is only six years old).
• Memetic Molester:
  • As if DIO wasn't already a Fountain of Memes, the flashbacks involving him with Pucci in this part have caused him to enter this status as well, especially since Pucci was only 16 at the time of that flashback.
  • Jotaro gets this, with the fandom joking that he's had sexual relations with a dolphin.
• Memetic Mutation: Enough for its own page.
• Moral Event Horizon: See the dedicated section of this page for examples.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Weather Report's voice in the anime, courtesy of both Yuichiro Umehara and Stephen Fu, has been praised to high heavens for not only fitting his reserved, mysterious nature, but also for sounding incredibly calming, almost to the degree of ASMR. One YouTube comment describes it as, "like a massage to the brain."
• Narm:
  • In the anime, Jumpin' Jack Flash's summoning has a sound mimicking that of a revving car engine, referencing the centrifugal force its wristlets weaponize. However, much like The World's time stop sound effect, the sound used for replication purposes sounds less like a car engine and more like a bass-boosted fart.
  • Foo Fighters' voice, both subbed and dubbed, has been heavily criticized for making the Stand sound too much like a Saturday morning cartoon villain that's incredibly difficult to take seriously. Thankfully, their voice as F.F. was vastly better received in contrast to the voice given to the Stand.
• Narm Charm:
  • The sound design of Jumpin' Jack Flash does still come off really badass to those who associate the sound more with car engines than farts, given how terrifying it can feel.
  • The voice of Foo Fighters' original body can sound really intimidating to those already suspending disbelief with how campy the acting of JoJo can be.
  • "Roundabout" is a rather upbeat song, something a JoJo fan would associate with the "To be Continued" meme. Despite how emotional the ending is, viewers found the song to be very bittersweet in this context as it was the first ending song used in the anime. Combined with the fact that this is the definitive end to the original storyline, it makes for a great bookend.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The infamous scene in the Planet Waves fight where Jolyne uses Stone Free to peel off Westwood's toenail, drawn in excruciating detail. It's telling that this is one of the very few things that was toned down in the anime.
  • Sports Maxx's first death sees Ermes forcefully drowning him in a sewer pipe. Worse, when he jabs himself with an inmate's drug syringe after becoming a zombie, the veins in his right arm explode, resulting in raw sewage spilling out from the arm, as well as his eyes and mouth.
  • Kenzō bouncing all over the place is a funny image at first, but then it becomes nauseating when it's revealed that Anasui used Diver Down to turn the bones in his legs into a coil shape, eventually resulting in Kenzō's bones protruding out of his body.
  • The effects of Heavy Weather causing people to not only profusely leak out their bodily fluids, but also hundreds of snails and the slime they leave behind.
  • When Jolyne's hand gets touched by Pucci's C-Moon, it causes it to turn inside out, with her inverted fingers sticking out of the back of her hand, bones clearly visible.
    • Additionally, when Pucci is about to be punched, he uses C-Moon to invert his head, leading to a very nauseating image of half of his face pushed inward while the rest remains outside.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Jotaro being a Disappeared Dad throughout Jolyne's life. While Jotaro's parenting skills are nothing to brag about, fans take things up a notch by portraying him as being deliberately neglectful towards Jolyne even though it's made clear that all in all Jotaro deeply loves his daughter (and that his neglect was out of a desire to protect her that definitely didn't go the way he wanted it to). That said, it is admittedly more common for Jotaro to be portrayed as being violently defensive of Jolyne.
  • The famous scene of Pucci and DIO in bed together. The subtext is more ambiguous at most and while Pucci is indeed undyingly loyal to DIO, it's implied that he loves DIO in a more platonic way. Yet fans like to portray Pucci's sexuality as his defining if not only character trait.
• No Yay: While DIO/Pucci is a popular ship, to the point where Pucci will never live down his Ambiguously Gay moments with DIO, a good portion of the fanbase finds the pairing extremely squicky due to Pucci being underage when he first met DIO and during the scenes with the strongest subtext.
• One-Scene Wonder: Jotaro's doppelgänger in the Made In Heaven universe only appears for one brief scene alongside Jolyne's doppelgänger, but the fandom was quick to embrace him for how much of a Gonk he turns Jotaro into, making him prime meme material. Fans were even willing to designate him Jotaro's fake sign-in name, Qtaro.
