Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean 38 (Final)
Though this isn’t how I usually start off these farewell posts at the end of each part, I want to begin by sincerely thanking each and every one of you who is here reading this right now. Whether you’ve been following our releases of Stone Ocean since late 2021, or randomly found this message just now without having ever watched it or the rest of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, thank you for caring enough to be here and read this. Reaching this point has been a long and difficult road, but also a satisfying one. I’ve been dreaming of the day I would finish subbing all six parts since I first read the Stone Ocean manga ten years ago, and now it’s finally here. Some of you are probably curious what happened that motivated us to complete the remaining 26 episodes of Stone Ocean we hadn't finished going into 2024, so I’d like to briefly explain what happened and why things changed.
Up until now, almost every Jojo part was officially released as an episodic weekly simulcast on Crunchyroll the same day new episodes aired on Japanese TV. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (2012) was the only exception, and those of you who have watched our version of it probably know that working on it was a major learning experience for us and that we lacked the ambitions for the project that developed as we continued subbing the show. I initially only agreed to do a basic QC of each episode, but quickly realized the scripts we had could benefit from a more robust edit. Truth be told, I wasn’t even a Jojo fan at the time; Gyro had to show me the scene from episode 10 where Joseph uses the cola bottle to beat up the racist cops to convince me this was a show I would even enjoy. Even then, the process of working on it was difficult since we had no self-imposed deadline to meet – a great excuse for my brain to decide I could take all the time I wanted. I fully credit Gyro with keeping me motivated to continue working on it. However, things dramatically changed when Stardust Crusaders began airing.
For those who don’t know, Stardust Crusaders was the first part of the anime to get an official simulcast release in the West. Unlike Jojo 2012, where we had started on that project late enough to have Blu-ray footage to work with from the outset, Stardust Crusaders was the first time Some-Stuffs had subbed a weekly TV anime as it aired and stuck with it until the end. We wanted each episode to come out within a few days of the simulcast release, and that deadline helped keep us focused. It was challenging, but we managed to complete all 48 episodes as they came out, as well as later releasing a revised Blu-ray batch in 2016. Our process changed in subtle ways for Diamond is Unbreakable and Golden Wind, but it more or less followed how we handled Stardust Crusaders: release each episode weekly as they came out, then revise them for a Blu-ray batch later on. Then, as I’m sure many of you reading this saw coming, Stone Ocean changed things.
When Stone Ocean was first announced, our team was immediately concerned. Not only was it coming out on Netflix, it was being released in batches of episodes instead of weekly individual episodes as it had been before. Suddenly, the workflow we had grown used to over several years had to be tossed out the window. Twelve episodes of the show came out in December of 2021, so now the soft weekly deadline that had been keeping us in check was gone. To some this may not seem like a big deal; why not just do one episode each week and continue on as if nothing changed? But it wasn’t that simple. I don’t want to go into detail, but during this time I was having difficulty with life in general due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as many of us were. I had bigger concerns than working on my fansubbing hobby, but I didn’t want to let down everyone who had been following us (Many of whom had been doing so since as early as 2013). You can clearly see this reflected in our erratic release pattern in 2022 and 2023. Subbing an episode felt like a total slog. I wasn’t enjoying it and seriously contemplated dropping the show entirely in 2023.
If the release of episode 38 today didn’t make it clear enough, things got better. The frightening early years of the pandemic were behind me and I no longer spent each day fixated on if things would ever feel normal again. I began to enjoy life again and finally felt positive after so many years of feeling hopeless. It was this return to normalcy that gave me the space to think about Stone Ocean and how we could keep the project going. We came up with a plan earlier this year for how to tackle each episode by eschewing needless extra steps that slowed us down without appreciably improving the quality of our final subtitles. So what exactly did we do? We set soft deadlines that we felt we could realistically meet. We were unsure even then if it would work, so we released episode 13 of Stone Ocean with minimal fanfare and kept our new plan to ourselves out of fear of not sticking to it. Then, less than a week later, we released episode 14. Eight days after that, episode 15. And now, just shy of eight months since we released episode 13, we’ve finished every single episode of Stone Ocean. We overcame what felt like an insurmountable obstacle and did what we set out to do faster than any of us ever could have imagined.
Suffice it to say, I could not have done this without my team. This won’t be the first nor the last time, but I have to thank Gyro yet again for being the absolute hero that he is. We never would have started subbing Jojo without him, and his tireless work on the series since 2013 and our enduring friendship has been a major inspiration and motivator for me. I wouldn’t be here and writing this post today if not for him. I’d also like to give a huge thanks to Toa of Gallifrey for his incredible support as QC on Stone Ocean and also for stepping up as the new owner of Some-Stuffs at the beginning of this year. He is one of the smartest and most talented people I know and has been instrumental in getting Stone Ocean completed in the amazingly polished state that it is. Despite all the projects on his plate, he’s prioritized helping us with Jojo, and for that I cannot thank him enough. I’d also like to thank our amazing translation checker Giraffebirbyuimumei for his terrific job fixing the abysmal Netflix translation and allowing us to present to you a better written and more accurately translated version of Stone Ocean that the official version failed to provide. I’ll forever be grateful that he stepped up to meet our accelerated release pace this year despite having the most demanding job on the team. And lastly, I want to thank Notkama for his contributions to the first batch of Stone Ocean episodes we completed during 2021 and 2022. He helped keep things moving while I was in a rough spot and did a fantastic job as QC and editor. If you’re a One Piece fan, I cannot recommend his work on the One Piece anime with HatSubs enough. His work on Stone Ocean was equally stellar, and I’m honored to have worked with him on it.
I honestly had no intention of making this post so long, so if you’ve read it all the way through, thank you again (I can never say that enough). For your patience, or perhaps your wise decision to scroll down to these final two paragraphs, I’d like to reveal what we have in store for Jojo in the future.
First, the Golden Wind Blu-ray batch IS coming. Now that Stone Ocean is complete, Golden Wind is our main priority. Expect a Blu-ray batch for episodes 14 through 26 sometime during the first half of 2025 (Or sooner, but don’t hold your breath). The third batch should follow some months after that, but that’s a bit too far in the future for me to feel comfortable giving a release window for it at the moment. A full Stone Ocean batch should also be coming out in 2025 or early 2026 depending on how things work out. The smaller batch containing episodes 25 through 38 will be coming out in about a week from now assuming we don’t run into delays, so downloading and watching all 38 episodes before we release the full batch won’t be a problem. We just want to take the time with the full batch to make sure our subs are as good as they can be. And finally, the one I’ve had to try REALLY hard to keep my mouth shut about, we plan on releasing a totally revamped version of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (2012), starting with a standalone batch for Phantom Blood! We’ve made it no secret that we aren’t thrilled with our work on Jojo 2012 from over ten years ago (!), so we’ve decided we’re going to make it right and release a significantly more polished and accurate translation than we did back then using everything we’ve learned from over a decade of fansubbing and striving to improve our work, as well as newer staff members who never worked on Jojo 2012 to begin with. I can’t give any kind of estimate for when any part of that project will be released, especially if a Steel Ball Run anime is announced at any point, but this will be our next major Jojo project so long as we have nothing new to work on. Not to say this is confirmation that we’re 100% subbing a potential Steel Ball Run anime, but… I think the odds are pretty GOOD ;)
So yeah, that’s it! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go celebrate with some pizza topped with mozzarella and gorgonzola. Catch you later, cowboys and gals!
-Josh