Creating Anime In A Fantasy World

Chapter 260: The Premiere of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure! (Part 22)

The wild, twisting plot of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure had every viewer gripping their seats, nerves stretched tight as bowstrings.

After all, no one had expected it—after everything, after such an intense battle—Dio was still alive.

A chill ran down the theater. What kind of nightmare would come next? What horror awaited them this time?

Yet just when the tension reached its peak, the story shifted unexpectedly.

The screen faded from chaos… to peace.

Jonathan Joestar and Erina Pendleton had married.

It had been quite some time since he had destroyed the Stone Mask.

After the ceremony, the newlyweds embarked on their honeymoon.

Bidding farewell to Speedwagon and the others, they boarded a passenger ship bound for a distant land.

On the deck, Jonathan and Erina enjoyed the gentle lull of the waves and the warmth of a calm future—unaware that, deep below, a strange coffin lay quietly among piles of cargo.

Below deck, a drunken priest stumbled through the corridor, grumbling as he searched for the crucifix he’d dropped earlier.

When he finally found it, his bleary eyes caught sight of that ornate coffin.

“…Locked… from the inside?” he muttered, his breath catching in his throat.

—Crack!

In the very next instant, an unseen force struck.

The priest’s head burst like a crushed melon, and his body crumpled lifelessly to the floor.

Meanwhile, Jonathan—enjoying a meal with Erina—caught sight of a familiar, sinister face in the crowd: the poison dealer.

His expression hardened. Without hesitation, he gave chase, following the man down into the ship’s lower decks…

…where he saw the priest’s corpse.

“Dio!” Jonathan’s voice trembled.

Inside the coffin—lying in the shadows—was Dio Brando’s severed head.

Jonathan’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“JoJo… look at me. I wanted you to see me like this—see this pitiful state I’ve fallen into.”

“Do you know why, JoJo? Because I have come to respect you. Yes… the man I once mocked, I now revere. Your courage, your soul, your strength—I have seen it.”

“Without you, I would never have discovered the Stone Mask’s power. And yet, because of you, the world has slipped from my grasp.”

“If God truly exists and governs our fates, then He must have woven us together for a reason! You and I, JoJo… we are two halves of one whole.”

“That is why I shall take the body of the only man I have ever respected—and live forever within it. That is my destiny as Dio!”

“Do not fear. I shall not let you suffer. Think of it as my final tribute to my greatest rival!”

The moment those words ended, the fluids from Dio’s eyes shot forth like needles, piercing Jonathan’s neck.

Erina, arriving just in time, witnessed it all—her beloved’s throat impaled before her very eyes.

Jonathan’s body shuddered. The wound prevented him from channeling his Hamon, and soon chaos erupted throughout the ship.

The newly spawned vampires began tearing through the passengers, turning the vessel into a floating hell.

Amid that madness, Jonathan gathered the last of his Hamon into his right hand.

As the poison dealer, now carrying Dio’s head, lunged toward him—Jonathan struck.

BOOM!

The man screamed as the Hamon coursed through his body, convulsing uncontrollably before his immense strength ripped through the ship’s engines.

The explosion was imminent.

Erina stumbled to Jonathan’s side, tears streaming as she pressed her lips against his.

Her voice trembled but her eyes were calm—resigned.

“If the ship is to sink… then let us die together.”

But Jonathan’s weakening hand pointed toward the stairs.

There, in the midst of all the carnage, a baby’s cries echoed—an infant miraculously left alive.

“You want me… to save that child? The baby of a woman I’ve never met?”

“To live on, when you…” Her voice broke. “That kind of courage… it’s too cruel, JoJo…”

Jonathan’s voice was faint now, but his gaze was as gentle as ever.

“That mother died protecting her child… just as mine once did.”

“Take the baby, Erina. Go… please…”

Erina froze for a long moment. Then, with trembling hands, she nodded.

Her tears sparkled under the flickering lights as the ship groaned and cracked around them—the last testament to the man who had fought not for glory, but for love and humanity itself.

Even at the brink of death, Dio refused to surrender.

He poured every ounce of malice left in his body into commanding the vampires to halt the explosion, to save the doomed ship, to keep his ambitions alive.

Blood vessels writhed from his neck, like serpents thirsting for flesh, as he tried to seize Jonathan’s body for himself.

But Jonathan…

Jonathan, with his final breath and final strength, drove his blade deep into Dio’s chest.

The ship trembled. Flames began to bloom around them like a crimson flower.

And Jonathan—his eyes still open, his breath already gone—pulled Dio’s head close, as if embracing an old friend one last time.

For a brief second, Dio tried to move.

But when he lifted his gaze, he realized—

Jonathan Joestar was already gone.

—BOOOOOM!!

A blinding explosion erupted, consuming everything.

The ship became a fireball, torn apart by the fury of the sea.

No one survived.

No one—except Erina, clutching the crying infant close to her chest as she hid inside the very coffin Dio had prepared for himself.

By that cruel twist of fate, she alone escaped the inferno.

And thus, the story of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure came to an end.

…

When the final image faded and the screen turned black, most of the audience realized—they had forgotten to breathe.

It was as if they, too, had sunk with that ship, trapped between the fire and the waves.

The ending, where both Jonathan and Dio perished together, left a heavy lump in every throat.

A sorrow that words could not quite express.

Tears glimmered under the dim lights.

Some wiped them away silently, others simply sat still, unable to move.

After all, tragic endings weren’t rare on the stage.

But no play—no tragedy performed under painted lights—had ever struck like this.

The impact of cinema, its immediacy and grandeur, made every emotion feel raw and unbearably real.

For a long time, no one stirred.

Then, as the house lights slowly rose, chairs creaked and murmurs began to spread through the theater.

“That was… incredible. But… why do I feel so empty?”

“It can’t just end there! Why did it have to stop now!?”

“Jonathan died… That’s too cruel—too cruel for Erina!”

“Damn that Dio! Even in death, he dragged Jonathan down with him!”

“I want to know what happens next! There has to be more!”

The flood of voices mixed joy with heartbreak, awe with frustration.

And this wasn’t limited to just the southern provinces—audiences across the east and west were just as shaken.

Theaters everywhere echoed with the same desperate cry that once swept through the south:

“If there’s no new movie soon, I’m going to die!”

But no matter how much they begged or shouted, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure had come to its definitive end.

One by one, they drifted out of the theater, their hearts still caught somewhere between admiration and despair.

Yet as they stepped into the lobby, they noticed another crowd emerging from the cinema next door.

Curiously, their expressions couldn’t have been more different.

Where JoJo’s audience carried that bittersweet daze of awe, this other group looked utterly disgusted, as if they had just seen something they wished they could scrub from their memory.

“That was the best movie I’ve ever seen!” someone from the JoJo crowd shouted.

“That was the worst pile of garbage I’ve ever watched!” someone from the other group snapped back.

For a moment, both sides froze, staring at each other in stunned confusion.