Diamond Is Unbreakable: The best part of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Jojo’s bizarre adventure is, unsurprisingly, bizarre. The first season has an immortal vampiric jack the ripper get pummeled by a 6"5 super buff warrior who uses his breathing to harness the power of the sun into his fists. The second season has the warrior’s grandson use the same breathing technique combined with spectacular amounts of trickery to defeat Gods who created humanity and feast on supernatural vampires. The third season has a teenager use his breathing to summon a physical version of his fighting spirit to defeat others who do the same, including a man who’s fighting spirit let’s him stop time, who incidentally happens to be the immortal vampire from the first season.
All of these battles take place with the same breathless context, spectacular battles on a global scale where the entire fate of humanity is to be decided by them. All of the protagonists, who are always called Jojo (as they are descendants of the original Jojo, Johnathon Joestar), battle for super high stakes and are large, powerful and intelligent fighters who are amazingly fun to watch on screen. The animation in the show is top notch and the voice acting brings out every iota of pain the characters feel. The settings are constantly shifting, the ‘stands’ (which are embodiments of the characters fighting spirits with unique abilities) are interesting and unique, and the jokes land almost universally.
Some of this holds true for the fourth part, and some of it is completely different. Diamond is Unbreakable is a lot crazier than the other seasons, but is localized to one little, bizarre town. Unlike his ancestors, Josuke Higashikata, the protagonist, isn’t fighting to save the world or protect all of humanity from some ancient danger. He’s simply trying to explore himself and his powers, living like a regular teenager. Since the stakes aren’t as high, you might think that the tension isn’t as severe, but that just makes the characters feel so much more real. It’s so much funnier to have Josuke running across the town and trying to avoid fights since he’s late for an exam than it is to have a high speed chase between Jotaro and Dio (the main characters of part 3) for a ball that would decide the winner of their battle, and by extension the fate of the world. The often tiny stakes allow for the personalities of the characters to shine instead of their fighting ability or situational power, something a lot of subpar Anime have to resort to. Instead of a huge fight between them, Josuke and a man whose stand lets him remove nutrients from his opponents body, the spat is settled in one of the most intense discussions over biology and high school power dynamics possible.
The humor throughout the show is genuinely top notch, masterfully employing visual comedy in most aspects, and having a spectacular understanding of how to subvert the viewer’s expectations at every turn. It’s almost profound with the depth of stories it tries to tell, masterfully creating fear and tension in every villain, humor in almost every conversation, even doing romance better than some shows who’s primary focus is romance.
Something that sets the show apart from other action based anime is the uniqueness of its characters and their abilities. While the Stands in the previous season were fearsome, some were pretty basic and often boring, some just having powers like being able to swim fast or breathe fire. Every hilarious and mind boggling Stand in Diamond is Unbreakable is used to its fullest, and the simple “strong” Stands are often (hilariously) used as throwaway gags. In fact, Josuke’s best friend Okuyasu almost definitely has one of the strongest Stands in the entire series, its ability being to erase anything Okuyasu wills it to. He’s actually introduced as a minor antagonist, where he basically tosses around Josuke by erasing the area between them and punching him in the nose. Josuke gets hit thrice but lets it continue, since he’s afraid that the alternative is being erased by it. It suddenly hits him that Okuyasu is an idiot for not just erasing him, and then realized that Okuyasu is literally too stupid to figure that out, and so simply positions himself in front of some loose flower pots, which slam into Okuyasu’s head when he erases the area in front of them again, knocking him out cold. The Anime also shows a respect for its rules that other Anime seem to override whenever their protagonist is slight trouble. Jotaro Kujo, the protagonist of part 3, who once defeated a superhuman lawyer who could stop time with his Stand, was almost hilariously defeated by a man whose stand was simply summoning a strong rat.
From an artist’s perspective, this is also where the show drastically improves its character models and animation. Before, protagonists and villains and every remotely important character in between was shown as a towering hulk of a man rippling with muscles. From part 4 onwards, everyone had their own unique style. Josuke has his hair, Okuyasu his scars, etc., which makes all the characters memorable, and from my own perspective, easier to sketch. The characters also stop feeling like one-dimensional fighters, and more like actual people with their own lives to deal with. This is most apparent in the Jojo of this season, who’s Stand, Crazy Diamond is fast and strong, but his real power is to repair things, which Jojo uses to heal others and trick his opponents. The animation is much more fluid than before, since the studio got a massive budget increase due to the commercial success of part 3. The dialogue writing jumped astronomically, with, as mentioned previously, some “fights” taking place entirely through dialogue. The stands were more unique and their abilities were actually utilized very well. For example, when Jojo fights a classmate whose stand can absorb and attack with electricity, Jojo uses his stand to bait him into attacking a tire, and then moves him over and then repairs it, trapping the stand in the insulating rubber and effectively rendering it useless.
Of course as much as I wish it was, it isn’t perfect. Sometimes it feels like the protagonists pull something that shouldn’t have been possible, which seems to contradict everything the show is about. As is the case with most anime, the fights are often interrupted by explanations of what happened, which can slow those supposed moments of action to a crawl. The constantly switching color palate is sometimes disorienting, but overall its vertainly a cool aspect of the art style. Lastly, as a minor complaint sure, the opening theme song is nowhere near as good as the first three seasons, something unfortunately shared by part 5 as well. Just listen to the opening of the second part.
The fourth season represents a shift in a much better direction for the show. Diamond Is Unbreakable moves the show from a regular show with the problems of power levels and plot armor and makes it into a beautiful, hilarious and sometimes heart-wrenching tale of friendship, revenge and high octane super powered fights. It’s (so far) the best season of a show any fan of Anime would surely enjoy.