The Ties that Bind JoJo (Episode)

The Ties That Bind JoJo (JOJOを結ぶ絆) is the twenty-forth episode of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime. It is also the fifteenth episode of Battle Tendency. It covers Chapter 107 through Chapter 108 of the manga.

Summary
Being forced to cling onto a rope to stop Lisa Lisa from falling to her death, Joseph is at a huge disadvantage against Kars. Feeling he has a plan, Joseph sets his scarf on fire, stating he will finish Kars off before it fully burns. Kars then cuts the rope in the hope of sending both Joseph and Lisa Lisa to their deaths, but falls into a snare laid out by Joseph, allowing the protagonist to hit him with a Ripple attack and knock him down into the sharp crystals below.

As Joseph rescues Lisa Lisa, Speedwagon explains to Smokey how Lisa Lisa, her real name being Elizabeth, was brought up by Straizo who taught her the ways of the Ripple. She later met and was courted by Jonathan and Erina's son George Joestar II, with their marriage resulting in the birth of their child Joseph. Unlike his father and son, George II had the ability to use the Ripple, but was not trained in it at all, and instead joined the Royal Flying Corps, battling in the Great War. However, a zombie who had survived the death of Dio and the destruction of the first Stone Mask soon sought vengeance for Dio's death, disguising himself as a high-ranking RFC officer and cornering George II, easily killing the young man who had no Ripple training to defend himself. When Elizabeth discovered the treachery, she hunted down the zombie and easily killed him with her Ripple powers, but she was caught in the act by an RFC official who thought she murdered a human in cold blood. On the run from the law, Speedwagon meets up with her; using his foundation to erase all trace of her past, he places her on Venice's Air Supplena Island where she changed her name to Lisa Lisa. Upon learning of the events, Erina began raising Joseph on her own, and asked Speedwagon to make sure that the young JoJo never learns the truth of the events that had unfolded so he may never learn the Ripple and have such a terrible fate befall him as had happened to the rest of her family.

With Speedwagon's story over, Stroheim attempts to finish off Kars with multiple blasts of ultraviolet beam, but as it seems that victory will be achieved at last, Kars turns his head toward the ultraviolet beams, revealing that he put on the Stone Mask with the Red Stone of Aja in place. Before Stroheim can call off the attack, the artificial sunlight from all the German soldiers and Speedwagon Foundation operatives channels through the Super Aja, activating the Stone Mask and sending its undiluted energy into Kars, who undergoes the ultimate transformation.

Manga/Anime Differences

 * The anime included an extra scene in Lisa Lisa's flashback where she meets George Joestar II and another where she is on the run after killing the Zombie officer. And in this scene, Lisa Lisa's clothes are different in the manga.
 * In the anime, the Nazis brought in a much larger Ultraviolet machine to fire at Kars. In the manga, the soldiers surround Kars and fire their own beams instead.
 * In the anime, Kars does one final jump off of the spikes and lands near the soldiers before collapsing, while he simply lies still in the manga.

Commentary
"There was a lot of space in this Episode 24! Indeed, we were keeping some of the material in reserve to give it all in the last two episodes. Thus, this episode is somewhat of a filler. That's why the direction was rather slow. Despite our choice, the fight between Joseph and Kars succeeds in keeping some rhythm. We owe it to Satoshi Osedo (storyboard and direction), his techniques are a god-send.

In the scene where Kars puts on the Stone Mask and the Red Stone of Aja, his body becomes semi-translucent, and the mask really pierces into the skull. We may have overdone it on the visual effects because we don't really see what's going on.

The episode's first half focuses on Kar's defeat, and the second one unveils the past of the Joestar lineage. I prefer the second half, first because Speedwagon's narration is enough to overshadow everything else, but there's also Smokey's reaction and the close-up on his tears at the end of the flashback, which uses as much frames as was necessary. Let's not forget we also get some of Stroheim at the very end (laughs)."

- Naokatsu Tsuda, Blu-Ray limited edition commentaries