JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E02 Review: The Uncle Ben Syndrome

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 2: Higashikata Josuke Meets Angelo

We start off with another flashback/introdump about "Angelo" Katagiri, detailing how he raped and killed a bunch of kids, and even mutilated one of them while pretending to hold him hostage. Also later on in this episode, we also get him biting off the face of a dog, and then choking his owner to death while spitting the flesh of the dog into the owner's mouth. God damn it what is with the brutal dog deaths in this series?

Wow, forget Dio, this guy is just the most vile piece of shit villain to grace the pages of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, huh? Serial killer, serial rapist, dog-killing bastard!

His first attempt at killing Josuke's family ended up being foiled, because Higashikata Tomoko is like any mom out there, being picky about how that one bottle of milk has a broken seal, thereby denying Aqua Necklace the chance to sneak into the household. I'm not sure why Angelo went through all the trouble of doing that, though, because his next attempt -- sending Aqua Necklace into the house through plumbing -- is so much more direct and obvious. I guess it's just a serial killer thing?

Meanwhile, Jotaro calls Josuke, warning him about the serial killer Angelo, and when Josuke's mom recognizes Angelo as the milkman, Josuke acts quickly when he realizes that Aqua Necklace has entered Tomoko's mouth. He just straight-up punches through his mom's stomach with Crazy Diamond, smashes a jar at the same time, and repairs them in a different order to have the glass form around Aqua Necklace.

That's... that's such an insanely brutal yet creative usage of Crazy Diamond's regeneration power.

Meanwhile, Josuke asks Jotaro just what he should do with this Stand (smash it, you moron!) and Jotaro tells Josuke to wait until he arrives. In the meantime, in a nice little callback, Josuke plays OH! That's A Baseball, the same video game that Terence D'Arby plays with Jotaro back in Part 3 that allows you to make an entire baseball team that looks like your Stand.

Josuke's police grandfather Ryohei shows up, and as Josuke is completely distracted, Aqua Necklace apparently has the ability to change the form of the liquid he is in, and apparently can also produce a brandy, and transform into creating the bottle with brandy-esque labels? Also also, in a spectacular bit of coincidence, apparently Ryohei was the policeman that arrested Angelo as a kid, and Angelo has apparently been obsessed with Officer Ryohei enough to know his drinking habits... but not know the members of his family? What kind of a shitty stalker are you, Angelo?

Anyway, the obvious happens, and Ryohei gets killed. Josuke manages to chase off Aqua Necklace with a DORARARARA barrage, and as he heals Ryohei's wounds and Josuke watches, Josuke keeps shaking his dead grandfather's body... and, of course, it's a dead mentor situation. It's similar to Spider-Man, I guess, in that Josuke not taking this whole Stand thing seriously ended up with a mentor figure dead, and also a clever way to showcase that while Crazy Diamond can heal people, it can't bring back the dead. We also establish that Josuke can't heal his own wounds. "It's a kind stand", Jotaro says. Josuke resolves that even to his last breath, Ryohei had the eyes of someone who would protect the town from the serial killer broadcasted in the news, and that Josuke will protect the town in his place.

It's a genuinely bizarre bit of pacing, though, because the story just cuts away to Ryohei's funeral, and Angelo just... retreated? Angelo just did nothing while the funeral happened and Tomoko goes to stay at a relative's house? It's a bit weird.

And, sure, we get the revelation that Angelo was waiting for opportunity to come in the form of rain, but I really felt that the pacing around here is off -- why wouldn't he go after Josuke's mom? Why would Jotaro hang out in the same house instead of going around and actually hunting Angelo down?

Of course, it's a neat way just to get Aqua Necklace to show off its ability, sweeping from fluids into the hose, and activating anything that can have water pour out, like humidifiers, kettles and taps, and apparently Aqua Necklace, in addition to being able to transform into liquids, can also transform into water vapour? It's a fun bit of having Jotaro and Josuke trapped in the house and escaping from the mist (this does kind of make Aqua Necklace sort of a combination of Geb and Justice), with Josuke showing off some really creative usages of his Stand -- breaking a wall and reforming it immediately as they run through it to block Aqua Necklace, and later capturing Aqua Necklace by restoring a rubber glove he's cut up and swallowed.

Also, Josuke's cathphrase to match Jotaro's yare yare daze is apparently gureito daze, which is the just English word great... but he doesn't quite say it with enough hamminess and it just sounds cheesy.

Anyway, after capturing Aqua Necklace in a rubber glove, Josuke just shakes it around, knocking Angelo out of a tree and exposing him to Jotaro and Josuke. Angelo makes this whole speech about "you cocky fucks don't have the right to judge me!" And... and they kinda do, you killed Josuke's grandfather. And also Jotaro killed like a good chunk of Dio's minions when he was a teenager.

But Josuke is definitely a lighter shade of being a hero, and tells Angelo to "repent for eternity", going all DORARARARA on him onto a rock, breaking both apart... and then fusing him together. We get the most hilarious defeat screen ever with the narrator cheerfully noting how the "Angelo Stone" is a tourist sighting favoured by lovers in the town of Morioh, telling us that Angelo's basically still alive and trapped as part of the stone. It's a pretty horrifying fate until you realize that, hey, dude kills old men, rapes children, mutilates them and eats dogs. Fucker deserves every second of that torment.

Overall, Aqua Necklace is honestly one of my least favourite fights in Diamond is Unbreakable, though, due to how weirdly-paced it is, and how Angelo's methods is all over the place. Still, that was a pretty badass showcase of Crazy Diamond's abilities, the obligatory mentor-figure death, and a pretty appropriately grisly end for Angelo. Still, while it's not bad, I felt that it's actually kind of a bland fight, and it's not until the Nijimura Brothers mini-arc that happens next that Diamond is Unbreakable really starts finding its groove.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Reportedly, Angelo borrows his sobriquet from American composer Angelo Badalamenti, most noted for scoring movies directed by David Lynch, earning an award for the Twin Peaks score.
• Aqua Necklace's exact reference is a bit harder to pin down, with one of the more common suggestions of an album or a song released around that time being Aqua, an album released by the band Asia. 
• The first Diamond is Unbreakable episode with an opening! We have Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town, which is a lot more chill compared to the previous couple of openings. Not my favourite one, but I guess that's because End of the World, Stand Proud, Bloody Stream and Sono Chi no Sadame were very LOUD and ENERGETIC. Considering how much more mellow part 4 can be, I guess it's appropriate. 
• The ending song is another English song, Savage Garden's single "I Want You". With Diamond is Unbreakable set in 1997, "I Want You" would be hitting the radio at around the same time.