Finished Stardust Crusaders, my thoughts:
~I love the concept of animal stand users, but, like, why does Iggy have human level intelligence? (That baby with the Death 13 stand, too, it's so weird) It's like, if you're going to make him a dog, make him a dog. Maybe if any organism achieves a stand, it gains human adult level intelligence through the stand's own mind?
~Speaking of the Death 13 stand, I kind of noticed something. When Polnareff was facing off against the assassin with two right hands, the conceit of that fight was that there could be no such thing as a "mirror world," and that the assassin's ability had to have some real world mechanism (which turned out to be travel via light projection). But then, a few stands after that fight, such as Death 13's domain in dreams, operate perfectly fine in alternate worlds that have no basis in reality. Maybe it has to do with the soul.
~Didn't the twin right hand assassin's mom (Enya lol) have two right hands, too? Why didn't Polnareff notice that when she posed as a hotel manager?
~Both Boingo fights (btw lol at the "Oingo Boingo brothers") were an absolute blast. I especially love how Araki made fun of himself with the "foreign cartoonist traveling the world for ideas" set up to the first Boingo fight.
~What was up with the whole "soul flying up to heaven" thing when the good guys died towards the beginning of the Dio fight? That had never happened before in the series, like when Caesar Zeppeli died. Maybe it's because if they can see stands, they can see souls, I guess? Also, if Joseph's soul flew up to heaven, then how was Jotarou able to revive him?
~The Dio fight was spectacular. Gotta watch the OVA now, seriously. I like how, although two non-main character protagonists faced off against him first and were defeated, it didn't have anywhere near Shishio-fight levels of annoyance, because something was actually accomplished with each fight.
~Okay, this has probably been discussed to death, but how is it that the Joestars never noticed their star birthmark, just because it's on the backs of their necks? Lol, no one else ever noticed it there? That's retarded. I'm not really sure how I feel about the whole "Joestar destiny" thing altogether, to be honest. Joseph Joestar is still my favorite character, though, and Jotarou is insanely badass, so I won't be trashing the destiny-link thing too much.
~Couldn't Dio have ordered all his henchmen stand users to just converge in a single place and ambush our heroes in concert? I did get the feeling that Dio only really ordered the stand users to go kill our heroes for the evulz, but still.
~Araki has an impressive imagination and massive reserve of creative energy for entertaining as hell tricks and cons. He was probably a grifter in a former life or something.
~Goddamn this series was gruesome for JUMP. The panel with the poor woman turned into a FETUS, egads
~Is Jotarou's mom the only one with a stand who was too weak-willed for one? What about Boingo, who's too introverted to leave his box? And couldn't they have given her a willpower seminar or something in order for her to not only survive, but get a useful stand out of her? With a son like Jotarou, she needs some spine on her anyway.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
~It strikes me as strange that, for a person with as many hax abilities as Dio, and for an absolute cad who will do anything to rule the world, Dio just kinda sits in his castle all day. I mean, this is a guy who can mind control people and has irresistible charisma, he could have infiltrated like every military and governing body by that point, couldn't he?