JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

This review is spoiler free. All gifs were made by @mob.

There are few franchises that have captured my attention in the same way "Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” has. Both as a manga and as an anime it manages to be this wholly unique experience. Through the combination of Hirohiko Araki’s never ending imagination and David Production’s efforts this has become what I consider to be one of the defining anime series of the decade. With each new installment in the franchise this feeling becomes more validated. What I want to explore in this review is the fourth part, “Diamond is Unbreakable” or DIU for short. This was a very refreshing series, especially when following something like “Stardust Crusaders”. It gave us some of the greatest characters in the franchise, some of the best arcs, it gave me my personal favorite villain in Kira Yoshikage, an amazing visual style, a wonderful soundtrack, rewatching it for the first time since it aired really gave me a new appreciation for it.

When we first saw the key visuals for the anime I will admit I had some apprehensions. I wasn’t sure at the time if this is how I wanted to see the characters look, but as time progressed it really grew on me. The difficult thing about the aesthetics in DIU is in the manga Araki was undergoing some radical change as an artist. The earlier chapters show a significantly different style than the later ones. This is quite the situation to be in when adapting the manga. Do you try to achieve that earlier look or do you just work with what we had at the end? What fans got was this middle ground that ended up working to the anime’s benefit. This style allowed for the characters to be more expressive than they had been in previous installments. And this color palette is so unique that I really have to applaud the staff. Josuke in his royal blue gakuran against this yellow sky is so eye catching. Koichi’s silver hair is far more interesting than the blond hair many expected him to have. And I just love the shade of green they chose for Rohan’s hair. Fans over the years have brought up how there were some dips in animation quality during DIU. I can see what they mean, however the televised version still contained really strong visuals in spite of a few slips. Now something that I think needs to be brought to people’s attention is what David Pro did with it later. The bluray release of DIU was given a major facelift that looks absolutely stunning. It is just as visually impressive as “Vento Aureo”. And those infamous moments fans took note of during the broadcast were fixed. If you have a way to view this version of the anime I strongly suggest that you do.

The DIU anime begins with the sounds of the Morioh Cho Radio jingle while we observe what would be revealed as a severed hand preparing breakfast. This was an anime original scene and I think the choice to open up this way was perfect. It establishes that we are going to be in what appears to be a regular suburban town, but something is lurking. We then see our previous hero Jotaro Kujo, now more mature and wise, arrive in the town of Morioh in pursuit of Josuke Higashikata, the illegitimate son of his grandfather Joseph Joestar. Jojo at its core is a generational series and one of the strengths to it is how Araki manages to build off of his previous concepts. We see a fan favorite character come back into the plot, but showing signs of progression. And it is very interesting to then see Jotaro in this mentor kind of position considering the person we saw him to be in "Stardust Crusaders". Josuke is the character Araki has said is his personal favorite and its clear why that is. He is made instantly likable and distinct from his predecessors. He doesn’t want to cause issues for Joseph’s family and we see that he’s a really good guy. That said we also get to see that he has a ferocity when pushed too far showing that he contains that same intensity we’ve grown accustomed to in this family. He also isn’t above a little bit of scheming on occasion, but it never leaves the viewer feeling against him. Josuke is still that same positive character in spite of a little sneakiness. We also meet Koichi who does not appear like he will be very important on first glance, he even says his name isn’t worth remembering. But as we follow him and Josuke we see him undergo great character development, becoming more confident and assertive without losing that humility that endeared him to viewers in the beginning. Okuyasu is the third person to round out our main trio and he is just a delight. Initially an enemy he then becomes Josuke’s best friend and a source of so much fun. I love watching Josuke, Okuyasu, and Koichi interact amongst themselves and following them through their crazy noisy bizarre town. After a series of adventures in Morioh that bring in other characters like Rohan Kishibe and even an older Joseph, we then shift gears into exploring just what the mystery is behind the hand in episode one. The anime handles the transition between these two phases in the story extremely well.

