"This is insane… how can these characters possibly be this ridiculously stylish?"
Leo Ward, who had also come up through the unforgiving path of child stardom and still carried that half-youthful, half-stubborn excitement of someone who had grown up in front of cameras, finished Kakyoin's scene with his entire body covered in goosebumps. His hands were trembling. His throat had gone dry. And no matter how hard he tried to keep some semblance of composure, his heart was still pounding as if he himself had just witnessed a divine execution.
Ever since Bleach had exploded, his former manager had repeated the same thing to him over and over: he needed, somehow, no matter what it took, to get close to Alex. The advice sounded opportunistic - and it was - but the entertainment industry had always worked that way. Career, prestige, opportunity… those things rarely came from talent alone. Sometimes they came from timing. Other times, from latching onto the right person at the right moment.
And yet, in Alex's case, you didn't even have to look at it from that cynical angle. For male actors of every generation, there was simply something irresistible about his productions. They didn't just offer visibility. They offered presence. They offered image. They offered that rare chance to become unforgettable.
All anyone had to do was look at Mark. A man already far past the age when excitement should have come so easily, and yet after seeing his own performance in Bleach, he had gotten worked up like a possessed teenager, bouncing around the house as if he had suddenly rediscovered why he had entered the profession in the first place.
For Leo, who was still at that age when style, aura, and iconic scenes mattered nearly as much as career itself, the impact was even more brutal. When Kakyoin delivered that revenge declaration under The Noble Hierophant, Leo's scalp had practically tingled. His whole body broke out in goosebumps so fiercely and so honestly that he didn't even bother trying to hide it.
And that was exactly why the frustration came roaring back.
Because he remembered what had happened a year earlier, when Alex had still been gathering people for the filming of Bleach: Soul Society Arc, and his old manager had convinced him not to go. He had said it was Alex's first truly self-written, self-directed project, that there was too much risk, that it could easily crash and burn, that it wasn't worth tying himself to something so uncertain.
Now, looking back, Leo nearly wanted to punch a hole through the wall.
If not for that idiot getting in the way, who knew? Maybe the role of Peter would have been his.
In the end, he had thrown that former manager completely out of his life and handed the job to his mother instead. At least he trusted her.
"Mom! Help me get in touch with Aurora Entertainment. I want to audition for whatever role they've got!"
He shouted from his room toward the living room.
The answer came from a distance, but it didn't take long. His mother was also in front of the TV, fully absorbed in a drama starring Mark and Alicia Stone.
"But, sweetheart, Alex's company hasn't announced any auditions for a new project yet."
"That's exactly why," Leo shot back immediately. "We have to move before everyone else."
Because he understood very well how that worked. The moment Aurora Entertainment officially opened auditions for a new production, the competition would turn into a full-scale war. Too many people. Too many eyes. Too many agents scrambling at once. Anyone who really wanted a chance had to start running before the crowd even realized there was a race.
But no sooner had he said that than he burst out laughing all over again.
On screen, Jotaro and the others were traveling through the mountains in a jeep when they were suddenly attacked by a mysterious car. The vehicle spun violently and nearly plunged into a ravine. Fortunately, Star Platinum once again proved that absurdity was practically its surname and, through sheer brute force, forced the jeep back onto the road at the very last second.
A little later, the group stopped at a small roadside shop tucked away in the mountains to catch their breath. The moment they got there, however, any sense of relief vanished. Parked outside was the exact same car that had just tried to kill them.
The problem was that several strangers were gathered nearby.
Three. Four. Maybe more.
All of them looked suspicious.
Any one of them could have been the enemy.
And for a few seconds, no one could tell which one of them was actually hiding the Stand.
That was when Joseph, with the natural ease of someone already accustomed to improvising wildly unreasonable solutions, said,
"In a situation like this, there's only one thing left to do, Jotaro."
Jotaro raised his hand, pointed at the group, and answered with that dry calm of his that somehow made even the most ludicrous idea sound reasonable.
"Yeah. Even if some innocent people get caught up in it…"
He paused briefly, as though merely confirming the logic to himself.
"We'll have to beat up every single one of them."
What followed was pure chaos.