• One True Threesome:
  • Jolyne/Ermes/Foo Fighters are often drawn together.
  • Jolyne/Ermes/Anasui isn't as common, but it has a respectable following of its own.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Jolyne/Anasui = Jolysui.
  • Jotaro/Anasui = Jotasui.
  • Jolyne/Ermes = Jolymes.
  • Jolyne/Foo Fighters = Foolyne.
  • Foo Fighters/Jolyne/Ermes = Foolymes.
  • Weather Report/Anasui = Weathersui.
  • Giorno/Jolyne = Giolyne.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Although the fight still isn't necessarily popular, the anime adaptation managed to make most fans more forgiving of the fight against Kenzō and Dragon's Dream, as, like King Crimson, the effects of the Stand were made easier to comprehend through the anime thanks to animation allowing for both the actions of Dragon's Dream and Anasui's explanation of Feng Shui to be better visualized than in still imagery. Additionally, Kenzō and Dragon's Dream were voiced by veteran voice actors Mugihito, William Frederick Knight, and Chō respectively, all three of whom give them hammy and memorable performances and some pretty hilarious dynamics. For Knight, it would be his final role before his death.
• Ron the Death Eater: Jolyne's mother frequently gets a lot of Die for Our Ship-related bashing from people who ship Jotaro with other characters (usually Kakyoin), who frequently accuse her of being an abusive Control Freak of a wife who was the main person responsible for Jotaro's divorce and Jolyne's criminal behavior. This despite the manga portraying her as a sympathetic figure and strongly implying that Jotaro's past of neglectful behavior was his own fault, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
• Rooting for the Empire: Unlike previous villains in the franchise, Pucci has well-intentioned motivations for his goal and a sympathetic backstory. There are some readers who actually wanted to see his victory over the protagonists. It helps that he came close to killing off all of the protagonists minus Emporio, and was successful in creating a new universe... albeit one that didn't last long before Pucci himself died, causing it to collapse.
• Self-Fanservice: Ungalo is meant to be very ugly in comparison to DIO's other, more handsome sons. Fanart often makes him more cartoonish-looking in an Ugly Cute way, especially if he's portrayed as a child with his brothers.
• The Scrappy: While Stone Ocean often comes under fire for its lack of compelling minor villains, some are especially disliked by fans.
  • D an G's Stand, Yo-Yo Ma, who is often put up there with Arabia Fats as having one of the least interesting fights in the series. A lot of the dislike comes from the fact that the pacifist nature of Yo-Yo Ma prevents the fight from going anywhere and the arc ends up getting repetitive.
  • Likewise, the Stand User fought before him, Kenzō, and his Stand, Dragon's Dream, are also extremely hated by the fans. Despite the fact that you're SUPPOSED to hate Kenzō because he's human garbage, most of the hate stems from his battle against Foo Fighters being a boring fight that ends up feeling like a complete waste of time. It doesn't help that his Stand's ability isn't that impressive, and at the start of the battle, Anasui explains the ability to Jolyne (and the readers), making it look more of an introduction to a new concept than a real fight - in fact, it would be outright useless if he weren't already an expert martial artist.
• Ship Mates: Jolyne/Ermes shippers who don't hate Anasui like to pair him with Weather Report.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Foo Fighters and Weather Report don't really interact much in the story itself, and yet F.F./Weather is one of the most popular Stone Ocean ships out there, for a few potential reasons. Their aliases are both named after their Stands, they both have individual connections to water, and between F.F. being a Cloudcuckoolander and Weather being The Stoic, they're prime Opposites Attract material.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The entire sequence where Heavy Weather transforms people into snails.
  • The ending where most of the protagonists are killed off, immediately before the entire universe resets.
• Signature Scene:
  • From the Manhattan Transfer fight, Jotaro with his discs emerging from his face is one of the most iconic manga panels in JoJo and a common subject for fan art.
  • Pucci fusing with the Green Baby, for not only providing the weirdest set of words spoken in the series yet, but also for showing that his scheme is going All According to Plan.
