JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E01 Review: Diamond is Not Crash

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Diamond is Unbreakable,  Episode 1: Kujo Jotaro Meets Higashikata Josuke

Welcome to Part 4 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Diamond is Unbreakable. Or, as it was previously called, "Diamond is Not Crash". Depending on your views, you would say that Diamond is Unbreakable is the part that JoJo really finds its groove, instead of Stardust Crusaders, and that really depends on your preference in genre. Stardust Crusaders is set up more like a serious "a group of characters go on a journey to slay an ultimate evil" style of a story. In contrast, Diamond is Unbreakable is a lot more... light-hearted, I guess? It takes the premise of simply defending someone's hometown, and plays out more like a standard Japanese shonen. All parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has previously been set outside  of Japan, so it's no surprise that this part, fully set in the town of Japan, is one of the most popular parts in Japan.

I know that Part 5 is airing like right now, but I felt it odd if I skipped an entire season just to review a series weekly. So we'll be covering Part 5 whenever I finish reviewing Part 4.

And in a neat little foreshadowing that is definitely not part of the original manga, we get a little cheery local radio tune welcoming people to the town of Morioh as a woman seems to be making breakfast and shit... and then we zoom away and it's apparently a severed hand! It's a neat little tease to a major character that's going to be introduced a wee bit later in the series's run.

Also, the art style truly changes a lot in this leg of the anime, yeah? The lines are a lot softer compared to Parts 1 through 3, and the colour palette used is a lot more pastel-y and vibrant. I guess being set in a cheerful town instead of third-world villages and deserts allow the art team to use far louder colours? It definitely fits the whole theme of Morioh, though, the happy little town with a dark secret.

As with Part 3, we are introduced to the previous part's JoJo, with Jotaro showing up in the town of Morioh twelve years after the events of Stardust Crusaders, sporting a white, more mature version of his Part 3 garb. Oh, and he's a marine biologist now, which is a career choice that is genuinely baffling to manga readers. The Part 3 anime adds a fair bit of subtle details of Jotaro being interested in marine life.

And as Jotaro arrives in Morioh, he begins asking around if there has been 'any incidents' in town, so he's clearly investigating some sort of Stand-related phenomenon. We also have a brief cameo by the Superfly tower, another character which we'll see in the future, which is neat.

And then we cut away to the archetypal short Japanese schoolboy, Hirose Koichi, who fills in the role in most Japanese anime set in a real-world setting of the less-cool sidekick that goes "eeeeh?" at all the strange things happening around him. We follow new transfer student Koichi around as he goes for his first day of high school as he bumps into Jotaro, who's looking for the Higashikata household... and then the duo witnesses Higashikata Josuke, who is the very person Jotaro is looking for, and also a dude with a glorious pompadour that goes to Koichi's school.

He's also a bit of a weirdo, looking at a turtle and just generally being wacky, while the senpai bullies are sort of slapping him around, and throws the turtle to near-death against a wall, scolding him for dressing so freaking extravagantly. Similar to how Joseph and Jotaro were both polar opposites to the previous JoJo's, Josuke's introduction seems to be a pretty huge departure from Jotaro. It's a huge, huge contrast to Jotaro, who's shown to take no shit from anyone from his first appearance, physically throwing around policemen and Avdol during his first appearance. In contrast, Josuke clearly avoids conflict, apologizes after every second sentence and kowtows to the bullies...

...Up until the bullies make the mistake of insulting his hair.  Because you do not fuck with Higashikata Josuke's hair.

Josuke goes insanely angry, and then his Stand manifests, and he beats up the bully... and a split-second later, the injuries sustained by the bully (and the turtle, yay!) goes back to normal. Albeit slightly distorted, in the bully's case. Josuke's Stand, it appears, has more powers than just beating people up, again, another contrast to Jotaro's.


