English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “I’m an Alien”

I’m not saying he’s an alien, but…

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Jotaro continues his investigation into Kira’s new whereabouts, and Kira himself continues to try suppressing his murderous tendencies to keep a low profile, Kira’s father, Yoshihiro, continues his quest to pad the hell out of this series, with his next target being the long-haired, pointy-eared Mikitaka Hazekura. Oddly enough, the Stand Arrow Yoshihiro fires ends up deflecting off of his neck, but DOES leave a wound on the other side. Josuke and Okuyasu then come across him in the middle of a crop circle. He claims to have been asleep for over half a day, possibly meaning the arrow had some sort of effect on him, but that seems to not be what he’s keen on talking about. Rather, he claims to be an alien from outer space.

He certainly ACTS weird enough to be an alien, even for the characters in THIS franchise. He can pull ice cream out his bag, imitates other peoples’ mannerisms out of confusion, and claims to be “allergic” to wailing fire truck sirens that come by. When that forces him out of sorts, he shapeshifts into sneakers that take Josuke away suddenly. Strangely though, he still seems to not be a Stand User, as Josuke suspected, but just a weirdly powered individual. Once learning more about his shape-shifting abilities, Josuke gets an awful idea: turning him into a convincing six-sided die so that he can scam people out of their money in bets! His first target is Rohan, who very quickly notes that he’s never liked Josuke, but is more than willing to take his money in a bet. So, the stakes are set and the game begins, but it starts to look like Mikitaka is making Josuke’s win look too obvious.

OUR TAKE

Well, at least they can make this padding interestingly weird! Unlike last episode, which seemed disappointingly standard for an episode of Jojo’s, this felt appropriately waist deep in the crazy. It feels more in line with the episodes near the end of the first third that were about meeting weird people who are harmless but just happen to have Stands, or in this case, just weird powers. Mikitaka is certainly a tough nut to crack here in that regard. Special powers in this universe were nothing new, even before Stands showed up. We’ve had stone masks and vampire eye beams and sun magic even ghosts in alleyways, so aliens with their own independent superpowers is not exactly a huge deal, but it is (and say it with me now) pretty BIZARRE on its own. But this isn’t even the end of this particular story, so that’s all to say this week.

What is kind of a problem here is the timing of this batch of episodes. We have some check-ins with Jotaro’s investigation and Kira trying desperately not to kill his dumb but hot wife, but our main protagonist Josuke seems pretty cavalier about there still being a serial killer running around if he thinks scamming his…associates is the best use of his time right now. This seems like a rather lackluster follow up to Shigechi’s episodes with him using another friend’s powers to scam people out of money, only this time it’s ACTUALLY a scam instead of a loophole in the system. So, as much as I do like the oddness of Mikitaka, this is still a not great episode simply because it really shouldn’t exist.

But enough about that, because we have our final Opening of the season (or at least final entirely new Opening before the variants of this one kick in later on) to kick off the final THIRD of the season! This one utilizes all the style and energy of the previous two while also using all of the existing themes and motifs from those, which makes a series of Openings that are actually almost a story in and of themselves. Jojo’s OPs have often been a cut above those of usual anime, and this one, “Great Days” is no exception. Not enough to make up for a lackluster episode in a series of likely also lackluster ones, but still a great OP regardless of that.