  • Anasui asking Weather Report where Mickey Mouse is, because it wouldn't be Disney otherwise. It's often used an example of a moment that makes more sense in context.
  • The final battle, where Pucci effortlessly kills the main cast, sans Emporio, and resets the universe. Due to how shocking this ending is, it's by far the most discussed element of the story, to the point where it's reached It Was His Sled status.
• So Bad, It Was Better: Many preferred the more ludicrous Flaccid Pancake as the localized name for Limp Bizkit in Eyes of Heaven over the closer-to-the-original Limp Viscuit in the anime.
• Song Association: All major characters naturally are associated with their musical reference, but Weather is frequently represented with Jamiroquai songs, due to resembling the band's mascot.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • While 2D Visuals, 3D Effects have been utilized well before with Aerosmith in the previous part and Manhattan Transfer, some of it hasn't meshed well with the 2D animation this time around, with some of its uses on characters being baffling at times.
    • Whitesnake, while normally being traditionally drawn most of the time, is sometimes rendered in noticeable cel-shaded 3D, with the partial justification that animating all the patterns on Whitesnake would be a hassle to do consistently.
    • Lang Rangler, while normally 2D drawn, is animated in 3D whenever he walks on all fours. It's particularly egregious and jarring as he's a Stand user rather than a Stand (which would justify being animated in 3D), and previous parts had shown characters crawling on the ground with consistent 2D animation. Even more confusing is the fact that his own Stand isn't given this treatment.
  • Likely because of Netflix rushing production, the anime has a lot of poor-looking scenes, with the biggest offender being an infamous shot from F.F.'s introductory arc where the characters walk towards the screen with a single frame, looking more akin to South Park.
• Squick:
  • Jolyne using Stone Free to unravel her own body is really unsettling to look at, especially for readers who have trypophobia.
  • F.F. forcing a prisoner to spit up the water she stole from them and then continuing to drink it, happy that there's now more water in the cup.
  • Upon being put in the Maximum Security Ward, Jolyne looks out of her cell door and one of the other prisoners throws a turd in her direction, splattering and staining her face, reminiscent of the Alessi fight.
  • Another fight that is torturous for trypophobic readers is Yo-Yo Ma, as its acid saliva causes Jolyne and Anasui to be filled with holes that profusely leak pus, and when the effect is first shown off on F.F., half of their face is completely melted off. It doesn't help that the acid also causes Jolyne's right eyeball to shrivel up.
  • Anasui stealing chocolates from a bake shop, and then hiding them inside his cheek with Diver Down. Not only do the chocolates protruding out of his face make him look like an ugly Gonk, but the idea of the chocolates sloshing around underneath his skin is nauseating.
• Superlative Dubbing: As with Parts 3, 4, and 5, the English dub of Stone Ocean has received tons of praise for how well the personalities and raw emotions of the characters are able to be captured within the English talents. It also helps that, like the Japanese dub of Stone Ocean, its English dub is filled to the brim with Promoted Fanboys who have had years of experience with JoJo, and thus know the characters they're playing by heart. Jotaro and DIO are once again performed phenomenally by Matthew Mercer and Patrick Seitz, with the latter not having voiced DIO in over 3 years yet still nailing the role, and even some talents who haven't had work in years were brought on, such as Dino Andrade playing the role of Yo-Yo Ma. On top of all that, since the series had transitioned from [adult swim] to Netflix, there were no longer any concerns of having to appease network censors, meaning the cast got to swear all they want in accordance to the original manga. Special highlights in the way of performances go to the actors playing the main characters, including Tiana Camacho as Ermes, Howard Wang as Anasui, Brittany Lauda as F.F., and in particular, Casey Mongillo as Emporio, Stephen Fu as Weather Report, and Kira Buckland as Jolyne. Even Yong Yea as Pucci got in on this during the final third of the part, after some had criticized him as coming across as awkward.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The first OP of the anime adaptation, "STONE OCEAN", sounds eerily similar to "The Pretender" by Foo Fighters. Which, given the existence of F.F., may or may not have been intentional.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Stone Free being localized as "Stone Ocean" in both the subtitles and the dub is generally agreed to be a poor decision. "Stone Ocean" refers to Green Dolphin Street Prison, so having Jolyne name her Stand after her nickname for the prison itself, rather than her goal to escape from it, makes much less sense.
