English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “Heart Attack, Part 2”

And the Oscar for Best Actor goes to Yoshikage Kira as “Helpless Injured Victim!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While still feeling the effects of Heart Attack’s fight with Reverb, Kira runs into two muggers but fights them off with Deadly Queen. He then makes his way to Koichi soon after, completely overpowering him and going in for the kill. Before that, though, he decides to take out his frustrations on Koichi before help can arrive, beating him to a bloody pulp. As he does this, he learns Kira’s name and taunts him with it, only ramping up the beatings further and getting punched right through his body. Luckily, before Kira notices Koichi’s socks are inside out, his OCD forcing him to fix this before he can destroy the body. This allows the injured Jotaro time and Star Platinum to beat Kira senseless, then passing out.

Josuke and Okuyasu arrive shortly after to see the carnage and spot Kira, who plays dumb as some office worker who was caught in a random explosion. Josuke tells him that he can heal him, but when Kira believes this too quickly, he gives away his disguise. In a last ditch effort, he has Deadly Queen cut off the hand holding Heart Attack in order to get it to attack them so he can run. But Josuke decides to heal it instead so they can use the severed hand as a tracker. This leads them to Aya’s shop, where the group comes across one dead with its face and fingerprints taken off body and a dying Aya, who tells them with her last breath that she was forced to take those features off someone with Kira’s height. She then explodes as Kira’s hand disappears into the crowd.

Kira has blended into the crowd once again, free to continue his horrible acts.

OUR TAKE

“Bohemian Rhapsody” may have not won Best Picture tonight (certainly deserved it over Green Book though I’d probably pick Black Panther), but SOMETHING tangentially related to Queen certainly would have won if I were in the Academy. Granted, it would be kind of weird for a random anime episode to show up in the nominees for a film awards show, but…whatever.

This episode, with all its dramatic peaks and valleys, was nail-bitingly intense all the way to the last moment, with the tides rapidly shifting back and forth between our heroes and Kira. Each advantage gained solely through one slight edge after the next, always keeping the audience (at least those who haven’t read the manga) on their toes as each blow and chess move went by. I’ve mentioned plenty a time how intricate and thought-out “Jojo” fights can be, so since this is the continuation of one I was already praising, this is no exception. Can’t say I was expecting a severed hand and plastic surgery to come into play, but then again, just about anything is in this show’s wheelhouse, so I should really stop being surprised at this point.

We also get to see Kira’s true wrath in full force, which helps highlight how different he is from other main villains that have come before. Unlike DIO or Kars, he’s not looking for some grand world-impacting goal, but simply to live the peaceful life he’s been living. He seems to either not be aware or not care about the fact that this life is at the cost of several lives, but all that matters to him is that his usual existence can carry on has normal, meaning he will do anything to preserve it. Kill a witness, cut off his hand, even change his face and become a completely different person. Yoshikage Kira will do anything to keep his peaceful life, including end the lives of others.

And if this were a video, this is where we would play the “In Memoriam” video but with just Aya Tsuji, Kira’s next victim from among the cast. But then again, we met her only four episodes ago, even later than Shigechi, and I already didn’t really care for or about her based on that alone (and I imagine Yukako isn’t going to be that torn up about it). It actually occurs to me that she might have only been brought in to be on the chopping block for Kira and provide a way for him to escape his first confrontation. Which also limits who among the group is actually at risk of being killed, which severely cuts the tension going into the remaining third of the season. Still, even without that, I’m already way too interested in seeing how this whole thing wraps up.

Score
8/10