JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable

Episode 34

The weeks are counting down as we get closer and closer to the finale of Diamond is Unbreakable, while the remaining one-off Stand users are dealt with and Kira finds himself flying too close to the sun with his murderous urges. I find it hard to believe that Part Four is almost wrapping up. I remember wondering if I'd ever see anything past Stardust Crusaders over here in the states. Boy, does time fly when you're having fun!

This week we finish off the story of Cheap Trick, the little whisper goblin that had latched onto Rohan's back. Rohan had called Koichi for help, thinking that of all our supporting cast, he'd be the most inclined to believe his circumstances. Unfortunately, Rohan is afflicted with the same problem as the architect who brought Cheap Trick into his home; he can't show anybody his back for fear of being killed and having Cheap Trick haunt a new victim. Koichi leaves, unimpressed by the goofy wall-hugging that a person in this situation would have to do. It just looks too silly to be a real threat.

It gets old saying that everything revolving around Rohan in a given episode is a treat, but I'm going to keep saying it as long as it continues to be true. Having cried wolf too many times, Rohan is on his own to traverse town without anybody seeing his back, lest he die and pass on the curse. The humor here comes from him trying to figure out what the architect must have done in order to reach his house in the first place, sneaking up against walls in public and even having to walk back to back with strangers and hope they don't turn around. It's so wonderfully absurd.

Cheap Trick is sure that Rohan's on his way to Jotaro, one of the few people who might be able to help, but instead Rohan has something more interesting in mind. He finds his way to the secret street where Reimi and her dog's ghosts live. If we remember back to their initial episode, one of the haunted qualities of that road is that you must exit without looking back, or else the hands of the dead will snatch you into the afterlife. Not knowing this, Cheap Trick happily looks back as soon as Rohan pulls himself away from the walls. Cheap Trick is on his back after all, so it ends up being a real *ahem* cheap trick on Rohan's end.

This is a weird little story hook to wrap my head around, because trying to imagine Hirohiko Araki's thought process makes me think Cheap Trick's entire ability was designed backwards, just to be taken advantage of by that street. Like, "Oh, we've got that ghost place! We've got to come up with an enemy that gets defeated by that!" I can't think of many reasons why it would have that very specific ability. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a series that's built around characters devising absurd strategies to defeat their enemy's absurd powers, so it often feels more contrived than clever. Then again, the fact that it's so confident in its contrivances forms the soul of a series like this, so it's both a positive and a negative depending on how picky you are about that stuff.

The B-side of this episode is all about our man, Yoshikage Kira. The day has come for him to put himself out there and get back on the dating scene. I mean, technically he's still married, and he's not exactly scoping out ladies as much as he's scoping out potential disembodied hands to love. But hey, his fingernails are the appropriate length now, so who am I to judge? When Kira picks his target, a woman he follows home to incinerate her boyfriend with Killer Queen, there's a sense of catharsis dripping off of him. It's like he's been holding his breath ever since stealing his new face, and now he's finally allowed to breath. A horrible, perverted killer is just what he was born to be, and he'll be damned if anybody contests him on that.

The same thing that makes Kira feel like his new life of peace and murder is just beginning also makes Diamond is Unbreakable feel like it's nearing its end. We've spent this last third waiting for Kira to show his true colors again and give our protagonists a chance to be proactive beyond bumping into random Stand users around every corner. Kira's back, and returning to the thing he loves most inevitably outs him to his "son", who's been suspicious of his "dad" from the beginning. Hayato's got video evidence that this man pretending to be his dad is some kind of supernatural monster, and the episode leaves us with a confrontation between the two of them, nude in the family bath as they try to be low-key in their absolute destruction of each other. (Side note: what was the deal with 80s/90s Shonen Jump and child nudity? I know it's not presented as anything sexual, but that was such a thing from that era. It's kinda weird.)

This episode exemplifies JoJo's Bizarre Adventure at its strongest, offering both the absurd humor and the ensuing horror. As far as I can tell, this is the beginning of the end for Part Four, and you can feel the show stepping up its game as it intends to keep you on the edge of your seat until the last episode airs. I know I'm on the edge of mine.

Rating: A

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