English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable “July 15th (Thurs), Part 2”

Oh no, the musical reference this time isn’t funny enough to put here!

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rohan meets with Masazo Kinoto, an architect hired to help him renovate from the fire damage caused a few episodes ago. But Masazo has an odd quirk of not wanting to people to see his back, which slowly makes Rohan desperate to see it. Reverse Psychology strikes again.

Back at the phone tower, Superfly’s user plans to make his escape and leave Mikitaka behind, but Josuke stops him. Having become acquainted with the Superfly’s ability to fight back against damage, he uses Shining Diamond to reverse the damage and fire it right back at the user, defeating him. Once he’s cornered, the user explains that he worked with Yoshihiro to hopefully gain his freedom from Superfly, with Yoshihiro also mentioning that there were two other Stand users doing his bidding to fight off Kira’s enemies and one of them was after Koichi.

While Kira continues to fight against his urges to kill, Josuke enlists Highway Go Go’s user, Yuya Fungami to use his (gross) strong sense of smell in finding Koichi. When they get a look at a suspicious guy with Koichi’s scent, he suddenly disappears and leaves Josuke’s mother’s unconscious body behind. Earlier that day, the man in question, Terunosuke Miyamoto, captured her within a piece of paper with his own Stand, Misterioso, which can capture anyone that way once they show their fear through a specific tick three times. And by showing Josuke his unconscious mother, he observes as Josuke gets ready to bite his lip and show his own fear.

OUR TAKE

Interesting thing I learned about this “arc”: it’s actually four different arcs from the manga that were all stitched together over four episodes because they all take place at the same time! That’s certainly one way make it more look more clever, at least compared to watching one arc at a time like we’ve done before.

Also was not expecting what looks to be a redemption arc for Yuya, who I was ready to write off as a one and done baddie with a somewhat neat power. They already made use of Mikitaka in the Superfly fight, so it gives a sense that they’re making use of all their available pieces introduced in this section of the story. Though unlike Mikitaka, Yuya started as a real jerk who has room to develop, so I’m actually curious how he’ll factor into the fight against Misterioso, who ALSO has a cool design and interesting power…even though it’s a bit on the overly-specific side. And I should also ALSO bring up that Yuya’s smell stuff is just as gross to watch him brag about as it was in his own episode, but I didn’t bring it up there because I thought that would be the last time we’d be seeing it.

I once again have to compliment the creativity in these fights, even if they still ultimately end up being pretty inconsequential. I’ve mentioned the inherent strategy required in fighting close quarters with Superfly, so I won’t bring that up again, but Misterioso and his overly long named user ramp up the levels of evil to straight up super villain. He seems like a guy who genuinely gets off on watching people be scared and locking them away in paper which…is a very specific fetish, but I’m not here to kinkshame. What looks to be important about this is how this will play off of Yuya, a former baddie, against an unrepentant monster like this new guy. That said, I have no idea what would be in it for him in terms of helping Yoshihiro out.

And then there’s Masazo Kinoto, who no doubt is the final opponent that Rohan will have to face. What’s odd is that he doesn’t seem to be consciously aware that he’s a Stand user, assuming he is one, but that’s pretty much the only way to get past a Stand like Rohan’s Heaven’s Door, which can read minds and control people. I imagine I’ll have more to say about this fight when it properly gets underway in the next episode.