The Game Master

Even after Joseph empties a Tommy gun into him, Straizo shrugs off the damage and fires a pressurized jet of eye fluid, borrowing Dio's old Space Ripper Stingy Eyes. The blast only strikes a mirror, and Joseph strikes from behind with his Ripple-charged weapon. Straizo soaks up the energy with a scarf woven from beetle muscle, so Joseph slips grenades onto him and tricks him into setting them all off.

Blown to pieces, the vampire reassembles himself, prompting Joseph and Smokey to do the unexpected and flee to a bridge. Straizo overtakes them and seizes a reporter as a hostage to bait Joseph into a fight. When he actually harms her, an enraged Joseph charges in. Straizo unleashes the eye beam again, but Joseph bounces it back with Ripple-infused shot glasses, then finishes him with a punch that sends him over the bridge. Held by the hand, Straizo warns of a soon-to-wake Pillar Man before detonating himself with his own Ripple.

The scene shifts to Mexico, where Speedwagon is revealed to be alive but captive. A German officer named Rudol von Stroheim questions him about the Pillar Man his forces have excavated and plan to revive. Holding a group of Mexican prisoners, Stroheim stages a blood feeding for the creature. When a boy bravely steps forward to be used, the major orders the remaining captives executed. Joseph, meanwhile, travels toward Mexico himself, unaware that a peculiar assassin named Donovan is trailing him.

The adaptation trims several minor beats, including an exchange with Erina, a scene of Smokey being dismissed as crazy, and a confrontation with a man named Bruto over the ruined cafe. It also changes the Pillar Men's stated slumber from four thousand years in the manga to two thousand, and reworks the story's Nazi references into a generic German army, cutting depictions of Hitler and the swastika.

Commentary noted the greater gore of the Straizo fight, which required blacked-out frames for broadcast that could be restored on home video, and praised the visual contrast between the New York first half and the dry Mexican setting that follows.