English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “Janken Boy Is Coming!”

Welcome to the beginning of Vic Mignogna’s Farewell Tour!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Rohan does some detective work to track down Yoshikage Kira, YoshiHIRO Kira makes use of his Stand Arrow to create more distractions for the Joestar group to face so he can protect his son. His first target is a kid, Ken Oyanagi, who he stabs with the arrow to give him the Stand “Boys Man Man” (Boys II Men in the original version). Ken is kind of obsessed with playing Ro-Sham-Bo (Rock-Paper-Scissors) and challenges Rohan to a game, only to lose twice. But when he accosts him a third time, Rohan’s patience “Runs Dry” and he throws the round. Unfortunately, this triggers Ken’s Stand’s ability, which forces a 3-out of-5 game where every time he wins, he steals a third of his enemy’s Stand’s powers.

Now knowing what’s going on, Rohan challenges Ken again, but loses a second time, losing another third of Heaven’s Door. With everything tied up, Rohan is “On Bended Knee” with how little energy he has left, so he starts using mind games to trip Ken up. But luck arrives in the form of Joseph and his invisible baby, who Rohan uses to literally force Ken’s hand into a losing form so he can reclaim his Stand and keep Ken from using his in the future. Yoshihiro looks upon all of this and realizes it’s the “End of the Road” for Ken, so he takes his Arrow and flees to find more potential Stand Users.

OUR TAKE

If I didn’t already know this was from the manga, I would have sworn this was a filler arc. I guess in the broad sense, it kind of is, since it’s literally filling in time before the next important plot point, but it also has all the trappings of some of long running anime’s worst offenders in that category. A brand new villain pops out of nowhere to create a bunch of problems that end up not really impacting anything and no one really likes or remembers. Ken is a two dimensional bit antagonist whose gimmick gets annoying quick and his Stand’s design looks like it was crapped out by the studio overnight. Even the animation team seems to have gotten the memo because this looks a hell of a lot rougher on the eyes than the last few of actually important episodes have been.

That said, this does seem to fall in line with the theme I’ve noticed in this show of taking kids games and activities and elevating them to being life or death situations. In this case, the hot blooded matches of rock-paper-scissors that I remember from my childhood certainly made me feel like my life was on the line some of the time, so it’s not like I don’t see the connection being made here. It doesn’t make up for a less than impressive battle and overall episode, though. Having this become a “Stand Battle of the Week” against arbitrary bad guys is what I liked about Part 3 (for the most part), but what I was getting out of Part 4 was how they were building up the setting of Morioh and the people who live here, so this episode didn’t feel like it was adding to that aspect much, if at all.

I haven’t watched ahead to know for sure, but if this episode was any indication, I’m getting the sense that the next two months worth of episodes are probably going to be a pretty dull and slow patch for this story. That’s a real shame, considering virtually uninterrupted streak of really interesting stories we’ve gotten during this third of the season. At the very least, this means the final Opening will be coming up soon, but that’s likely the only really good think to look forward to. Hirohiko Araki’s improvisational style of writing does often lead to mind blowing and amazing stuff, but then you get segments like this that show how that doesn’t always work out. Ah well.

But at least we get to hear what will probably be Vic Mignogna’s last performance that will air on American television. He’s a great actor, but it looks like this controversy’s done its damage. “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”, but say goodbye we must. (Those are all Boys II Men songs I’ve been quoting, by the way)