  • The removal of any and all references to the KKK in the third batch of the anime wasn't well-received by fans, to say the least. While the private detective and his "clan" are still stated by the narrator to have heavily prejudiced views, and their brutal beating and attempted lynching of Weather Report is still hard to watch, many fans believed that the anime swapping the KKK's trademark outfits for more casual clothes immensely downplays how horrific and cruel the KKK were (and still are), and lessens the overall emotional impact of the scene. This doesn't even make sense from a pragmatic standpoint, as the entire reason the KKK wear robes and hoods is because they're a secret group no member wants anyone to know they're a part of, especially law enforcement. So now, the detective and his posse openly assault/lynch a teenage boy, sexually assault his girlfriend, and burn his mother's house down completely undisguised. It also makes Weather Report's arrest for his murder of the detective go from being a convenient Frame-Up by Pucci to a miracle the detective wasn't exposed for his crimes and Weather Report was arrested at all.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Foo Fighters, especially given their sheer popularity. In and despite of being one of the main characters, they only get one major fight which is really just helping Jolyne defeat Kenzō. Not helping is the fact that quickly afterwards, they are killed by Pucci only halfway through the story — and, unlike the other characters who die, they aren't brought back in the ending (which does have justification in that Pucci, the one who gave them life, is now Ret-Gone). The anime at least goes out of its way to give them more relevance and not be the Forgotten Fallen Friend they were in the manga, including adding a scene of Ermes learning about and mourning over their death while promising to avenge them, including them in both the final OP and marketing for the final episode batch, having Emporio mention them by name during the final fight, and including them in the final group shot when they were absent in the manga.
  • Fans believe Ermes to not get enough attention following the battle with Sports Maxx. While her being Put on a Bus was justified due to the fight being so severe that she had to be put into intensive medical care, once she returns when the cast breaks out of prison, she gets very little relevance. She assists Jolyne in taking down Donatello Versus, and she's one of the first victims affected by Heavy Weather, but then she isn't seen again until the end of the fight against C-Moon, and she contributes very little to the final battle against Made In Heaven, only allowing the crew to dodge Pucci's attacks a couple of times. It also doesn't help that she's killed by the exact same attack that kills Jotaro, and his death is presented as much more harrowing than hers. The anime alliviates this by animating scenes on her backstory (instead of just having text explaining it) and generally having more scenes where she appears, down to her alternate universe self finally being given a name in the form of Eldis.
  • In a more minor example, Gwess was set up to be a rather important character, being Green Dolphin Street Prison's resident Knowledge Broker and being Jolyne's flunky despite her not wanting anything to do with Gwess. However, right after Johngalli A. and Whitesnake enter the plot, Gwess is never seen again until the beginning of the Jail House Lock arc, and doesn't even get a proper send-off when Jolyne breaks out of prison. Thankfully, the anime adaptation manages to give Gwess more relevance by having her be the one to tell Jolyne and Foo Fighters where to find documentations of Gloria Costello's murder, rather than F.F. already knowing about it through Atroe's memories.
  • The Sons of DIO. Despite the franchise's focus on inheritance and the sheer amount of parallels that can be drawn between them and both DIO and the Joestars (and Giorno), they all colectively bring little to the plot besides some fights, albeit some very memorable ones.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Part 6 establishes a lot of these, in part because at this point, the cast of previous parts is quite large and still around.
  • Enrico Pucci's actions attracted to Florida three young men who were all DIO's sons, but Giorno was nowhere to be seen despite having DIO's blood. Araki hints that Giorno may be in Florida after all, though the reason he wasn't drawn to the priest is unknown. It would've been an interesting opportunity to see a clash between Pucci's and Giorno's versions of DIO's legacy, and even how Giorno would interact with his half-brothers.
  • While it's understandable that Joseph is simply too old for action anymore, there are some fans who question why Josuke and Giorno were not present in the finale. Pucci had created a universe-wide catastrophe, so you'd expect the Speedwagon Foundation would give Jotaro as much help as they can. It doesn't help that the Speedwagon Foundation knows of both of their existences, and in Giorno's case, Araki has hinted that he was in Florida at the time.