Alex, Bell, and Henry - playing Jotaro, Joseph, and Polnareff - charged in without mercy, turning the front of the shop into a storm of fists, shouting, and total confusion. It was all so ridiculous, so direct, and so perfectly in tune with that brutally simple logic that no one could help themselves.
If they didn't know who the enemy was, then the answer was obvious: beat everyone until the truth revealed itself.
It was stupid.
It was brilliant.
It was JoJo in its purest possible form.
Kakyoin, played by Boris Andersen, somehow ended up even funnier in the middle of all that madness. Even though he had also built up a stronger frame and more screen presence for the role, next to the other three he still looked like the leanest one in the group. And there he was, completely horrified, trying to stop the insanity.
"Don't do this! Jotaro! And Mr. Joestar, you too?! This is way too much!"
The audience collapsed into laughter.
Leo Ward nearly choked from laughing so hard. Across countless screens, viewers were letting out those ugly, genuine, undignified laughs that came from the gut and refused to be suppressed. The internal logic of the scene was so deranged that it somehow looped all the way back around into perfection.
And in the end, the enemy Stand, Wheel of Fortune, still managed to squeeze out one more ridiculous, instantly memorable line, fully convinced it had finally cornered Jotaro.
"Now you have nowhere left to run!"
For one fleeting moment, it truly did seem as though the man was about to eliminate the group's greatest threat: its most terrifying Stand user.
Then the ground exploded.
A single blow shattered the earth from below, and the next image triggered yet another wave of reactions.
Jotaro's black coat - the one with the thick gold chain hanging from the collar - was gone. In its place was Jotaro himself, emerging from the wreckage wearing only a dark gray tank top, his bare arms revealing a brutal, heavy, thick kind of musculature that looked strong enough to convince anyone he could beat a bear to death with his fists.
In another house, watching the episode with her parents, little Violet Grant immediately frowned.
"Alex looks ugly like this," she muttered under her breath, displeased. "He was better before, when he looked more like himself."
She still held on to that childish affection for him, that memory of an Alex who had been easier to hug, more comfortable, less hard. Now he looked dense, solid, rigid. Too strong. And in her eyes, that only made him less pleasant.
Her mother, on the other hand, lit up at once.
"You just don't know what you're looking at," she replied without taking her eyes off the screen. "This is when he actually looks good. Honestly, I used to think your father might still be able to get in shape like that."
Once she finished speaking, she turned toward her husband beside her and cast a look of pure disdain at his protruding belly.
"With that stomach, you can barely even get forward properly."
Violet's father froze, staring at his wife with the expression of a man who had just been ambushed without warning.
On screen, though, Jotaro seemed utterly indifferent to anything except crushing the enemy.
"You said something about there being no way out?"
His eyes were half-lidded, cold, as heavy as stone.
"Wrong. A path is something you carve out yourself."
Then he finished, in a voice too low to sound forced and too arrogant to sound entirely human:
"Now I, Kujo Jotaro, will show you how."
Star Platinum erupted into view as though it had been dragged out of Jotaro's body by the sheer violence of his intent. Then came the fists. A storm of blows. A flood. A total collapse distilled into a barrage of punches accompanied by that cry that had already become inseparable from its presence.
The audience's reaction was immediate.
Screens flooded with "ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA," a blue avalanche of repeated words posted by fans who were no longer merely watching. They were participating. Every new punch seemed to drag another chant out of the audience, until the entire playback page was buried beneath "Ora" from every direction, as though the viewers themselves had fallen into perfect rhythm with the Stand.
Only when the narration confirmed that Wheel of Fortune had been defeated did that overwhelming torrent begin to calm.
Even so, the effect of those two episodes lingered long after the credits.
The internet erupted. Some people swore they would die before next week without more JoJo. Others desperately searched for Kakyoin's theme so they could set it as their alarm tone. Someone else chimed in that a true fan's alarm had to be that famous "ai-ya-ya" meme. And amid all the reactions, one joke quickly established itself as absolute truth: when you don't know who your enemy is, just hit everyone with Ora Ora.
At its core, that was exactly what made the series so impossible to put down.
Alex did not merely write good scenes. He manufactured lines, moments, and images that felt born to become part of popular culture.
At Penguin headquarters, the news arrived attached to a number so staggering that even the executives could only stare at it in silence for a moment: Stardust Crusaders had just broken five hundred million.
