English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “The Nijimura Brothers Part 2”

Bad Company, I can’t deny, but saying “Bad Company” violates copyright.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Josuke enters the house to find Okuyasu’s brother, Keicho, pulling the arrow out of Koichi’s neck while remarking how valuable it is to his plan. Josuke sprints save Koichi but notice a glint in the dark. Many small shots fire and miss him narrowly, but land in the revived Okuyasu, lethally injuring him. The shots came from Keicho’s stand, Bad…wait, I mean WORSE Company. The shots go off again, though Josuke manages to pull himself and Okuyasu out of the house, but not before getting injured himself. He tries pumping Okuyasu for information, but even after being almost killed by his brother, he won’t say anything. Josuke sees now he has no choice…but to heal him anyway.

Okuyasu’s understandably confused by this, considering they were just trying to kill each other, but Josuke simply replies he didn’t want anyone else to die today. He then tries heading back into the house to find Koichi, following a trail of blood upstairs into a room where Koichi’s twitching body lies. Suddenly, Okuyasu jumps up behind him, but instead of ambushing him, he uses The Hand to pull Koichi to Josuke. With this, he’s able to finally heal the poor guy, but they’re soon surrounded by Worse Company, which turns out to be a bunch of moving soldier figures and even tanks and helicopters. Basically, they’re a cross between the army guys from Toy Story and that model kit hobbyist from that one Bob’s Burgers episode.

Josuke and Koichi are soon cornered, but it turns out that surviving the arrow has given Koichi the ability to see Stands, as well as give him one of his own. Keicho emerges from the shadows to see what his stand might be, so Koichi lays an egg. Like his Stand is actually a big green egg. And if Pokemon Go has taught me anything, that thing can probably hatch with just a couple kilometers of walking. Keicho’s not that patient, so he orders his Stand to finish Josuke off. Little does he know that Josuke has used Shining Diamond to reconstruct one of the helicopter’s missiles and fires it back on Keicho, making him a bloody mess.

OUR TAKE

One thing I forgot to mention about this fight last time is that it’s the first big conflict with a Stand that Josuke has to deal with without Jotaro’s help. This is important since it’s another chance to show that he’s taking the reins of this stage. In fact, the reason I forgot to mention it is probably because this is the first episode of this arc that doesn’t have Jotaro in it at all! Perfect timing for a quintessential showing off what makes Josuke such a similar yet different and all around entertaining protagonist. Likely because of his grandfather’s recent death, he’s eager to avoid anyone dying without him doing his damnedest to stop it, as seen when he healed Okuyasu. He’s also still a very crafty planner with his ability, which is made clear at the end though is the use of the missiles. It’s just nice to see that these character traits are still just as interesting and dynamic as they were at the start of the season, and I hope they continue to be moving forward.

As for his opponent, Keicho’s powers are certainly interesting in their own way, but I’m not sure they’re good enough for a grand mastermind like he seems to be. A lot of his dialogue seems to be about foreshadowing the uses of the arrow and that he wants to get someone to get some sort of Stand that he can do…something with it. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be setting up some sort of mystery, but Keicho’s character is like half that and I don’t see him being around much longer. So, while he made for a cool fight, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around his big role in all this.

But we do have some less scrambled views of future events, such as Okuyasu’s shifting allegiance and Koichi’s developing abilities. Okuyasu seems to be realizing that some stranger he was trying to kill is actually a way better person to hang around than his own brother, so that’s probably going somewhere. And Koichi’s Stand seems to still be gestating, but I imagine they wouldn’t have Keicho be so intrigued by it if it wasn’t something legitimately intriguing. Based on the guide listings, we should be touching on that plot as soon as two weeks from now. More things to look forward to next week when we conclude this story arc.