JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 25: Atom Heart Father
This episode has its storyline split into two distinct parts. The first half is a focus on Kira Yoshikage as he's forced to adapt and act as his brand-new appearance and persona of "Kawajiri Kosaku", and it's just pretty fortunate that the dude is actually indeed kind of a boring, bland dude. We get to see the point of view of the real Kosaku's wife, Kawajiri Shinobu, who's a catty, tired woman that noted how utterly loveless her married life is, and how she doesn't have any sort of emotion left towards Kosaku. He's good enough of a man to not outright hate, but Kosaku is so lifeless that he's so boring. And her kid, Hayato, is... well, kind of a mumbly brat, but all kids his age are the same.
But then Kira-Kosaku shows up, and while he doesn't really say a word, the things that Kira does ends up being like that of a patient, attentive husband. No complaints about the instant ramen, and even cooks a delicious meal for both of them. Great usage of the chipper Morioh Radio soundtrack at this point, too.
Sure, there are some points that Kira seems to fuck up and do things that Kosaku would never do, like accidentally closing the door and locking out the house's cat (oh, I definitely didn't remember the cat appearing this early...), but Kira's polite and actually charming mannerisms end up causing Shinobu to brush off "Kosaku" as actually being a changed man and being so much more romantic. A brief bit where Kira is forced to improvise with his Stand to pay the bills for their house (he has no idea about the combination needed to open the safe), Kira ends up stealing the money from the debt collector to pay for the next couple of months. This new, dangerous Kosaku ends up impressing Shinobu that she actually ends up falling head-over-heels for this new-and-improved Kawajiri Kosaku, and voice actress Shimamra Yu (Attack on Titan's Annie) actually ends up really selling Shinobu's mental state really well. She certainly was a character that I rolled my eyes and go "how dense can you get?" but it's definitely something that was paced and delivered far, far better in the anime. 
Meanwhile, Josuke, Jotaro, Koichi and Okuyasu are investigating Kira Yoshikage's old house, now abandoned, and they discover how unsettling Kira has made his life. He's just so... normal, without any sort of accomplishments to make sure he doesn't stand out. He's not antisocial because he's got photographs with "friends" and the like, and participates enough in things like high school competitions, but Jotaro notes how unerringly Kira's achievements are all bronze and silver awards to make sure no one catches on to his horrifying intellect and his sociopathic tendencies.
Also unsettling is Josuke's discovery of Kira's insane collection of nails, which he collects over the period of several years, and apparently Kira uses his nails as a way to determine when it's good for him to kill? What, like a cat growing its nails, then? Killer Queen does have a cat motif of sorts. It's also pretty unsettling noting just how excited Kira is in documenting his nails.
And then Jotaro and Josuke encounter the bad guy of this episode, as a polaroid camera clicks, and they get to see a 'ghost' sitting on the corner of the room... and that's the ghost of Kira's father, Yoshihiro, which we saw earlier in this picture. And the episode goes into a quasi-horror mentality as Yoshihiro 'calls' Josuke and Jotaro via the phone in the room, and then uses the phone to whack Josuke in the face. Yoshihiro's Stand ability is apparently to manipulate things inside any photograph that he's in. Oh, and he's also a ghost, like Reimi, and I don't quite think it's made clear whether his remaining as a ghost is part of his Stand, or if he's a ghost with a Stand. I mean, ghosts exist in the JoJo universe, and we've got rats and swords with stands, so why not ghosts?
Koichi notes -- pretty observantly -- that ghosts are actually susceptible to Stand attacks, noting how Heaven's Door managed to affect the ghost of Reimi a while back, and throughout Diamond is Unbreakable there's definitely a running theme that brings back the whole "my Stand is a Spirit!" way that Jotaro introduces us to Star Platinum. It's something that unfortunately never actually gets brought up after this.
Yoshihiro's Stand, Atom Heart Father, apparently creates a dimension around the photograph that makes Okuyasu and Koichi unable to interfere as they just pass through the photograph's dimension, and Jotaro's attempt to rip up the photograph actually damages both of them -- only Crazy Diamond ends up restoring the photograph back.
The anime also employs some old-photograph distortion to the scenes set within the photograph dimension, and I felt like that's a subtle and actually pretty dang effective way to give a different flair to this whole thing.
The way that Jotaro makes this huge deal about "giving up" on fighting is also pretty fun, because he just nonchalantly takes-a-photo-of-the-photo, trapping Yoshihiro in a blank photograph with no one but himself. It's sort of similar to J'Geil's Hanged Man, I guess, and while it's likely a coincidence, I kind of like the idea of Jotaro remembering one of his old enemies and figuring out that Atom Heart Father works similarly. Jotaro tells Josuke to mock Yoshihiro with something cool ("you don't scare me, idiot" isn't cool, Josuke) before smashing the camera, folding the photograph shut and taping it up, pinning on the wall.
Jotaro then surmises that Yoshihiro is trying to chase them away because there's something in the house that Kira probably doesn't want them to find, and, of course, it's a second Stand-making arrow. Otoishi/Keicho's bow and arrow are still safe within the Speedwagon foundation, but apparently there's a lot of the arrows, which is a detail I completely forgot -- and a reason why Keicho manages to get a set despite the Egypt conflict being pretty far-flung from where he is.
Unfortunately, though, the setup to Yoshihiro becoming a recurring villain and being the new enemy-maker is a bit bland, with Okuyasu's attempt to bully Yoshihiro causing him to... play dead, pretend he's escaped, and tricking Okuyasu to open it up to check. And somehow everyone -- including Jotaro, who can stop time -- just gawks around as Yoshihiro flies around in the photograph, uses a lasso to grab the arrow and pull it into the photograph, and fly off on a convenient bird? After how the episode lampshades how Okuyasu can just wipe Yoshihiro out with The Hand, it genuinely feels rather contrived. Atom Heart Father manifesting random new abilities (the photograph floating around, or being able to draw objects into the photograph) always felt pretty ass-pull-y as well.
Overall, though, it's definitely an episode that's meant to introduce Yoshihiro and a way for our heroes to face off against a new batch of Stand users since Yoshihiro notes how he's going to do his best to eliminate these people going after his son. Not the strongest story in Diamond is Unbreakable, though, and I honestly felt far more compelled with the Kira side of the story as opposed to the Yoshihiro fight.
The JoJo Playlist:
- Yoshihiro's Stand, Atom Heart Father, borrows its name from Atom Heart Mother, the fifth studio album released by Pink Floyd. Atom Heart Mother itself is a six-part instrumental suite that took up the first CD in the studio album.
No comments:
Post a Comment