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JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable
Episode 37

by Sam Leach,

How would you rate episode 37 of
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable ?
Community score: 4.7

“I wanted to live a peaceful life. Like a plant.” Yes, because plants need to amputate and romance women's hands. Fantastic logic, Kira.

Things are a rollercoaster right now for our dear little antagonist, as his luck seems to be spiraling back and forth. He survived Hayato's scheme to use Stray Cat and blow a hole through his heart, only to get tripped up by Hayato's backup plan to summon Josuke to the scene early. From a previous repeat of the day, Hayato overheard that Josuke had overslept shortly before arriving to meet up with Jotaro and the others. So, working within the confines of Bites the Dust, he called Josuke's home that morning (we saw this happen) in the hopes of waking him up so that he might show up earlier than usual. He didn't tell him anything or even speak to him at all, so Bites the Dust could not interfere.

My favorite scene in this episode is right there at the beginning, where Kira is soaking up his presumed victory and shouting his own name, "Yoshikage Kira!", out loud because he no longer has a care in the world, only for Hayato to reveal that other work of fate that he had set in motion, forcing Kira to turn around and see a groggy, angry Josuke who has just heard a very interesting name.

So a proper Stand user fight explodes, the first in a while that feels like a proper close-quarters brawl rather than a creativity-based chess match. When the technical side of the Stand abilities does come into play, it's all about Crazy Diamond's healing abilities and all the ways that it can counteract Killer Queen's overpowered bombs. There's a moment where Crazy Diamond is able to reconstruct Hayato instantaneously as he is exploded in a brief sacrificial gamble. This episode is dead set on establishing that Josuke and Kira's abilities are philosophical opposites, as the latter destroys things while the former puts them back together. Jotaro is no longer the man Kira finds most threatening.

I don't generally consider the more complicated side of this show's plotting to be a significant flaw, but I do occasionally feel the need to bring it up, because I do struggle with it at times. Characters' abilities and limits feel like they're dictated entirely in the moment, and it's become easier for me to just give up and assume that the show knows what it's talking about. I still couldn't tell you what Killer Queen can or cannot turn into a bomb, what its range is, or anything like that. It gets brought up a lot in this episode, but I just can't follow any of it for the life of me. Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention or maybe the show is just making up the rules as it goes along. It's anybody's guess but mine.

I don't consider that a huge flaw, but in action-heavy episodes like this one, it's what I'm left to talk about. The other significant element this week is the possible death of Okuyasu, who gets torn up and used as a potential bomb to lure Josuke into Kira's trap. Josuke had a line a few episodes back where he decided to save Koichi despite the high probability that it was a trick, simply because if there's even a 1% chance of one of his friends getting hurt, he has to make the dive. That mentality is challenged once again this week, as Josuke has to risk triggering one of Killer Queen's bombs in order to maybe save his friend. Despite Josuke's desperate persistence, it's made pretty clear that Okuyasu has tragically passed on, but with all these time-resetting hijinks, we're in the same dubious position that we were with Rohan.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a show that's proven itself perfectly willing to kill off beloved characters, so who survives Diamond is Unbreakable and who doesn't is a big question, but with every tease, I find myself scooting back from the edge of my seat, because it feels like there's less details to speculate on. The show's gonna do what the show's gonna do regardless, so for this brief moment, I've lost a bit of the fire that the last few episodes were so good at stoking.

Rating: B

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sam Leach writes and records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw


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