JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E06 Review: Super Saiyan Koichi

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 6: Hirose Koichi [Echoes]

Yeah, I completely forgot Hirose Koichi's hair goes straight-up Super Saiyan when he activates his Stand. It's something I genuinely forgot about, even though I've read through the manga.

Anyway, up until we actually fight Red Hot Chili Pepper, we're going to have a bunch of "weird things happen in this town" episodes, which has some of the more memorable and wildly varied stories in JJBA. Without a huge evil organization to beat, or a constant tension of being on the clock to some doomsday, Diamond is Unbreakable has a lot more chances to just take a breather and just muck around with weird characters and weird story concepts.

Episode 6 starts off by introducing the villain of the week, Kobayashi Tamami, a local conman who's a graduate from the same high school Koichi and Josuke go to, and he puts a random cat-in-a-bag in the middle of the road for Koichi to run over, and for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to tick its weekly quota of animal brutality. Except not really, it's a con, and all Koichi ran over is a cat doll and some ketchup. Kobayashi basically tries to extort money from Koichi, getting him to basically pay money for reimbursement for 'hitting and killing my cat', which causes a giant lock to manifest on his chest.

This is Kobayashi's Stand, The Lock, and it's actually a pretty interesting one. The Lock basically works off of guilt, and gets heavier on people's chests until they do something to reimburse said guilt. Koichi gets dragged down by the weight of The Lock, until Josuke and Okuyasu comes and basically acts as a way for Kobayashi to exposit about the powers of his Stand. Okuyasu punches Kobayashi and breaks his teeth (totally "accidentally" and he doesn't roll to hit the pavement) and gets afflicted with The Lock as well... but as soon as Josuke heals the tooth and unveils the toy cat, both Okuyasu and Koichi are freed.

That's just the opening salvo, though, because it isn't just over with this single encounter. Kobayashi goes all the way to Koichi's house and with the aid of an identical wallet and memorizing the contents of the bills in Koichi's wallet, talks up this whole talk to Koichi's mom about how he bumped into Koichi and their wallets got switched, and basically sweet-talks his mom into believing him. And that brief bit of guilt is enough for The Lock to be activated on her. Oh, and Koichi's sister also gets caught with the Lock for spilling tea on Kobayashi's arm, and both of them just get crushed under The Lock as Kobayashi gloats -- he's going to take everything, from the house to the money to Koichi's sister as revenge.

And then mild-mannered Koichi goes all Super Saiyan, and unleashes his Stand after an episode full of just kind of being apologetic and confused, and his little egg stand from the previous episode hatches into Echoes, easily one of my favourite non-humanoid Stands out there. Just what is Echoes, really? It's this helmet-beetle-bug thing with robotic bug eyes, a beak, two baby hands, wheels for lower legs, and a giant Cell-esque tail that whips around like a snake. Oh, and its powers involves sound effects. Easily one of the most creative-looking Stands in JJBA, for sure. I'm pretty sure I came out of reading this arc in the comic and went "man, Crazy Diamond's cool, but could you imagine if our main character has a Stand like this?"

It's also something that works particularly well in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with its penchant in the manga to really have sound effects in katakana show up -- even in the anime! And Echoes takes these sound effects and basically amplifies those sounds to 'hit' Kobayashi with it. Perhaps it visually loses a bit of a punch for a non-Japanese-reading audience,  but I honestly don't mind.

In an interesting bit, The Lock very nearly kills Koichi's family when Kobayashi makes it look like Koichi has stabbed him (by stabbing himself and throwing the knife into Koichi's hands), but Koichi ends up throwing his own voice of "believe in me!" into his mother, and that barrage of "believe in me" in his son's voice manages to break his mom out of guilt. And with this victory, Kobayashi ends up being Koichi's fan-cum-servant of sorts, which is... okay? I've always thought that someone who threatened to extort and kill your family (with rapey vibes too) isn't someone you'll ever want to hang out around with, but Kobayashi's going to continue to be a minor supporting character after this.

It's an episode I enjoyed a lot more than I remembered or thought I would -- Echoes and Lock are both very interesting Stands with very interesting powers, and this really ends up being a pretty interesting fight. A superpower that works off someone's guilt and a superpower that amplifies sound effects? Yeah, JJBA is going to go into a whole other level of bizarreness.

As a side-note, and perhaps a good choice considering it's kind of a stupid thing... Kobayashi remains short throughout the entire episode. In the JJBA manga, enemies that Koichi fights tended to first appear as tall and imposing, and suddenly shrink inexplicably after being beaten. And I do mean shrink -- compare Kobayashi in the manga during the first part of this arc (here) where he's a far bigger adult compared to the short Koichi, to how Kobayashi is at the end of the arc (here) where he's suddenly shrunken into the height of Koichi. The anime just ignores this and has Kobayashi be short throughout the entire episode. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Koichi's Stand, Echoes, borrows its name from Echoes, which is also a Pink Floyd song like Shine On You Crazy Diamond. 
• The JJBA wiki lists The Lock as being a reference to The Rock, a song by The Who... but I feel like that's a far, far stretch. Since there's no conclusive confirmation from the writer, I'm just going to say that it's just an English word being used. 
• The Hirose household's dog is named Police, named after the band Police, best known perhaps for its single Every Breath You Take, but also Walking On The Moon, Roxanne and Message In A Bottle.