JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable

Episode 23

"Turn on the TV, let it drip right down in your eyes", Freddie Mercury sang once upon a time. I choose to believe he was talking about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Our heroes, Koichi and Jotaro, continue their defense against the little tank bomb left behind by Kira's Stand, Killer Queen. I snatched the above quotation in an attempt to make a labored reference to the tank's namesake, 'Sheer Heart Attack' by Queen. Hey, I'm trying my best.

There turns out to be a surprising amount of contention between Koichi and Jotaro, two of the more cooperative characters in the show otherwise. Koichi feels like he and Echoes are being underestimated by the much more confidant Jotaro, and they argue about the distance of the escaped villain relative to his present Stand's strength. Koichi thinks it just doesn't make sense that such a powerful and sturdy bomb could be controlled remotely. Jotaro ends up being correct, using his experience with Stand users to determine the trick to Sheer Heart Attack: it's not remotely controlled, but rather heat-seeking.

This raises several pros and cons as far as outsmarting the thing. If our heroes can produce something that exudes more heat than a human body (like an impromptu campfire or a heated stove), then they can force it to change paths. However, the more intense the heat, the more intense the explosion, meaning that the duo is almost always within the blast radius. The fight goes on, mistakes are made, and eventually Jotaro finds himself severely wounded. It's a pretty violent sight, and even though he can always get healed by Josuke, it's up to Koichi to keep him safe from Kira's Stand.

The solution comes in the form of Echoes's next DBZ transformation: "Echoes, Act 3". Now Koichi's Stand has a humanoid shape and can speak to him, though its personality seems a little dense. Act 3 can punch like Star Platinum, but its true powers seem to reside in rapping. It is the 90s, after all. It's hard to parse the specifics of its powers at the moment, since the new form is still fresh and even Koichi is still figuring it out. It announces its attack as "Echoes, Act 3! Freeze!" and I guess it was the rhyming of "three" and "freeze" that caused Sheer Heart Attack to get pressed into the ground by immense gravity. If I've got all that right, then I think this is a cool power and a great evolution of what Echoes has been doing throughout the show.

Sheer Heart Attack manages to serve as a threatening antagonist for this episode, so it's interesting that it's only a piece of Killer Queen's power. I liked the moments where we cut back to Kira, trying to enjoy a peaceful lunch out on the town as his hand suddenly got affected by the same gravity as his bomb. That said, the knowledge that Josuke can easily heal Jotaro after his most recent wound is a little disconcerting to me. JoJo's is absolutely the kind of series that would kill a major character like that, but I'm pretty sure he's going to make it out okay. I'd hate to sound bloodthirsty, but I do hope the stakes rise higher than just Shigeki's death.

Overall, it's as exciting an action episode as you could expect from this series. I've more or less stopped praising the style of this show since it's so omnipresent that I hardly even notice it anymore, but it feels like it's been a while since an episode's really been all about fighting, so there is a jolt of "Oh yeah! Other shows don't look like this." JoJo's continues to be JoJo's, basically.

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