(Oh, by the way, Higashikata Josuke's "suke" can be read as 'Jo' depending on the kanji, which is why he's given the nickname JoJo. Just like Jotaro, though, the JoJo nickname is more of a formality that's going to be dropped pretty quickly)

Jotaro and Josuke then walk with each other (Koichi's there too) and we have a bit of a setup. Jotaro notes how Josuke came down with a fever when he was four -- which was around the time that Stardust Crusaders happened, and Jotaro also reveals that Josuke's father is Joseph Joestar. Apparently, Joseph fooled around in his old age, and produced an illegitimate son with a far, far younger woman! And... and you know what? I totally buy that Joseph would do something like this. Jotaro notes that the inheritance bit is thrown into uproar, grandma Holly is furious... and Josuke actually apologizes for causing trouble in someone else's household...

And then Jotaro accidentally insults Josuke's hair off-handedly, which causes Josuke to get angry, and we get a Stand battle between Josuke's Stand, Crazy Diamond (which hasn't been named yet outside of the commercial cuts) and Jotaro's own Star Platinum. The battle is over pretty quickly, though it does show that Jotaro retains the time-stop abilities he unlocked during his final battle with Dio, albeit it has degenerated to merely a couple of seconds. Jotaro also gives Josuke a bit of a warning, because when Joseph attempted to scry on Josuke with Hermit Purple, all that the pictures show is a menacing man. Josuke then walks around, noting that "eh, things are fine, isn't it?" Of course, as in any archetypal hero journey, this sort of fate-tempting statement is just, well, a prelude into the conflict happening.

We also get to briefly see Josuke's family -- his grandfather Ryohei, a local cop, and his mother Tomoko, who's kinda violent....


And then we cut away to the main villain of this early mini-arc, Anjuro "Angelo" Katagiri, who bumps into a pair of lovers and then we get a narrated information dump who describes him as a violent robber, rapist and serial killer.

We cut away to him after a couple of scenes later, with the woman dead in the bushes, while the man that Angelo encountered is robbing a bank and holding someone hostage, clearly deranged and fucked in the head. Josuke is fully willing to walk away, but the robber insulted his hairdo, causing Josuke to step up, and then have Crazy Diamond punch through the hostage into the robber's stomach... and as Crazy Diamond's fist retracts, both wounds on robber and hostage alike disappear, but the knife ends up being stuck inside the robber's body. So clearly Crazy Diamond is able to repair things it damages,  albeit in a different way... although I definitely enjoyed the slow burn of the mysteries behind our protagonist's stand.

And then this creepy, baby-like blue Stand gloops out of the robber's mouth, notes that Josuke is a fellow Stand user, and swears bloody vengeance. This, of course, is Angelo's Stand, and the final shot of this episode has him show up in front of the Higashikata household, promising sweet sweet vengeance.

Overall, it's definitely a slow-paced opening that actually does introduce the setting and the characters pretty well. Josuke is definitely one of the more interesting JoJo protagonists out there, with his unique character quirk and being so much of a subtle presence most of the time, apologetic and being a generally polite,  well-mannered boy until his hair is insulted. Definitely like the slow burn and the apparent lack of a main villain other than this random serial killer that shows up in Morioh. Diamond is Unbreakable is a lot of a slower-paced part for the first half, thanks to the lack of an immediate driving for like "gotta kill Dio/the Pillar Men!" that the first three parts have. It's definitely a neat little opening, for sure!

Also, as a brief note, is how the Diamond is Unbreakable anime basically has a consistent look for all of its characters. In the original publication of the manga, Part 4 was... infamous for starting off continuing the super-buff artstyle from Stardust Crusaders, before mellowing out into having slimmer character designs. (Compare Josuke's original appearance) Some characters even shrink between story arcs... but the Part 4 anime eschews it all and just takes the appearances of the characters from the second half of the manga. It's interesting, considering how slavishly they made three different character models for Iggy in part 3.

The JoJo Playlist:

• In Part 4, most of the characters have normal names that aren't references to anything, and it's the Stands that end up being musical references. Part 4 is kind of inconsistent about this, though. Josuke's Stand, while not named yet, is called Crazy Diamond, named after the iconic Pink Floyd song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
• Due to trademark purposes, in most English dubs and translations, Crazy Diamond's name tends to be localized as Shining Diamond, taking a different word from the title of that song. I'm watching the Crunchyroll subbed versions, but I have ears and am pretty familiar with both music and the original JJBA, so I will always exclusively refer to the Stands by their original names.