JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has retconned and reset itself a few times. At first, the series followed the traditional shonen blueprint with the Phantom Blood story arc, where hero Jonathan Joestar let his fists and gentlemanly honor do the talking. In the next arc, Battle Tendency, Joseph Joestar was a craftier hero who could use any resource to turn the tables on his more powerful enemies, and he is well-known for quotes such as "I outsmarted your outsmarting!" This trend of brains dominating brawn, however, really hit its stride in the Stardust Crusaders arc, when Stands and cunning battle plans always triumphed over brute force.
The Nature Of Stand Battles In Stardust Crusaders
Stands were famously introduced in the Stardust Crusaders story arc, and this reinvented the JoJo combat system in more ways than one. Stands vary greatly in their abilities and nature, and they don't use Hamon energy. The Stands to appear used fairly straightforward techniques in battle. Star Platinum, Jotaro's Stand, relied mainly on its fists and speed in combat. Avdol's Stand Magician's Red is simply a fire user. Kakyoin's Stand could control people like puppets (at first) and could stretch out its body and launch the Emerald Splash attack. From there, however, the combat system really took off.
DIO had many villainous Stand users by his side, and their powers challenged Jotaro's team in a "monster of the week" formula. The Stand user named Mariah could make her opponents magnetic and crush them with all the heavy metal objects being drawn to their bodies, and another Stand user, Arabia Fats, nearly cooked Jotaro's team to death with a sun-based Stand. Enya, meanwhile, nearly did the team in with the deadly fog of her Justice Stand, and her son J. Geil could ambush his foes with reflective surfaces and strike with the melee-oriented Stand Hanged Man. Every battle had unique elements in it, as each Stand had its own methods of attacking, moving, defending and even gathering information. Some Stands were seemingly invincible while in their element, but if the battlefield can be changed, then the Stand and its user become vulnerable. Finding enemy Stands' weaknesses required sharp insight and resourcefulness. Sheer punching power won't win the day, even when Star Platinum was involved.
Jotaro's Sharp Mind In Action
Many of the cleverest Stardust Crusaders Stand battles feature Jotaro Kujo himself, who has a crafty and insightful mind that can point Star Platinum's fists in the right direction. At first, Jotaro's strategy was to pummel the enemy with punches and sheer attitude, but by the time Jotaro faced an orangutan who wielded the ship-Strand Strength, Jotaro showed his true capabilities at last. He and his fellows were trapped aboard a giant enemy Stand, but Jotaro used loose screws in the ship to distract his enemy, and he realized that the ship itself was the Stand, and the team had to abandon it at once. Then, Jotaro and the gang faced Arabia Fats, who was hiding behind a mirror while his Sun Stand was boiling everyone alive. Jotaro's sharp eyes spotted an irregularity in the terrain, and he threw a rock at Arabia Fats' shelter and damaged it, exposing the Stand user at once.
Jotaro's finest moments came when he fought the D'Arby brothers. He went up against Daniel first, who used his Osiris Stand to absorb the souls of anyone who lost to him in games of chance. Polnareff and Joseph both lost to him, but Jotaro realized that his opponent was used to going on the offensive, and he had few defenses for Jotaro's cunning mind games. With a stone-cold poker face, Jotaro bluffed Daniel heavily and demanded a massive bet from Daniel (exposing DIO's secrets). Daniel was overwhelmed and psyched himself into defeat. No one else even thought to try Daniel's own strategy against him. Then, Jotaro went up against Terrence D'Arby who, instead of cheating, used his Atum Stand to read his enemy's mind. So, Jotaro worldlessly urged Joseph to use his Hermit Purple Stand to control Jotaro's video game controller and beat Daniel in a baseball game, despite Atum's mind-reading abilities.
Jotaro's allies showed their own cunning, too, such as when Kakyoin and Joseph used a TV to view the inside of Joseph's head and take the fight to the tiny Stand called The Lovers in there. It was Kakyoin who figured out the secret to The World's time-freezing ability, and he pointed at a clock tower to pass this message on to Joseph. And Polnareff realized that he could use scattered sand to detect the movements of Cream, a powerful enemy Stand, and outmaneuver it. As ridiculous as it could be, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure became a show that truly prized intelligence.
