We open on the Netflix logo to remind us that despite our best wishes, Netflix still gets to decide when to release new episodes and historically they’ve made some questionable decisions about it. I’m glad this is coming out weekly and not all at once because it’s so much easier to forget about a show if it’s just dumped somewhere in one go. This is what happened to me with Part 6 and I ended up watching it quite a bit after it had already come out. But not this time, this time we get to enjoy a little bit of this story every week. Looking online for an episode count, people don’t seem to fully agree, but from what I can see, anything from 3 to 4 cours (36-48 episodes) seems like a good guess to make. Hopefully it’ll all follow each other and not be split up. 

I’m loving the “tired older brother” energy that Gyro is already bringing into this friendship. With Johnny being the excitable younger brother who just wants his big brother’s attention and praise. Either way, it is interesting to me that he gets the cork to spin without having any Steel Balls yet. I wonder if the power of spin is something you can have without those, or if this is just a leftover effect of the energy that Gyro put into the cork previously. And just like that, he manages to immediately disappoint his new older brother by looking through his stuff. Even though he only happened upon it, it was still impolite. No time to waste because someone is approaching the camp.

Elsewhere in the frontier, the leaders of the pack are – unsurprisingly – Dio, Pocoloco and Sandman. But we only get a small glimpse of each of them resting before returning to our stranger approaching who looks like he is half asleep on his horse. He introduces himself as Andre Boomboom (what a name) and tells us he’s not shady. Okay buddy. And our new friend Boomboom got bitten by a spotted salamander. He seems shady – I know, shocking as he said he wasn’t shady. He seems desperate to get close to the fire before seemingly trying to hang himself. I now fully agree with Gyro that this guy is incredibly shady. And not only is he shady, it looks like he has family in the race too and one of them has a horse with the same indent that the murderer had. Looks like we found out what has been going on. The knocked out Boomboom brother and his two family members are doing something and it’s quickly stabbing Gyro’s leg to pieces. It seems like whatever power put the blades through Gyro’s leg has some sort of magnetic power pulling the gun parts and a knife towards him. 

And of course, a season of JoJo’s wouldn’t be right without some sort of stand ability. We see Andrew Boomboom moving back to his horse, not being dead or unconscious at all and Gyro spots a strange ghost of sorts next to him. That can only mean one thing in this series. That also explains how the elder Boomboom managed to whittle down Gyro’s steel ball without touching it; it was likely the work of his stand. It also wouldn’t be a season of JoJo’s without someone being turned into a donut. Gyro gives us the age old tactic of “up high, down low, too slow” and simply throws a rock through Andre’s stomach while he is distracted by the steel ball. 

This trio proves me wrong on Mountain Tim at least. It seems like he isn’t after Gyro at all, but instead he’s trying to catch the Boomboom gang. This gives them a plan. Pretend to be Johnny and Gyro and turn Mountain Tim against them. This is going to turn ugly considering the Boombooms managed to get away. And we also learn here – which I had read about online already so I knew it was coming – that there are in fact stand powers in this part of JoJo. And we also learn where they come from. Apparently they are granted to people who visit some sort of place called “Devil’s Palm” which the natives warn people to stay away from. Mountain Tim and these Boomboom brothers have visited this place and returned with stand powers. Not only that, but this place is in the desert so there’s a pretty big chance that Gyro and Johnny are going to come across it too. Now if this were a normal shonen anime I would predict Mountain Tim clashes with our two main characters in the next episode and at some point they all figure out who the real villains are and they’ll laugh about it afterwards, but this is JoJo’s bizarre adventure, so anything goes. I sure hope Gyro manages to fix up his leg before he has to deal with anyone’s attacks, as that stuff looked gnarly as hell. We are still on the second stage of this race and with three episodes done it looks like there is much more for us to explore. I’m excited for next week already and I hope you are too. Thanks for reading.