Even though Stardust Crusaders was gaining popularity at a steady, reliable pace, it was still nowhere near Bleach. The gap between the two was enormous.
JOJO had already begun spreading across the internet through its iconic lines, memorable scenes, and endlessly clipped highlights. Group chats were full of it. Short videos were full of it. Everywhere people looked, there was another reference, another screenshot, another joke.
And strangely enough, that constant exposure created resistance in some people.
The more they saw it, the less they wanted to watch it. Instead of curiosity, it sparked irritation. Some people developed the exact same stubborn reaction: if everyone kept pushing it so hard, then they definitely were not going to watch it. That kind of attitude was more common than people thought. JOJO's addictive charm was its greatest weapon, but it could also work against it. The very thing that made fans fall deeper into the series could end up pushing outsiders away before they ever gave it a chance.
Even Alex, looking at the situation, felt a little lucky that he had fallen into JOJO early, back when the fan environment had still been relatively normal. Later on, as the years passed, the community had grown more excessive. People threw out spoilers without a second thought. Others forced pairings into every possible corner. JOJO references got spammed under completely unrelated works until people who had never even watched the series started finding it annoying on principle.
And on top of that, there was still the most obvious hurdle of all.
The art style.
No matter how distinctive or brilliant it was, for plenty of people it was still hard to accept at first glance.
This time, though, things felt a little different.
When fans saw Alex going on that interview show and putting himself through such an awkward conversation just to promote JOJO, even they were caught off guard. After all, Alex had always been the kind of person who avoided variety shows whenever possible. His fans complained all the time that they never got to see him outside of dramas and film sets, yet he never cared enough to indulge them.
But for JOJO, he had already appeared on two shows in a row.
That mattered.
The contrast became even clearer when people compared it to Bleach. During Bleach's run, Alex had never needed to do anything like this. But then again, Bleach was simply too big. It did not need promotion. It was like a major album release everyone in the country had already been waiting for. No one needed to waste extra time advertising what people were already counting down for.
JOJO was different.
And the fans felt it.
For the first time, a lot of them realized just how much effort Alex was putting into this series. It hit harder than expected. Because although they spent most of their time in comment sections cursing him out with all kinds of vicious nicknames, the truth was that when something actually mattered, their attitude changed completely.
When the time came to act, Alex's fans were shockingly fierce.
It only took a few people saying that, since Alex had gone this far, they might as well give JOJO a chance. Then more people echoed the same thought. Others said it would be wrong to ignore a project he was clearly trying so hard to support. Some even half-joked, half-seriously argued that if this damaged his confidence and made him lose interest in future projects, everyone would be the ones suffering for it later.
Once that mood spread, the momentum became impossible to stop.
Stardust Crusaders saw a sudden surge in views. It shot back onto trending lists and left people inside the industry staring at the numbers in disbelief. Perhaps only then did they truly understand what Alex's fandom looked like once it decided to move as one.
Then, at last, the new release day arrived.
That night, plenty of JOJO fans were already sitting in front of their computers long before the episode went live, staring at the time in the corner of the screen as if waiting for the opening signal of a war.
At the same time, another crowd had gathered too.
These were the people who had been influenced by Alex's recent push. More than half of them had not even finished the first two parts. Some had not made it through the previous twenty-something episodes of Stardust Crusaders. In truth, they were not there because they had suddenly become devoted to JOJO. They were there to help. They wanted to open the episode, add to the view count, and support their idol's efforts, even if their actual interest in the series was still limited.
And they were the ones who got the biggest surprise.
When the episode opened and showed the Stardust Crusaders split into two groups, with Jotaro, Kakyoin, and Joseph facing off against D'Arby the Gamer, a lot of those viewers stared at the screen in disbelief.
They had expected something else entirely.
Looking at a cast full of muscular men, they had assumed the fights would be purely physical - direct, brutal, all fists and force. That was the image they had in mind.
Instead, they got a battle fought over a video game.
For a few seconds, many of them genuinely did not know how to react.
Then D'Arby's Stand ability came into play, using mind-reading to predict Jotaro's thoughts.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
"No! No! No! No! No!"
The repetition was hypnotic. It sounded almost like a cursed chant, and even the newcomers felt themselves being drawn in. They might not have understood JOJO yet, but they could feel it. That bizarre, magnetic energy. That strange atmosphere that made the series feel unlike anything else. It was ridiculous, theatrical, and somehow impossible to look away from.
By the end of the episode, the trick was finally revealed.
Jotaro had not been playing alone.
Joseph had hidden Hermit Purple's vines over Jotaro's body and used them to control the joystick from a distance without D'Arby noticing. In other words, D'Arby was successfully reading Jotaro's mind - but Jotaro was not the one actually playing. The real player was Joseph. Which meant the mind-reading, despite looking so overwhelming at first, had been rendered useless from the start.
When that explanation landed, it was not just D'Arby who froze.
The audience did too.
That was it?
It was that simple?
And yet, when the older fans thought about it, that had always been part of Stardust Crusaders' appeal. So many of its battles worked on ideas that sounded absurdly simple once they were explained out loud. The problem was that no one ever thought of them before the characters did.
Once Kakyoin returned to normal and the balance of the fight completely shifted, Jotaro sank his hands back into his pockets and looked at D'Arby with that cool, contemptuous calm that had become second nature to him.
"You want to use your mind-reading again?" he asked. "Go ahead. Try to predict it. Is my next hit going to be with my right hand, or my left?"
D'Arby, who had entered the scene with all the confidence in the world, was now reduced to a sweating, trembling man on his knees. His voice came out weak and unstable.
"With... with your right?"
But what echoed back through his mind was only this:
"No! No! No! No! No!"
The new viewers were already completely caught in the strange pull of the scene. The longtime fans, meanwhile, were starting to smile with a kind of shameless satisfaction. They knew. Or at least they thought they knew exactly what was coming next.
Terrified, D'Arby could barely breathe.
"Then... your left?"
"No! No! No! No! No!"
"Both at once?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
By then, he was on the verge of breaking.
"Don't tell me... you're going to Ora Ora me?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
The instant a giant YES burst across the top of the screen, Star Platinum emerged behind Jotaro like the embodiment of inevitable defeat. To JOJO fans, that image only meant one thing. Once Star Platinum appeared like that, the fight was already over. Everything that followed was just the execution.
And that was exactly what happened.
Under a violent barrage of punches, fast and relentless like a storm made of iron, D'Arby was blasted away as if he had been struck like a baseball. A moment later, the narration confirmed what everyone had already understood.
He was done.
Watching alone at home, the actress Sasha - who had once even asked Alex for an autograph - sat up on her couch with her eyes lighting up. She liked Sosuke Aizen, but had never cared much about JOJO. Like many of the new viewers that night, she had only clicked on the episode out of curiosity. She wanted to see what Alex found so special about a series he was promoting this hard.
To her own surprise, she found it genuinely entertaining.
So entertaining, in fact, that she did not want to keep going from there. Instead, she backed out of the newest episode and returned to the very beginning, determined to watch the whole thing properly from episode one.
The longtime fans, of course, had no such hesitation.
As soon as the first episode ended, they rushed straight into the second release of the week. Kakyoin turning into a doll had scared them for a moment, but the crisis had passed without true disaster. The enemy had been dealt with. The tension eased.
And without even realizing it, people began to relax.
If Jotaro, Kakyoin, and Joseph had made it through, then maybe the other group would be fine too. Maybe Polnareff, Avdol, and Iggy would get out safely. Maybe this week would end without anyone being emotionally torn apart.
What no one could have imagined was that this small sense of relief would be the last kindness Alex offered before driving the knife in for real.
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