The Ties That Bind JoJo

Clinging to a rope to keep Lisa Lisa from plunging to her death, Joseph is badly cornered by Kars. Away from them, Stroheim's unit and the Speedwagon Foundation keep grinding through the Pillar Man's vampire ranks. Joseph lights his scarf ablaze and vows to end Kars before the flame runs out. When Kars severs the rope hoping both will fall, he instead drops into Joseph's rigged trap and finds himself dragged down by Lisa Lisa's weight. In a final trade of strikes, Joseph pours out his last drops of Ripple to overpower Kars' blade and mangle his arm, sending the foe tumbling as he seizes his own mother.

With Lisa Lisa rescued, Speedwagon fills Smokey in on her buried story. Raised by Straizo and trained in the Ripple, she was born Elizabeth. She married George Joestar II, the son of Jonathan and Erina, and gave birth to Joseph. George II could channel the Ripple but never learned to fight with it, choosing instead the Royal Flying Corps and the Great War. A zombie that outlived Dio and the shattered original Stone Mask sought payback, posing as a senior officer and cutting down the defenseless George II. Elizabeth tracked the creature and destroyed it with her power, but a witnessing official mistook the act for cold-blooded murder of a man. Fleeing the authorities, she was found by Speedwagon, who used his foundation to scrub her history and settled her on Air Supplena Island near Venice, where she took the name Lisa Lisa. Erina then chose to raise Joseph alone and asked Speedwagon to keep the truth from him, so the boy would never learn the Ripple and share his family's grim fate.

As the tale ends, Stroheim pounds Kars with volleys of ultraviolet light. Just as triumph looks certain, Kars angles his head into the beams, revealing he has donned the Stone Mask fitted with the Red Stone of Aja. The pooled artificial sunlight from the soldiers and operatives funnels through the Super Aja, firing its concentrated energy into him and triggering his ultimate transformation.

Joseph defeats Kars in their duel using the burning scarf ruse and the last of his Ripple. Speedwagon narrates the origin of Lisa Lisa, exposing her true name and the murder of George Joestar II by a surviving zombie officer. Erina's decision to hide the Ripple from Joseph is explained. In the closing moments Kars wears the completed Aja Mask and absorbs the concentrated ultraviolet light, beginning his transformation into the Ultimate Life Form.

The adaptation inserts extra scenes into Lisa Lisa's flashback, including her meeting with George Joestar II and her flight after killing the zombie, and her outfit differs from the manga version. The anime also has the Nazis wheel in a far larger ultraviolet machine rather than having soldiers fire individual beams, and Kars performs a final leap before collapsing near the troops. Tsuda described the installment as something of a filler that held material in reserve for the finale, and noted his preference for the second half built around Speedwagon's narration and Smokey's tearful reaction.