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

Well, I’ll be a dolphin’s uncle!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In April 1999, 11 years after the battle with Dio, Jotaro Kujo (Matthew Mercer) arrives in the quiet town of Morioh to find Josuke Higashikata (Billy Kametz), but bumps into high school freshman Koichi Hirose (Zach Aguilar). They soon find Josuke, also a freshman, being buillied by some older students who hurt a turtle he was playing with. He seems to be pretty subservient to their abuse…until they badmouth his hair, which makes him lose it. A Stand springs forth from him and pulverizes the head bully. Oddly, the bully’s nose seemingly heals itself but takes on a strange shape, and the turtle is good as new.

Jotaro takes this opportunity to introduce himself and inform him that his father is none other than Joseph Joestar (guess it didn’t take him that long to forgive the Japanese after all). He also mentions how Josuke was also bedridden like Holly during the 50 days over which Stardust Crusaders took place. Joseph’s apparently become a real estate tycoon since then, but word of this affair and secret love child is putting him in hot water with his wife, Suzie Q. Even he didn’t know about Josuke’s existence until Jotaro, who is basically his older nephew, found out.

Josuke is surprisingly gracious about hearing he’ll be inheriting a third of Joseph’s money at some point and doesn’t want to be responsible for tearing apart a family he didn’t even know he was in. His mood does a 180 when Jotaro makes an offhand comment about his hair, and we finally get a good look at his Stand before Jotaro quickly stops the fight with a time stop.

The other piece of business Jotaro brings up is that there’s a Stand wielding serial killer named Angelo lurking around that Josuke should avoid. But it wouldn’t be a very fun first episode if he did, so the guy actually uses his own Stand to possess some thug and makes a scene in front of a convenience store that Josuke and Koichi stumble on. One hair related insult later, and Josuke’s punching a hole in both the thug and his hostage while also placing his knife inside him. Angelo’s Stand emerges from him, warning that he’ll get his revenge, and then arrives at his house in person the next day.

OUR TAKE

It’s sometimes said of the long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who that each new incarnation of The Doctor is a response to the last. I think that applies at least somewhat to new Jojo protagonists as well, though I guess it would be more accurate to say it’s an expansion of ideas. Jonathan was a straightforward gallant hero, so Joseph was a crafty trickster who put more planning into his fights. Jotaro carried on with that ability to think ahead but with an impossible to read poker face and the added dimension of tactics with his Stand. Josuke seems to mainly share qualities from both Jonathan (good-natured and polite to those who are the same to him) and Jotaro (short-tempered, lives with single mom, and has a Stand suited for direct combat) and expands on them by making him a more approachable and immediately likable who is also more likely to get into fights. There are also the odd powers of his Stand (I know it has a name but I’m waiting for it to be said in the show) that seems to both cause and reverse the damage, compared to Star Platinum, which is mainly only good for punching. And time stops.

Also, while his new story doesn’t start off with a ton of direct action, it also manages to quickly recontextualize how we view characters from previous story arcs, much like Stardust Crusaders did the same for Jonathan and Dio. In particular, while Joseph wasn’t exactly the paragon of goodness in Parts 2 or 3, we knew he was still a decent person who did what was right when it counted. Now we begin this and learn that shortly before the events of the last season, he had an affair and has been completely disconnected from this other child he had, even when Josuke had to deal with the same life-threatening sickness as Holly. He’s probably not irredeemable because of this, but it’s still a pretty reprehensible thing to do. It does seem to show that this story is going to be delving into rather complicated family drama alongside its usual supernatural wackiness.

There are tons more to go into, specifically the fact that this arc is going to be entirely in this one town as opposed to the previous globetrotting of the previous two stories, or talking Jotaro’s graduation to mentor role and all these nice people we’ll get to know, but we’ll have plenty of chances to go into that as we dive deeper into the mystery of Morioh.