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JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable
Episode 26

by Sam Leach,

How would you rate episode 26 of
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable ?
Community score: 4.2

As a concept, Kira's father roaming around and creating new Stand users throughout Morioh is almost stressful to try and explain in written form, because his mode of transportation is so abstract and weird that I don't quite know how to describe it. He's a ghost, living in a photograph, grabbing onto birds and street lamps with a protruding string and pricking people with the Stand-making arrow from the safety of his two dimensional space. That's the best I've got for ya.

His first victim is a kid who happens to be exactly colorful enough to look like a supporting character in this show instead of a generic background extra. This kid loves Janken, also known as the noble Japanese art of Rock Paper Scissors, and his first target with his newly acquired Stand powers is the oh-so humble manga artist himself, Rohan Kishibe.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure feels like it's just been biding its time all these years before doing a Rock Paper Scissors episode, since it's the perfect blend of ordinary mundanity and psychological warfare that can be heightened to absurd melodrama. The episode makes it clear early on that this game is not about pure chance, but rather willpower. The Janken boy was an ideal candidate for Kira's father, since it's apparently his goal to surpass somebody as famous and admired as Rohan. The boy follows Rohan around in his daily life, challenging him to Janken over every little thing until he eventually wins one, summoning his Stand (“Boys II Men”) to absorb a piece of Rohan's Heaven's Door. If the boy can win three rounds in a row, he will succeed in absorbing all of Rohan's power.

The episode is understandably absurd from this point forward. Soon, the Janken games are presented with such heightened intensity that the two opponents fly through the air, speed lines carrying them between shots. It's all about drama, flair, and psyching each other out so that their opponent's luck slips through their fingers. It also occasionally falls into the JoJo's problem where I honestly can't tell if the logic behind a character's strategy actually makes any sense or if I'm just bad at following the story.

We've entered the next stage of Diamond is Unbreakable, and I was almost ready for this next batch of Stand users to be exclusively villainous to contrast the first half's cast building, but that would have contradicted the season's mission statement of seeing the good and bad in otherwise ordinary people, so I shouldn't be surprised that this episode ends with Rohan and the Janken boy learning to respect each other's gusto by the end. Visually, this ended up being one of the stiffer episodes of late, with most of the action taking place in classic anime still shots and speed lines. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was noticeable. I also found the boy's voice to be extremely obnoxious, especially when he's constantly pestering Rohan early on. I usually don't cringe at anime voices, but that one was starting to push my buttons. Otherwise, this was a good episode of the show, perfectly demonstrating the series' knack for finding drama and personality in something as ordinary as Rock Paper Scissors.

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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