The head of the platform looked at the report almost in disbelief.
So few episodes had aired.
So few.
And yet Part Three had already, with terrifying speed, reached what many productions spent an entire year chasing without ever touching.
Of course, there was still a substantial gap between JoJo and the global phenomenon that Bleach had become. But by then, nobody really used that as a fair standard anymore. Bleach had already crossed into that rare category of work that could no longer function as an ordinary measuring stick, because it was not ordinary. It was a historical exception.
Even so, what Stardust Crusaders was doing was already enough to steamroll nearly everything else released in the same window. And there was one detail that caught the executives' attention even more: the series' almost frightening ability to produce catchphrases, viral moments, and endlessly recyclable scenes. It was exactly the kind of strength that kept a show alive long after it ended, the kind certain classic dramas possessed - works that stayed culturally relevant for years simply because they never stopped generating conversation.
And JoJo had that in abundance.
Chapter 125 - Just Because It Isn't Bleach Doesn't Mean Everyone Can Puff Out Their Chest and Compete
Alex had always known that JoJo would probably never reach the same absolute height as Bleach.
He had no illusions about that.
But knowing it did nothing to diminish the value of what he was building. Even if it never repeated the colossal achievement of his other masterpiece, JoJo was still the kind of series destined to leave a heavy, dark, impossible-to-erase mark on the history of Aurora Entertainment. Maybe it simply needed more time. More settling. More viewers gradually surrendering to its logic, its style, and its particular madness.
Even so, in the present, its numbers were already more than strong enough to crush every competitor sharing the same release window.
There were historical romances, lavish fantasy dramas, productions starring celebrity couples trying to capitalize on their fame, expensive network bets overflowing with confidence in their casts. All of them were airing at the same time.
And Alex, looking at that landscape, genuinely wondered whether these people were trying to challenge him on purpose.
It wasn't Bleach, true.
But it was JoJo.
And for some reason, several production companies seemed to have convinced themselves that because it was not the broadest or most conventional project in his catalog, it would be safer to go up against.
But the market was never that refined. Other teams were also tied to schedules, post-production, approval processes, revisions, broadcasting slots. No one could move an entire drama just because Alex happened to be releasing something. If they stumbled into the line of fire, most of the time it was simply bad luck.
Among the competing productions, only one series starring Mark and Alicia Stone was managing to hold onto anything resembling a respectable reception, scraping by with a barely decent score. Even then, plenty of people online were openly saying they had rated it higher out of nothing more than goodwill toward Mark's face.
At the height of that moment, Stardust Crusaders simply felt unstoppable.
A lot of viewers kept repeating the same thing, and it was becoming more true by the day: once you accepted the art style, the tone, and the logic of that world, there was no stopping.
Under normal circumstances, the success of a show like that would already have set off an all-out publicity war. Agencies would have rushed to seize attention, drag actors into trending topics, sell romance rumors, behind-the-scenes friendships, cast chemistry, jealousy - anything that generated traffic.
That was exactly what had happened during Bleach. Mark, Emily, Melissa, the other actresses in the main cast - all of them had dominated headlines for days.
But Stardust Crusaders had a different structure.
There were relatively few domestic actors in the central cast. In the main group, the only prominent local names were basically Alex and Boris Andersen. Boris was married, his personal life was stable to the point of uselessness for gossip, and as a result, a good portion of the publicity machine found itself with very little material to exploit.
The person who unexpectedly benefited most, to nobody's surprise, was the child actress playing the little girl many fans had already started pushing as Jotaro's official love interest. That one mildly provocative scene in which he touched her unexpectedly had been enough on its own to push her name into several trending lists.
But then another name appeared - one almost nobody expected to see.
Kyoto Straw Pictures released a statement, with far more fanfare than the actual scale of the news warranted, announcing that their actor Victor Kline would be appearing in Alex's work and would make his debut in the following week's Stardust Crusaders update.
The public reaction was immediate and skeptical.
Seriously?
For the younger crowd, Victor Kline was almost a stranger. But for those who had grown up watching television some years earlier, his face still carried a certain familiarity, especially because of a hugely successful drama that had briefly thrust him back into the spotlight.
What truly surprised people was not his name itself, but how he had managed to attach himself to Alex in the first place.
