“The Guardian of Hell, Pet Shop”

Fridays at 12:30 pm EDT on Crunchyroll

Iggy separates from the group and stumbles upon Dio’s mansion, guarded by the falcon Pet Shop and his Stand of ice, Horus.

Iro’s thoughts

Iggy finally gets his time to shine, complete with a boatload of internal monologue and a facelift. The anime’s done a decent job of not making it as drastic a shift in appearance, but if you go back and look at Iggy’s debut and compare him with now, he looks so completely different that it’s hilarious. In my head I remembered Iggy doing way more stuff over the course of the show, so I was surprised that it took so long for Pet Shop to show up and that it happens so close to the endgame. There isn’t too much left for our favorite Boston terrier to do before our heroes finally confront Dio himself, but thankfully this fight is a pretty good one.

Pet Shop is, of course, yet another Stand-using animal, alongside The Strength’s master and Iggy, and won’t be the last (assuming the anime goes into Diamond is Unbreakable and beyond). I’m not sure if he’s a fan favorite enemy or not, but he’s definitely one of my favorites, partly since I’ve always liked ice-based powers and partly because his stone-cold attitude. Only in JoJo can a bird have such a great poker face; I’m convinced that Pet Shop could probably stare down Jotaro himself if they ever met. Horus is also a pretty cool-looking Stand in all its weird dino-bird-monster glory. Fun fact: in the old Arcade/PS1 JoJo fighting game by Capcom, Pet Shop was a playable character and was considered too overpowered for competitive play, mostly due to his ability to fly around while spamming fast attacks. And a second fun fact: way back in episode 5, what was a random bird in the manga got changed to an early-bird cameo of Pet Shop. Pretty cool!

Oh yeah, and I guess Kakyoin’s back. Woohoo.