#kenzou

I'm a little unclear where the Westwood arc ends and the Kenzo arc starts, but this page shows Jolyne right after she defeats Westwood, and she recalls noticing a prisoner nearby who had the bone she came here to find. Recall that Jolyne got herself sent to the Ultra Security Punishment Ward on purpose, because she found out the bone was here and it somehow figures into Whitesnake's plan.

Whitesnake had four Stand Users in the ward to protect his agenda. We already met Westwood and his Planet Waves. Survivor's user hasn't been revealed yet, but the Stand itself caused everyone in the building to start fighting. I'm not sure if Survivor is still affecting the characters or not.

Jolyne meets the third Stand User when she notices all the other combatants are dead. There's two people left standing, but the tall guy doesn't do anything in this arc.

The little one introduces himself as Kenzou, and he killed the others with Feng Shui Assassination techniques. This caused them to get all bloated, and they drowned from their own body fluids. He wants to fight Jolyne now, and I already put her reply to his challenge at the top.

But before they can start, Kenzou notices Foo Fighters hiding among the bloated corpses. They came here to protect Jolyne, and they're joined by Anasui, who helped them infiltrate the Punishment ward. This works out pretty well, because Jolyne's in pretty rough shape after fighting Westwood, so now FF can fight Kenzou instead.

Anasui and Jolyne watch the fight, and she remembers him from Emporio's Music room, but this is the first time they've spoken. I should point out that this is their first appearance on-panel. If Jolyne saw Anasui before, it wasn't shown in the manga.

Anasui was first introduced when Emporio brought Hermes into the Music Room during the Highway to Hell arc. Later, Jolyne consulted with Emporio in the Operation:Savage Garden arc, and there was a piano in the room, so I guess that was the same Music room as before, but it was a different piano and a different layout. Anyway, Anasui wasn't in that scene.

Finally, Foo Fighters went to the Music Room in the Westwood arc, and Anasui was there and he agreed to accompany Foo to the Punishment Ward. So by now almost all of the main cast have met except for Jolyne and Anasui.

I think it's reasonable to infer some occasion where Emporio brought Jolyne to the Music Room and she saw Anasui and Weather Report there. I haven't watched the anime yet, but I found a clip on YouTube with this very moment, but they just did the Hermes scene and put Jolyne there in her place. And that's probably close to how it would have happened in the manga. Presumably, Jolyne got to visit the Music Room between her escape attempt and getting put into solitary confinement.

But that still doesn't explain why Anasui would go to all this trouble, and he declares that he's in love with Jolyne. She just looks at him incredulously and asks what he said, like she didn't hear him.

I suppose this is the crux of what Stone Ocean is all about. The bad guy is trying to "achieve heaven", and while that goal remains unclear, we can assume that "heaven" refers to some immutable happy ending. For Anasui, that might be something like a successful romance with Jolyne. But she's so focused on her mission that she doesn't even acknowledge his feelings. If she rejected him, that might be one thing, but she doesn't even shoot him down.

And this doesn't seem to discourage Anasui at all. Like a wise Vulcan once said "Having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true." So maybe Anasui's heaven is already realized in his desire for Jolyne, regardless of whether he fulfils that desire.

Meanwhile, Kenzou is kicking FF"s shapely green butt. He uses the same move he did to kill the others, which involves shoving his fingers down FF's mouth to trigger FF's adrenal gland to put just enough moisture into their lungs to drown them.

The only reason it doesn't kill FF too is because they can just poke a hole in their throat to drain out the excess water, or let air in, or whatever. Their main advantage in this battle is that FF isn't human. Kenzo can sense this, probably because of the effects of Survivor, but he still doesn't understand what FF is.

Anasui explains to Jolyne that Kenzo became a cult leader in the 1960's, and eventually led his followers into some mass suicide when the government began to interfere. The cultists all died, but Kenzou miraculously survived, and got sentenced to 280 years in prison.

Then we meet Kenzou's Stand, Dragon's Dream. Foo Fighters attacks it, but to no avail. Dragon's Dream helpfully explains that it is a neutral party in this battle. It doesn't attack Kenzou's enemies, but it does give him information on which direction to attack from. In theory Kenzou's opponent could make use of Dragon's Dream as well, but this is unlikely since they wouldn't know how.