Because within Alex's circle, there were not that many men who had that kind of access.
Inside the Kyoto Straw Pictures building, Victor himself was nowhere near as enthusiastic as the announcement made it sound. Standing in front of his boss, he wore an expression so bitter it was almost tragic.
"Did we really need to publicize it like this?" he asked with a pained smile.
Back when Alex had told him there was a role that suited him perfectly, Victor had practically run to accept it. And why wouldn't he? Alex was, at that moment, the most dominant figure in the entire film and television industry. An invitation like that did not come twice.
The problem was what came afterward.
The moment he read the script for the character he would be playing, Victor felt the scalp on the back of his neck tighten.
It was the kind of role that made people want to beat the character to death.
The rare sort that awakened the urge to throw something at the television.
But refusing didn't feel like a safe option either. He did not have the courage to slam a door in Alex's face like that.
His boss, on the other hand, could not have cared less about whether the public would want to drown Victor in a bucket.
"How many years has it been since that drama put you back in the spotlight, and what have you done since then that actually matters?" he said bluntly. "You're pushing fifty. You need to grab any chance you get to rise again. Do you understand that or not?"
Victor looked like he was on the verge of tears.
Deep down, even he did not know whether reappearing through a role like this would be a blessing or a curse.
But in truth, the public at large did not pay much attention to the announcement. For most people, it simply looked like another actor trying to cling to the heat of the moment. If some truly explosive veteran had been confirmed, that would have been another story. As things stood, most viewers assumed he was just playing some secondary role and trying to ride the show's popularity.
Then the new week arrived.
The little girl so many fans stubbornly insisted on treating as Jotaro's potential official partner left the story, which was only natural. The closer the group drew to Dio's territory, the more dangerous their journey became. There was no way they could keep dragging a child along that path.
Even so, that did nothing to stop people from insisting she would return in the future.
Soon after, Jotaro and the others entered a small town with an atmosphere so unpleasant it felt rotten from within. The entire place gave off the sensation that it was watching the intruders. Streets too quiet. Doors too closed. Too much shadow in too many corners.
That was where they fell into the trap of Enya, one of Dio's most dangerous subordinates.
And, as expected, Polnareff became the first target.
After witnessing the terrifying power of Justice, he had no choice but to flee in a panic, throwing himself into the first room he could find.
Only then did he realize where he had hidden.
"This is a bathroom…" he muttered, caught somewhere between disbelief and resignation. "Why is it always bathrooms or places like this when this kind of disaster happens to me?"
The line was so perfectly miserable that it drew immediate laughter.
But the worst was still to come.
In a moment of carelessness, Polnareff was struck in the tongue by one of the corpses Enya controlled. Justice's mist flooded into the wound at once and seized control of that part of his body.
Filled with venomous satisfaction, Enya declared that he would finally experience suffering worthy of the man who had killed her son.
The next second, an invisible force lifted Polnareff and hurled him in front of the filthy toilet. His tongue, completely out of his control, began stretching toward the bowl still stained with disgusting residue.
The desperate sounds escaping his throat were almost tearful. His eyes had started to well up. He wanted to call for Jotaro and the others, wanted to scream, wanted to rip his own tongue out if necessary, but he couldn't. His body simply no longer obeyed him.
The internet collapsed.
No one showed any mercy.
By then, the ongoing chain of disasters involving Polnareff and bathrooms had achieved a status all its own, almost like a personal curse. The jokes poured in by the thousands. People calling it "Polnareff's real bizarre adventures." People insisting he was spiritually bound to toilets by sacred fate. People laughing so hard they could barely breathe while still acknowledging that the whole situation was humiliating beyond belief.
Just as Enya was preparing to move on to Jotaro, Jotaro himself came downstairs.
Polnareff had been gone for too long.
That alone was enough to make it suspicious.
With no other choice, Enya halted the attack and put on the mask of a harmless old woman again, trying to deceive him.
"Oh, there's no problem at all, Mr. Jotaro. Mr. Polnareff merely went to the bathroom."
Jotaro looked at her with lazy suspicion.
"I see. But there's something strange."
The pause was brief, but it was enough to send a chill racing through Enya's body.
"I don't remember telling you my name. So how do you know I'm Jotaro?"
The audience lit up at once.
That was it.