  • Ungalo's Stand affected the entire world. This would have ended the Masquerade, and it would have been interesting to find out how the global community reacted to this or the revelation that Stands existed.
  • In regards to the anime, Weather Report and Anasui's character themes are considered some of the best songs in the series. As such, many fans were quick to criticize the fact that the third batch of episodes never used their themes even once, despite the two having greater relevance in the final third than they did in the first two. It was especially egregious when three scenes that would've been perfect for using Weather Report's theme, being Put Back undoing Bohemian Rhapsody's work, Weather's fight against Pucci during Heavy Weather, and Emporio using the Weather Report Stand to kill Pucci, instead opted to recycle songs from Stardust Crusaders that are already commonly used.
• Too Cool to Live: While most of the heroes are killed off by Pucci, they came back in the reset universe in some way. The same cannot be said for Foo Fighters, who is the only one out of all of them who doesn't return in any form.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Anasui is commonly interpreted as a trans man or genderfluid: in his first appearance, he is drawn with a visibly female body. However, the next time we see him, he's been Retconned into a man, and stays that way for the rest of the story. Considering how his Stand has the ability to manipulate peoples' bodies from the inside, it's easy to imagine that he used his powers to transition into a more masculine body in between his first two appearances. Word of God says that Anasui was always envisioned as a character who "went beyond the standard definitions of gender", which helps support (or even confirm, depending on how you look at it) this theory.
• Unfortunate Character Design: The vertical stripe in the middle of Donatello's hair makes it look like the head of a penis. Might be a Visual Pun, as he's shown to be a pretty ruthless and selfish character, or in other words, a "dickhead".
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Viewers who suffer or once suffered from depression may feel for Thunder McQueen, given that self-blame and denial of positivity are common traits of those suffering from depression, despite the series stating that he's, "the worst." At least, until he intentionally tries to take Ermes down with him.
  • D an G crying over his mutilated arm is meant to highlight how pathetic and cowardly he is despite his tough appearance. However, the anime adaptation of the scene made a lot of fans feel bad for him, especially since his reaction to the injury is jarringly realistic compared to the Major Injury Underreaction that is commonplace in the manga. And with the lack of his additional backstory of being a Corrupt Cop who killed people simply due to the Nostradamus prophecy in the anime, he comes across as the lesser evil of the three major enemies in the Maximum Security Ward, especially compared to Kenzō, performing only his obligation as an assassin at Pucci's command, nearly getting killed for it by Anasui's manipulation of Guccio, and spending most of his time unconscious. It makes his later death surprisingly tragic as he wakes up just in time to be killed by F.F. shortly afterward.
• Values Dissonance: In the manga, while playing catch, Jolyne randomly says that F.F. throws, "like a queer",^note In the original Japanese, she describes F.F. as looking like an "okama" (a Japanese-language slur interchangeably referring to Camp Gay or otherwise effeminate men, crossdressers, and trans women), which was changed in the tankobon release to the more neutral "gei" (which is more associated with Macho Camp or Manly Gay men). something that would probably be commonplace in the West (especially among hardened delinquents like Jolyne) in the early 2000s, the time of release, as well as 2011, when the story takes place, but would probably be quite a no-no since at least 2014. David Production opted to leave the line out of the anime. However, there is still a nod to this dialogue in the first opening, "STONE OCEAN", which features a rainbow over F.F. throwing a baseball.
• Values Resonance: Despite being released in Japan during a time where worldwide, the portrayal of trans people in media was still not being taken very seriously, the (manga-only, although he potentially appears in the background of Loccobarocco's lecture in the anime) trans male inmate that Jolyne encounters at Green Dolphin is shown to be just as buff and handsome as any cis male JoJo character, rather than some offensive caricature. There is the fact that he's being sent to a women's prison and the fact that the staff refer to him with female pronouns, but given that Green Dolphin isn't shown to have much care for its inmates in the first place, this can be chalked up to Deliberate Values Dissonance. In addition, Jolyne treats him with quizzical wonder, even proclaiming him as being "the dawn of a new era", rather than the absolute disgust seen at the same time in many Western works trying to riff off of The Crying Game. With anti-trans "bathroom bills" becoming an increasingly hot topic in the late 2010's and 2020's, the scene can also be interpreted as a criticism of purely sex-based segregation^note whose proponents usually focus on putting trans women into male spaces, so flipping the genders involved by showing a passing trans man being forced into a female-only space where he clearly doesn't belong highlights the absurdity of these beliefs, which is still an extremely progressive message even decades after the chapter's release.