There's a whole section of this arc where Anasui explains that this all has to do with Feng Shui, an ancient East Asian belief that life force, luck, energy, etc. are all guided along certain directions based on the physical landscape. Using Feng Shui, one could organize a place to improve the flow of good fortune. That's basically what Dragon's Dream does for Kenzou. It divines predictions about what Kenzou needs to do for the best possible outcome, and those predictions are absolute.

Personally, I think this Stand Ability sucks ass. It kind of resembles Wonder of U from Part 8, but that one was easier to explain. If you pursue or oppose the user, calamity will befall you and impede your progress, perhaps fatally. Dragon's Dream requires no fewer than three different character to explain how it works. Kenzou has to observe details about Foo Fighter's fighting posture, Dragon's Dream explains itself to Foo Fighters in an attempt to be impartial, and Anasui has to explain it to Jolyne.

The part I don't really get is that despite this overwhelming advantage, Kenzou can't just beat up Foo Fighters. It has to be this thing where he puts his arm inside Dragon's Dream, and then calamity befalls FF. Or he can just pummel FF the regular way. So even with all of the explanations, it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so the fight ends up being "The Bad Guy just tees off on the Good Guy for most of the story, and then the Good Guy suddenly wins for no apparent reason."

For example, Kenzou successfully launches an attack with Dragon's Dream, and not only does he hit Foo Fighters, but there's also this Final-Destination-Style moment where rats crawl on a security gate, which accidentally causes it to close while a dead guard's head is in the doorway. This crushes his glasses, which launches the pieces right at Foo's head. This apparently happened because Foo Fighter opened their mouth earlier in the fight, as opposed to keeping their mouth closed.

So it's... you know... bullshit.

And stuff like this is why Part 6 is my third favorite JoJo Part, and not my favorite. The Stands in Part 3 are a little too simplistic, but I'd rather have easy-to-follow Stands than whatever Dragon's Dream or Jumpin' Jack Flash are supposed to be. Silver Chariot is just a shiny guy with a sword. That's enough. The problem is that Araki already did a sword guy and a fire guy and a time-stopping guy and a bomb guy, and eventually he ended up doing Stands that were "feng shui guy" and "you thought about cheating so now I own your liver guy"

At one point, calamity befalls FF so badly that the top of their cranium gets sliced off. This doesn't kill FF, but only because their unique biology allows them to survive these kinds of gruesome injuries. But FF needs water to survive, and they can't last much longer in this kind of battle.

Foo Fighters begins to consider tricking Kenzou with a mirror, to fool him into using the wrong direction for his next attack, which would throw off his luck. They could produce such a reflection with water, but they need to get water for that plan to work.

The thing is, I'm not sure this plan ever actually got carried out? The dialogue later suggests that FF managed to get that water after all, using Kenzous own sweat, but I didn't see it happen. And this reminds me of how Joseph Joestar tricked Straitz in Part 2. Except he didn't lecture the reader about what a mirror is and how it would help him. He just found a mirror, played his trick, then explained what he did and showed the mirror to the audience. "Hey, this clock above my head is backwards because you're looking at a reflection, dummy."

Part 6 doesn't do this very well, and I'd say Part 5 has similar problems. The Stand Abilities get more complex, requiring more convoluted ways to defeat them, and the explanations of those convoluted methods become even hardeer to communicate. This is why Part 2 is the best. Fuck Stands, Joseph Joestar can just beat a guy with a cactus and some rope.

Long story short, FF tries to run to a fire hose nearby, but they run afoul of some unlucky position or their horroscope was misaligned with their chakra or whatever, so FF doesn't get the water out of the hose, and somehow gets tossed down to the basement where the prison keeps its electric chair. Somehow Foo Fighters gets strapped into the chair and power turns on, because they're fated to get shocked in this chair.

Imagine Goku vs. Vegeta had a part where Goku starts beating himself up because Vegeta was so powerful that fate simply compelled Goku to eat shit for several minutes whether Vegeta punched him or not. That would suck ass, but JJBA pulls this kind of stunt all the time, and it's kind of amazing that Araki gets away with it this much.

Anyway, Foo Fighters can't escape the electric chair, so they grab Kenzou and force him to endure the same electrocution. Dragon's Dream interprets this development as a "draw". Like, FF was bound by fate to get shocked in this electric chair, but I guess Kenzou wasn't so safe that he could just stand that close and not get a jolt himself.