That was how Jotaro worked. Most of the time he seemed indifferent, almost lazy, as if nothing around him deserved his full attention. But the instant he actually made a move, the feeling was always the same: the game was over.
Enya faltered inside, but recovered quickly.
"Oh, honestly, did you forget? You wrote your name in the guest register."
"Oh? Really?"
Jotaro raised an eyebrow slightly and pulled a small notebook from inside his coat.
"You mean this?"
"Yes, exactly that…"
She began answering automatically.
But the moment her eyes landed on the page, her entire expression changed.
Because the name written there was not his.
It was a fake one.
Jotaro snapped the notebook shut with a light motion, and the corner of his mouth nearly lifted.
"There's no 'Jotaro' in here."
The fans erupted.
That was precisely why he carried that impossible aura. Jotaro had the face of a man for whom the word "invincible" had already been legally trademarked.
Even so, exposing Enya did not mean instant victory. In the chaos that followed, Jotaro also ended up receiving a wound. With his tongue pierced and his face pale with panic, Polnareff managed to force out a warning through almost incomprehensible sounds.
"Run… Jotaro… if she controls you, it's over…"
Enya, increasingly convinced of her own superiority, began praising Justice as if she were describing a divine entity. She called it the ultimate Stand, incomparable, something ordinary users could never hope to face.
Jotaro merely raised his hand and made that familiar motion, tugging lightly at the brim of his cap with the infuriating calm of someone who had barely even begun.
"Yare yare…"
That line was already so deeply embedded in the blood of the fans that the moment they heard it, countless hearts relaxed.
"I don't need to run," he continued. "I just need this old woman to breathe one more time. After that, her Stand falls."
That was when Star Platinum's execution theme began.
It was settled. Everyone felt it in that same instant, even without understanding how.
Enya didn't understand either.
"What are you talking about, you idiot? Breathe one more time? Then I'll - "
She tried to inhale.
And couldn't.
Her face began turning purple at a visible speed. Her hands flew to her throat. Her mouth opened. Her chest fought. But the oxygen simply would not go in or out, as if something invisible were blocking her nose, her mouth, and her lungs all at once.
Then the scene shifted.
And what it revealed left both the characters and the audience completely dumbstruck.
Star Platinum was sucking Justice into itself whole.
That skeletal, corpse-like mist, that Stand made of deathly fog, was being inhaled through the Stand's mouth with the casual ease of someone tidying up a mess.
Polnareff's eyes widened.
"Star Platinum… it pulled Justice entirely inside! If she can't breathe, she can't maintain the Stand!"
The internet lost its mind all over again.
No one - absolutely no one - had predicted that.
It was completely absurd.
And somehow, for some twisted reason, it also made perfect sense.
Some people immediately started calling Star Platinum a living vacuum cleaner. Others declared that this had to be divine-level lung capacity. And many could only repeat, half laughing and half in genuine awe, that only Star Platinum could defeat an enemy like that and make it feel obvious afterward.
Once the battle was over and the tension finally broke, the episode still had one last cruelty reserved for Polnareff.
Recovered enough to speak, though still flushed with humiliation, he tried to end the subject with as much dignity as he could manage.
"I already said it doesn't matter what I licked. Stop asking me stupid questions…"
Then he coughed, looked away, and, almost under his breath, finally admitted:
"It was… the toilet."
Joseph instantly pretended not to hear him.
"Hm? What was that? I didn't catch it."
Kakyoin, wearing an expression far too innocent to be genuine, tilted his head as though he were honestly confused.
"I thought I heard something too… was it 'toilet bowl'?"
Joseph couldn't hold back anymore and burst into laughter, revealing that he had known the truth for ages and had simply been enjoying himself at Polnareff's expense.
That was enough.
Polnareff exploded.
"So you already knew?! You damn old man, you were just using me for entertainment?!"
And the audience, completely won over by the chemistry among them, could barely breathe from laughing so hard.
In the end, as far as a huge portion of the viewers were concerned, the Stardust Crusaders group had found a perfect and hilariously clear balance: Jotaro was the monster whose job was to end the fight, Kakyoin was the elegant brain, Joseph was the elderly disaster instigator, and Polnareff… well, Polnareff had now been officially promoted to the role of the team's professional magnet for misfortune.
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