• Vindicated by History: Throughout most of its existence, Stone Ocean barely made much of a splash in its native Japan due to how much it defied standard shōnen tropes compared to previous parts, which left many of its readers feeling alienated. However, thanks to the fine-tuning done with the anime adaptation, which has more standard shōnen elements at play while still keeping the overall story and characterization in tact, it's allowed for Japanese fans to revisit Stone Ocean and appreciate the more glossed over elements they had missed out on, especially since most of the work done in the anime adaptation is spearheaded by people who were fans of Stone Ocean to begin with and wanted to capture its essence.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Despite the dire situation he puts the heroes in, the self-portrait of Van Gogh given life by Bohemian Rhapsody has a beautiful painterly style reminiscent of the artist's own work, and looks completely unlike anything previously seen in the anime.
  • Despite the backlash on the visuals from the anime adaptation's first and second batches, the third batch got a much better reception, with many fans citing Made In Heaven's awakening and terrifying displays of power, often even hyping up the fans despite it being a dark hour for the heroes.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Often described as the part where Araki was preparing himself to leave Shonen Jump. While Golden Wind had its moments, Stone Ocean is filled with even more gratuitous violence, many Stands with abilities that are outright frightening, tons of sexual content, and having a cast of mostly older women.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: As if the villains of the part didn't have garish enough clothing, some of the heroes have questionable outfits, as well, of note being Anasui wearing a mesh shirt with footpads on it and Weather Report wearing a massive, golden codpiece beneath his belt and hair and accessories that resemble a buffalo with white hair.
• The Woobie:
  • Jolyne, starting out really hostile towards Jotaro since he was absent for most of her life, even during times where she needs him the most. The whole part revolves around her trying to restore Jotaro's memories and Stand, only to die at the end just as she could finally bond with her father. It's fortunately undone by the ending, as after Pucci is wiped from existence, she is finally living a normal life and is at least in regular enough contact with Jotaro to seek his approval of her upcoming marriage.
  • Emporio, who was born in prison, and lost his mother at a young age. He spent his entire childhood in Green Dolphin Street Prison because he had nowhere to go. It only gets worse in the end when all of his friends and Jolyne (the closest he's ever had to a sister figure) die. Moreover, even after Pucci is defeated and time resets to the start of Part 6, Emporio is the only member of the main cast to remember their ordeal.
  • Jolyne's mom, who had a strained, most likely mostly long-distance relationship with her husband, and whose daughter kept ending up in prison, making her worry constantly. She sort of ends up by the wayside by the end, never getting a proper reunion with either Jotaro or Jolyne as they were both killed by Pucci. That said, the Reset Button leaves room for her to once again be married to Jotaro, and Jolyne is now in a happier situation.
  • Atroe is implied to suffer from some kind of disorder where she fantasises herself being kidnapped, which eventually lands her in prison. Her shy demeanour causes her to be bullied by the other inmates, and she dies a horrible death when her explosive collar goes off. All of this was because she was a victim of a disorder that was beyond her control.
  • Perla Pucci is the younger sister of Enrico Pucci, and was the leading catalyst behind his Start of Darkness. From a young age, she was led to believe that her other older brother, Domenico, died as a stillborn, when he was actually Switched at Birth and went by the name Wes Bluemarine. After meeting with him 14 years later, they fall in love without knowing that they're siblings, causing Pucci to hire a private investigator to split them up. Said investigator was secretly a Klansman who thought Wes' adoptive black father was his real father, causing him to be lynched. All the while, Perla was physically and sexually abused by other Klansmen, with the sight of Wes seemingly being hanged causing her to be Driven to Suicide. A long laundry list of trauma, because Perla never knew the truth behind her boyfriend.

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