English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “Josuke Higashikata! Meets Angelo”

Who will stop the rain?

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Jotaro continues narrating about how screwed up the guy’s murders are, Angelo shows up at the Higashikata house disguised as a milkman and tries to leave a bottle filled with his Stand, Aqua Necklace, so it can kill Josuke and his family. Josuke’s mom, Tomoko, manages to narrowly avoid this, so Angelo takes his anger out on a guy whose dog’s crap he stepped in and sends his Stand through the waterways into Josuke’s house. Josuke describes the stand to Jotaro, who tells him not to eat, drink, or wash, but he finds it too late when he sees Aqua Necklace about to enter his mother (not like that). Thinking fast, he drives a hole through her (NOT like that), breaks a glass bottle, and then uses his own still unnamed Stand to reverse the breaking and reform around Aqua Necklace so he can trap it and reverse the damage.

Jotaro tells him to sit tight while he heads over to deal with things, but then Josuke’s grandfather Ryohei comes home. Seems he’s the one who apprehended Angelo in the first place, and he’s eager to settle the score. He tricks Ryohei into thinking the bottle is full of cognac. All it takes is for Josuke to look away for one moment to find his grandfather dead and Angelo’s Stand getting away. Sadly, while Josuke’s Stand can reverse the damage, it can’t bring the dead back to life. Angelo is officially on the shit list.

As the Jojo duo prepare for the showdown and send Tomoko out of town, Josuke reveals that his Stand can’t heal himself. Angelo monitors their house for three days, at which a rainstorm comes in and allows Aqua Necklace to have the run of the place. He sets boiling pots of water, turns on the humidifier, and leaves every faucet running. Truly his greatest act of villainy is revealed: irreparable water damage.

Both Star Platinum and Joskue’s stand can punch Angelo’s easy enough, but punching water does nothing but splash about. So, when it finally manages to get inside Josuke, Josuke uses his powers to reform a plastic glove in his stomach and traps Angelo all over again. They soon find his real bod, and while they don’t kill him, Josuke traps him inside a rock, dooming him to be a tourist attraction for the rest of his days.

OUR TAKE

While the change in the title is only slight from last week’s, it has a deeper meaning. Namely that Josuke is officially taking over as the hero of the story from Jotaro. That seems fairly obvious, and the title could have been the end of it, but this episode drives the point home as it completes our introduction of Josuke, his strengths and weaknesses, how they differ from Jotaro’s, and how Part 4 will set itself apart from Part 3, and it all starts with Angelo.

For one, Angelo’s methodic skills with Aqua Necklace mean that he himself is hard to find, and a water based Stand is shown to be impossible to defeat using solely physical attacks. Jotaro’s Star Platinum only has two offensive moves: punching things and stopping time so he can punch things faster. Only with Josuke’s Stand’s “healing” ability were they able surround it and capture it, highlighting that he’s a quick and sharp planner like his father Joseph (guess that’s where those qualities come in). And second, unlike Jotaro’s earliest fights, Angelo isn’t an agent of a greater evil force that wishes to take over the world. He’s just some sicko who is acting on his own and snuck into Morioh to continue a spree of destruction, likely beginning a pattern of further enemies going forward who will be personally motivated instead of simply being mindless minions controlled by some Big Bad.

We also see that Josuke’s abilities are not a solution to every problem, as they can’t help Josuke if he gets injured or bring people back from death. Now we have a firm grasp on what Josuke is capable of and what his limits are, making a well fleshed out and constructed new main character right off the bat. A lesser story would’ve kept Jotaro in the protagonist role, which would’ve been easy given how popular he was then and still is now, but this makes it clear that we are starting Josuke’s story now.

The new Opening and Ending also reflect a more insular setting compared to Part 3’s world travel. Better reviewers than I have pointed out all of the intricacies of the OP, “Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town” by The DU, so the best I can say about it for now is that it’s the first modern Jojo OP to not use CG modeling and has a much more fun feel than the last four, which were noticeably more serious. There’s obviously parts that are meant to be filled in as certain events play out, so it sucks that Toonami only plays the OP once in full unless it’s at the start of the block and we won’t see this one as it evolves. The ED, the 1996 song “I Want You” by Savage Garden, was nice enough as a nostalgia trip for me personally, but its visuals act as sort of a tour of Morioh. I get the sense that, whereas Part 3 used the entire world as a giant playground for the story, Morioh will essentially act as the entire world of this story and so will be detailed and fleshed out as the characters will. And also check out a funny version of it replaced with “All Star” by Smash Mouth if you get a chance.

All in all, a nailbiting showdown that properly kicks off the next installment of the Jojo saga.