Jolyne rushes down to intervene, and Anasui warns her that she's too badly hurt, and there's nothing she can do for FF anyway. The shock surely killed Foo Fighters instantly. But that's not why Jolyne's going down there. She notices that Dragon's Dream is still floating there, which means Kenzou somehow survived, so she wants to kill him before he can hurt anyone else.

And she uses her string to locate a puddle on the floor, which contains some of Foo Fighters' plankton. I think this is what happened:

FF managed to collect some moisture from Kenzou's sweat as he chased after them.

FF used this sweat as a mirror? Either they tricked Kenzou into occupying a suboptimal place, or they found a really good place by just looking at Dragon's Dream.

FF deposited some of their plankton in the sweat collected from Kenzou, and put it on the floor in that good place.

Once Jolyne pieced this together, she could find the right spot, soak up the puddle with Stone Free, and transfer the surviving plankton into Etroe's electrocuted body. I guess.

So Kenzou tries to assassinate Jolyne like he intended from the start, except this time Anasui is ready for him. He can't prevent Kenzou from landing a perfect attack against Jolyne, but he can put his own Stand, Diver Down, inside of Jolyne's body, and use its ability on Kenzou at the moment his attack is about to connect.

This is very effective, although I'm not sure I understand Diver Down well enough to explain it. It goes inside of objects--like Jolyne's body in this case--and then it releases kinetic energy through those objects upon contact. I think? How did it turn Kenzou's legs into springs? Well, his legs were crushed on impact, but moreover, the Diver Down ability reshaped the bones and muscles into this new form. This ought to be excruciatingly painful for Kenzou, but apparently he can't feel it because of the effects of the Survivor Stand. So instead he just bounces around helplessly, unable to use Dragon's Dream because he can't control his own movements.

Finally, Kenzous just lands in a bucket, and I guess that's the end for him. Did he die? I don't know.

Meanwhile, at the Speedwagon Foundation, the doctors are still caring for Jotaro Kujo. He's no longer dying now that he has Star Platinum back, but he's still missing his memory disc, which leaves him nearly devoid of intellect, passion, or purpose. With nothing to motivate him, the doctors worry that he'll die anyway as his muscles atrophy. Then one of them reaches for his head and this somehow causes Star Platinum to lash out and break an IV bottle.

Miraculously, the shards of glass produce cuts on Jotaro's right arm which spell Jolyne's name.

Back at the Punishment Ward, Foo Fighters is tending to Jolyne's injuries, when she suddenly develops a wound on her own right arm to match her father's. This is just one of those things that has nothing to do with the established super powers in this story. Neither Star Platinum nor Stone Free should be able to do this.

I guess we could chalk it up to the same psychic link that caused Jonathan Joestar's body to send a "distress call" to his descendants when Dio got a Stand ability. Maybe that link has other ways of manifesting itself. In Part 5, this was exactly the sort of thing Diavolo was worried might happen between himself and Trish, which could lead to his enemies using Trish to discover his true identity.

Anyway, Jolyne has a flashback to when she stole that car at age 14, and Jotaro didn't show up to help because he had some emergency in Tokyo. But now, Jolyne understands that Jotaro had been protecting her even when he wasn't around, doing what he had to do in the distance so that Jolyne and her mother wouldn't be in harm's way. Despite their estrangement, she now feels completely reconciled with her father, and understands him "with every fiber of [her] being."

And this is a good counterpoint to the bullshitty powers of Dragon's Dream. Whatever caused Jotaro's wounds and Jolyne's matching wound, it's as bullshitty a power as this Feng Shui nonsense. The difference is that this phenomenon doesn't need an explanation. Whatever caused this, it's a manifestation of the character growth we've already witnessed in the story. Jolyne is now fighting to save her father, just like he used to protect her when she didn't know it. The wound on her arm is just the a-ha moment for the character. How it happened is less important than how she reacts to the moment.

Foo Fighters offers to tend to this wound, and Jolyne tells her to leave it alone without explaining why. It's only temporary, but for Jolyne, this is like a badge of honor from her father, and she's finally matured enough to appreciate it.

So is this heaven for Jotaro? I mean, he's just sleeping all day because he doesn't know or remember how to do anything else. And his daughter is finally strong enough to look after herself and carry on the Joestar tradition.