One thing that has always made DIU feel so fresh is that it’s not a grand epic taking characters across the world, it’s a story focused within the town of Morioh. This worked because the characters Araki gave us are so engaging and the situations they end up in are so filled with creativity. Seeing Josuke navigate his daily life while dealing with enemy Stands and eventually the hunt for Kira Yoshikage helped give DIU its own distinct voice compared to previous parts. A Stand user of the week format is something we saw with “Stardust Crusaders” except here it’s intertwined with Josuke’s life in Morioh. We see the cast grow with each encounter he has and once our key players are established things feel so alive. When we see Josuke, Koichi, and Okuyasu about town it really feels like we have experienced a lot with them and that Morioh itself has taken on its own identity. The anime pulls this off with great success. They nailed the chemistry these characters share. And the seiyuu cast really brings it home. Jojo is a series that has one of my favorite casts in all of anime. We see Daisuke Ono and the late Unsho Ishizuka reprise their roles as Jotaro and Joseph. And among the new characters we have Yuuki Ono, Yuuki Kaji, Wataru Takagi, Takahiro Sakurai, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Kappei Yamaguchi, and Shigeru Chiba. The anime’s casting is just so perfect. These seiyuu just nail their roles and David Pro deserves a tremendous amount of credit for assembling such talent.

As previously stated, DIU takes on a somewhat slice of life style. There are episodes where the characters encounter their enemy of the week and then proceed to go about their usual routines. While some episodes may not be crucial to the search for Kira, the anime doesn’t treat them like they don’t matter. We still get the same amount of excitement out of “Let’s Go Hunting”, an episode where Jotaro and Josuke hunt for a rat, that we do in something like “Sheer Heart Attack” where Jotaro and Koichi have to face off against Kira’s automatic Stand ability. Sometimes the episodes are funny and sometimes the episodes are serious, this is something Araki has always been great at balancing and David Pro has managed to strike it for themselves. There are even episodes, like “We Picked Up Something Crazy” where Josuke and Joseph find an invisible baby, which manage to serve incredible fun and then present the viewer with some strong emotions. And it all feels at home in this story. I felt the weight of the Nijimura family’s problems, I felt Hayato’s anxiety during the Bites the Dust arc, I was moved by Josuke opening himself up to Joseph. And on the other hand I always get a great laugh at Rohan being punched in the face after boasting “I’ve won” or Tonio losing his mind at Josuke because he entered his kitchen without washing his hands. None of these serious moments felt undercut by comical ones nor do the comedy scenes feel out of place in this narrative. And in the case of a character like Kira Yoshikage I always felt he walked the line between being unsettling and being darkly comical. This is what I like about him and the anime captured that amazingly. Take the scene of him licking sauce off of his “girlfriend’s” fingers after piercing the wrapping on a sandwich. Is this disturbing? Is it funny? Is it both? This is what I think Araki was trying to achieve and the anime pulled it off perfectly.

The work David Pro continues to put into the Jojo anime is nothing short of spectacular. They have continuously topped themselves and showed they are willing to try different things. When DIU came out it felt so different from what we had gotten before. The tone and feeling of it felt so fresh. It managed to be everything that the manga was while also offering up exciting new things. They provided the audience with some new scenes and even linking up three different arcs into a series of episodes creating an arc all its own. Not to mention the openings which are every bit as great as fans expect even without the CGI from past series. We still talk about the Bites the Dust version of “Great Days” for a reason. We had seen a villain tamper with the opening of the show before, but never to this extent. It’s clear to me that the anime staff members are always looking to find new ways to enhance the experience. These are things that make manga fans like myself get excited for the anime. It’s not just wanting to see the story animated, but what they are going to do with it. The manga was already a masterpiece in its own right, but sometimes that’s not going to ensure a good anime. We have seen some great manga get outright terrible adaptations, but Jojo is not among them. And DIU is every bit the adaptation it needed to be. It captures the mood and spirit of the manga while also supplying audiences with striking visuals, great voice acting, excellent music, and new ways to present the story and characters they love. And I strongly recommend giving it a revisit.