English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “Heart Father”

This “Ghost Dad” reboot is looking weirder all the time.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Josuke and company search Kira’s now abandoned house for clues on the guy, where they learn Kira’s made his whole life about being completely unremarkable so as to blend in, and thus can go unnoticed so he can commit his crimes in secret. The one hint at his peculiar nature is his tendency to bottle up his finger nail clippings and chronicle their growth rate, the years with the most growth being what Jotaro links to years of his murders, such as Reimi’s in 1983. He must be using the times his nails grow the fastest to measure when he is the most prepared to kill someone. And the jar for the current year (1999) is already mostly full.

As Jotaro and Josuke piece this together, a Polaroid goes off and takes a photo of them, but there seems to be a strange old man next to them. This man turns out to be Kira’s own supposedly deceased father, Yoshihiro Kira, who is determined to kill any who go after his son. His own Stand power has captured the two’s “spiritual energy” within the picture. Damage to the picture causes damage to them, while no one not in that picture can affect anything in that world, but Yoshihiro can now easily kill them. Using that quick Joestar wit, Jotaro takes the picture and puts it right up against the camera, having it take another picture that only has Yoshihiro in it.

Jotaro wraps up the photo and nails it to a post while they all go looking for whatever Yoshihiro was clearly hiding. Unfortunately, his whining and manipulation eventually gets Okuyasu to let him out. While this is happening, Josuke stumbles upon the hidden object: a second Bow and Arrow capable of creating Stands. Yoshihiro swipes it soon after and uses the thread on his pajamas to grab onto a bird to escape. He then vows to use the Arrow to make more Stand users to fight off Josuke’s group to protect Kira.

Meanwhile, Shinobu Kawajiri starts noticing some odd but newly bold behavior from her usually boring husband Kosaku, but she’s starting to like it. He does have an odd tendency to clip his fingernails, but I’m sure that’s totally normal.

OUR TAKE

Is it possible for this show to get…TOO bizarre? I think we might have hit that point with this episode, because ghost dad coming out of a photograph and strangling a bird while carrying an arrow is probably the step over into just insane that I wasn’t looking forward to.

We’re entering a new phase of the story now, where Kira, now taking the place of Kosaku, settles into his new life while Josuke and the rest go hunting. I suppose the author decided there needed to be some breathing room between the last fight with Kira and the next, which I agree with being the right move. What I have concerns about is this new enemy spawning device popping out nowhere simply to buy time before the next big confrontation. It really does feel like Araki just wrote down the next plot point on Mad Libs…but even weirder Mad Libs than what we mortals are used to. And from what I’ve heard, this is another phase of the plot that is just filling time figuring out what to do next. Don’t get me wrong, Araki’s write-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nature is an admired trait that he shares with Dragon Ball author Akira Toriyama, but like Toriyama, this sometimes lead to some weird and confusing moves.

The other thing worth mentioning is Kira taking on his new identity, which he seems to already be improving on by making a major impression on his new wife, Shinobu. Gotta say, as much of a depraved sicko Kira has thoroughly proven himself to be, the possibility of him finding a happy ending was not something I had considered. Now that it’s out there, I wonder if we’ll start to see him come around on being a good husband and father (oh yeah, Shinobu has a son, but I’m sure he won’t be important later on, definitely sure) and renouncing his evil ways before Josuke finds him.

Oh who am I kidding. This guy’s going down. But not for awhile, I guess! The good episode streak couldn’t go on forever, so next week begins about ten weeks of not filler but basically filler! It’s not like I haven’t enjoyed the breather episodes of this season, but I’ve become so used to the plot stuff that I’m really going to need to be impressed to hold my interest for the next few months. Guess we’ll see how that goes.