D'Arby the Gambler, Part 1

The Joestar Group arrives at last in Cairo, but the maze-like city hides DIO's lair somewhere in its outskirts, and Holy's failing health leaves them only days to find it. Handing out photos and asking after the mansion, they wander into a cafe run by a man called D'Arby, who claims to know the hideout's location. A compulsive gambler, he refuses to simply tell them, instead tossing two dried fish and inviting a wager on which one a nearby cat will choose first. Dismissing him as a crank, Polnareff rashly agrees to stake his soul and picks the larger piece, only for the cat to go for the other. D'Arby's Stand, Osiris, promptly draws out Polnareff's soul and seals it inside a poker chip.

The group realizes they have stumbled onto one of DIO's agents, but any attempt to rough him up risks the captured soul being crushed. Boasting openly of his talent for cheating, D'Arby displays a hoard of chips as proof. To reclaim Polnareff, Joseph steps up, proposing a game of dropping coins into a whiskey-filled glass, the loser being whoever makes it overflow. Joseph estimates seven coins will do it and tries to rig the outcome by secretly adding whiskey on his sixth turn, expecting his opponent to fail. Instead D'Arby drops the seventh coin cleanly, and a shaken Joseph inwardly concedes, losing his soul to Osiris as well.

Inspecting the glass, Jotaro spots a lump of melted chocolate wedged beneath it; D'Arby had tilted the vessel to make Joseph misjudge its capacity. Undeterred by Avdol's objections, Jotaro challenges the gambler to poker, the man's strongest game, resolved to win back both his friend and his grandfather.

The Crusaders reach Cairo, their final destination, and first encounter Daniel J. D'Arby along with his Stand Osiris. Polnareff loses a reckless bet and has his soul stolen and turned into a poker chip. Joseph attempts to outwit the gambler at a coin-dropping game but is beaten by a hidden trick and also loses his soul. Jotaro accepts a game of poker to reclaim the captured souls, setting up the confrontation to come.

The thirty-fourth episode of Stardust Crusaders and tenth of the Egypt Arc, it skips chapter 210 and adapts chapters 211 through most of 213. The anime adds an opening scene of the Crusaders reaching Cairo and a flashback of D'Arby gambling against the Moor family, and it swaps the wager's drink from rum to whiskey. Director Naokatsu Tsuda praised voice actor Banjo Ginga's performance, noted that a professional magician was filmed shuffling cards as animation reference, and admitted the strange markings on D'Arby's face were treated as tattoos without any clear meaning. Owing to the somber mood, the ending card played over a black screen with a different section of the theme song.