English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “We Picked Up Something Crazy!”

Oh, the Purple’s in the Hermit with a silver spoon…

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With Chili Pepper retired and the Bow and Arrow retrieved, peace has been restored to the town of Morioh for the time being. One piece of business remains, however, and that’s resolving the awkward tension between Josuke and Joseph. The plan is to bring Joseph by for a visit with Josuke’s mom before he leaves, but Josuke makes it clear he won’t be calling him “dad”. This would be made easier if Joseph’s slowly deteriorating mind didn’t lead him wandering off around town or accidentally getting on a bus going the other way.

The two end up on the outskirts, with Josuke at his wit’s end trying to keep a handle on this guy who is supposedly his father. Even worse when Joseph starts rambling about invisible footprints and Stand users. But as it turns out, there IS another user nearby; a female baby that can turn itself and everything around it invisible. It might not have even been hit by the Arrow, as Joseph theorizes it might’ve just manifested Stand abilities as instinct.

So, now this teenager and this increasingly senile old man have to take care of this invisible baby, which means hijinks ensue. Joseph goes to buy diapers and bottles for the baby, but because they have no idea how big she is, he ends up using all of Josuke’s savings buying everything possible. They try putting makeup and clothes on her to get an idea of what she looks like, but then her powers kick in again and she pops out of sight along with Joseph’s hands.

Then she starts turning her stroller, trees, and even the ground invisible as she gets rolled through the park and ends up falling in a nearby lake. Joseph wants to help, but Josuke won’t have anything to do with him, so Joseph slits his wrist in order to use his blood to indicate where the baby is. This selfless act of bloodshed proves to Josuke that Joseph is actually in alright guy…even though his credit bill wiped out his savings.

OUR TAKE

Well, that was more about baby essentials than what I was expecting to learn this week.

But seriously, this is a moment in typical shonen stories that usually comes much later AND in a much different tone. By the time your run of the mill shonen protagonist meets his estranged father (and almost every single one of them have estranged fathers), the story is at least close to the halfway point and makes a point of showing the protagonist’s father as a rather cold and complicated figure. And while the complicated part is certainly true of Joseph, it’s in a much different way. This episode is as much about Josuke as it is about Joseph, who Jojo fans will be far more familiar with by this point, which lends an extra layer than it would if Josuke’s dad was just some random guy.

For Josuke, Joseph is the cause of at least a large portion of his mom’s pain and sadness, and while he was more than willing to stop Chili Pepper from killing him, he’s not about to let a guy he barely knows and has every reason to dislike into his life with no strings attached. The implications of Josuke’s very existence are almost a retroactive black mark on Joseph’s previously spotless character, and even him being old and senile isn’t going to wipe that away. There’s probably a part of Josuke that wants to get to know him and ask him a ton of questions, but the situation’s just so…complicated that nothing’s going to make this easy to start with.

And for Joseph, Josuke is a walking reminder of a massive mistake he made not too long ago that has come back to bite him. We know his wife, Suzie Q, was none too pleased about the affair, but who knows what his daughter Holly thinks (Sidenote: man, there is nowhere near enough fanart of Josuke meeting Holly). It was certainly nice enough of him to come to Morioh just to help out with the case, even though he didn’t get to do anything, but even beating immortal gods and fighting vampires possessing your granddad’s body is nothing compared to trying to make conversation with your bastard son.

This is why meeting the baby was a great way for them to finally gain some common ground. It gives Joseph a chance to be a father again (if not to Josuke, then at least to the baby) and it gives Josuke a chance to see that his dad isn’t so bad and knows a thing or two about the problems with Stands he’s been facing the past few weeks. It’s not going to wipe out all of their tension with one stroke, but it’s a start.

The one major point of contention with me is partially due to my knowledge of the plot trajectory for the next few episodes, that being it’s really going to be floundering while looking for a next plot point to find. Manga authors often get credit for making things seem planned out when they’re making it up as they go, but the cracks are going to show at some point, even for someone like Araki, and this point in the story is certainly that for DiU. But that’s not going to spoil the fun and great character work we got this time.