JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 8-9: Yamagishi Yukako Falls In Love
Another two-parter episode, and perhaps one of the more... wacky and fun episodes? We get the premonition from the hospitalized Hazamada that "Stand Users will be attracted to each other", sort of a mantra that Josuke and company will be repeating throughout the season.
And the Stand User in question for this pair of episodes is Yamagishi Yukako, a lady from the school they go in, who's madly, deeply in love with Koichi. Why? Why not? JJBA has never really went out of its way to have any sort of meaningful attempt at telling romance, at least not until Part VIII. Yukako starts off as kind of as sweet, demure girl, before going straight-up crazy when Koichi takes too long to reply to her sudden love confession and going "DO YOU HATE ME OR DO YOU LIKE ME, WHICH IS IT?" before storming off, with Koichi confused by the encounter, as well as a fuck-ton of hair clumping up his cola.
And then in the next day, Yukako apologizes, and asks to be friends... but ends up acting like a super over-possessive girlfriend, giving Koichi a floofy sweater that's tailored to his size, making a super-fancy homemade meal, and Koichi actually acts pretty reasonably in that he doesn't want to be rude, but he's clearly disturbed by all of this sudden clinginess by a girl he barely knows.
And when the class representative interrupts Yukako's attempt to feed Koichi some shrimp, Yukako shows off the powers of her stand by... embedding chunks of her hair into the poor girl's scalp, and then have the hair pull her bodily into the school's incinerator while also wrapping around the poor girl's eyes and tongue. Fortunately, Josuke and Okuyasu have been stalking the stalker, and rescues the poor girl with The Hand. After a meeting with Koichi, Josuke and Okuyasu tries to spread around rumours about what a shit person Koichi is to repel Yukako, but she is clearly unaffected...
And we get some pretty well-shot borderline horror scenes as Yukako shows up at Koichi's window in the middle of the night, and breaks in, noting that she will have to properly "discipline" Koichi, and when Koichi wakes up, he ends up being trapped in a secluded villa -- and while I know Yukako eventually becomes an ally, it is pretty horrifying to be at the mercies of a clearly deranged person who claims to 'love' Koichi.
But all that horror sort of dissipates that the utter hilarity of Yukako's attempt to teach Koichi English to improve his grades, with a multiple-choice question with food hidden behind the right answer, and horrifying shit like soap, erasers, or asparagus wrapped in pages of English dictionary behind wrong answers. And Yukako's attempts of getting Koichi to learn? "Prince often sings a song called Funky Music. What does Funky Music mean in Japanese?" before showing off three homophones.
And then as we start off the second part, we get to see Koichi struggling to get into the bathroom, with the bathroom door locked with the combination of "what year is Columbus born?" It's such a hilarious chunk of utterly ridiculous trivia! Yukako's next attempt to discipline Koichi is going to use an electrical chair, but as she goes off and locks up the mansion to buy some supplies, Koichi realizes that Yukako doesn't know about Stands, or that he has one -- and he sends out Echoes to try and scout out for a payphone. For whatever reason, though, Echoes leaving behind "beep boop beep" sound effects on Yukako's hand manages to... dial the phone? What? I'm genuinely not sure how this works, and honestly feels like a pretty contrived sequence. Josuke and Okuyasu are alerted that they're in a payphone near ocean waves, though, because in any fiction-land, ocean waves are always strong enough to be heard over payphones.
And then it's a matter of Koichi surviving until backup arrives, but nothing Echoes manages to do to Yukaku matters. His attempt at shooting "I hate you" non-stop into Yukako gets utterly broken by Yukako's own powerful yandere delusions, and Yukako notes that the simple fact that Koichi has a Stand is proof of their shared destiny. Halfway through the fight, Echoes suddenly turns into a rocky cocoon, and evolves into Echoes: Act II, a funky little stout bug-robot with a giant tail. Act II actually allows Koichi to create the manifestation of the sound effect, so the equivalent to "Boom!" creates a sonic boom, and whatever onomatopoeia corresponds to "sizzle" causes actual heat.
The battle is basically Yukako attempting to breach the house, and then her Stand goes utterly insane and starts to wrap around the entire house like giant tentacles. Koichi also cuts off his hair to get rid of Yukako's hair... although that ends up giving him a mini-Polnareff haircut. Ha! He's going to look like a small Polnareff for a significant portion of this series, by the way. Koichi manages to 'defeat' Yukako temporarily by goading her into personally wrapping her hair around him, activating the DOGON sound effect that blasts her away to a cliffside.
The shock apparently bleaches Yukako's hair white, because, uh... what? Stand magic!
And as Yukako tries to kill Koichi so that she can preserve him in her heart, Koichi ends up rescuing Yukako when she falls from the cliff, with a "BOING" sound effect to bouncer her back onto the cliff. Yukako is thusly 'defeated', although she is still in love with Koichi, while the cape became another one of the sights in Morioh Town.
Overall, it's a fun little episode for Koichi, and again, I really do like it that Koichi is being forced in situations where he is forced to improvise and grow. The fact that Echoes is such a weird Stand with so much creative use of its power also makes most of Koichi's battles to be pretty entertaining to watch. Yukako herself is a pretty effective antagonist as this insanely obsessive psychopath with a completely warped mentality. There's definitely a fair amount of horror/slasher movie mentality thrown into this, as well as the typical Japanese trope of a yandere character. It's perhaps not the best story in Diamond is Unbreakable, but a fun one nonetheless.
The JoJo Playlist:
- While not named in either of these episodes due to Yukako not being familiar with Stands, her Stand is called Love Deluxe, sharing its name with a studio album by the English band Sade. Notable songs from that album include Feel No Pain, Kiss of Life and No Ordinary Love.
No comments:
Post a Comment