Well, just spent way too much time reading this entire thread instead of doing something productive.
It gives me a certain amount of perverse satisfaction but also makes me very depressed to say that I was completely right to dump Stardust Crusaders when I did (about when Avdol died) because I saw all of the signs that the show wasn't going to get better. Stardust Crusaders has aged horribly and I would go as far to say that it's flat-out bad. It's a completely by-the-numbers monster-of-the-week shounenshit story that discards all pretension of fighting smart established in Part 2 in favour of the group acting like fucking idiots until it's time for the episode to be over, with Stands that are all pretty fucking boring and if we're being honest pretty fucking boring villains too - as much as people talk up Araki's creativity and 'THERE'S A STAND THAT DOES X' the majority of the monsters I've seen have either been very simple ideas or just outright copies of horror movies just with spooky punchghosts instead of Freddy Kruegar or what-have-you.
The real, cardinal sin of Stardust Crusaders is how it handles the two Jojos. Joseph is a fucking idiot now who never contributes to anything, no matter how useful his wily ways might have won the day even if he were his Stand-less Part 2 self, and because of the story's basic structure his 'moment in the sun' episode just comes off as fucking insulting to everyone who liked Joseph for his brains because lol Empress is dead now so he's back to being a fucking idiot. Because we can't have anyone infringe on precious Jotaro, can we? Perhaps appropriately for such an old and influential series, Jotaro is just this dense critical mass of painful strong-and-silent antihero cliches. You could literally replace him with a fridge and the show would lose nothing, he's that fucking bland. He literally doesn't have character traits beyond sometimes getting angry at the monster of the week. And his Stand, even among the especially boring Part 3 Stands, is like unpainted drywall. It's super strong and super tough and super fast and even when he's not paying attention it solves his problems for him and like 70% of problems are solved by "and then Star Platinum punches it". And it all comes to a head in the final fight with DIO.
See what makes my balls ache about 'oh yeah I'm used to asspulls I watched Joseph's shenanigans' is that the difference in execution is like night and day. Joseph is a goofy and vulnerable character with traits and flaws. He rolls through plan after plan after plan, and sometimes he just completely fucks up and accomplishes nothing. And when a plan doesn't work right or someone sees through him he actually reacts. He has a range of emotions wider than a fucking teaspoon and, honestly, reading this thread has given me a new appreciation for the end. I'd totally forgotten that Lisa Lisa demonstrated the Red Stone's light-enhancing powers in its first appearance, so my main problem with his defeat of Cars is now gone because it's justified for him to subconsciously realise that it'd enhance Cars' 'one hundred times stronger' Ripple. The simple fact of the matter is that Joseph was always outclassed physically and in need of closing the gap with smarts, a thousand times more gratifying than the reverse.
And then there's Jotaro. The culmination of how worthless Jotaro is as a protagonist isn't even worth spoiling. When you get to the final confrontation with DIO, simply think of the most boring way and zero-effort way he could solve the problem. Congratulations, you've figured out the twist. Have fun still having to deal with the fucker for Part 4.
(Wow that got a bit venomous. Sorry, the series was kind of an emotional rollercoaster for me. I fucking despised Phantom Blood and Dio himself with a fury that eclipses ten thousand suns, then Battle Tendency came along and made me believe in the light of anime again. So Stardust Crusaders was uh, kind of a come-down crash for me.)
