JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E31-32 Review: Bargain Sale on Stands

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 31-32: July 15th Thursday, Pts. 1-2

In one of the best moves that the animated adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has done, they has done something that I really wished they did in Stardust Crusaders and combined multiple arcs -- Superfly, Enigma and Cheap Trick -- into massive four-parter that shows the events happening simultaneously. In the manga, we just have the individual arcs happening, despite the cast being pretty divided up and the implications that "by the way, this is happening at the same time!" In the manga, the arcs are shown individually with flashbacks linking them, and it's such a nice, well-done choice that manages to keep the tension going throughout these four episodes and making it look like Yoshihiro's minions are actually indeed splitting up and attacking everyone.

Of course, the first two episodes mostly focus on Josuke, Okuyasu and Mikitaka dealing with the mysterious Kanedaichi, user of the Stand Super Fly, but we get cutaways to other characters with some nice 24-style "July 15th, 08:30" timestamps. Koichi and Josuke's mom get assaulted by a mysterious attacker who we learn at the end of episode 32 uses a Stand called Enigma; Rohan is visited by a mysterious architect; Jotaro and Joseph are staying at the hotel and investigating via the Speedwagon Foundation; Hayato continues to be suspicious of his dad. These other scenes take a bit of a backseat considering episodes 31 and 32 mostly focus on the Super Fly fight, but it's definitely great for pacing to build up all these other antagonists happening in the background.

No real reason, by the way, why Joseph doesn't just use Hermit Purple to track down where Kira is. Considering he's brought to Japan for the express purpose of finding the user of Red Hot Chili Pepper, it's not because of his age, and there's really no excuse for the two of them to just hang out there. It's one of the biggest plot holes that I think Diamond is Unbreakable has.

Anyway, though, I'll talk mostly about the Super Fly stuff. Josuke and Okuyasu meet up with Mikitaka, and the ambiguity about whether he's a Stand user that trolls people or if he's actually an alien is still gloriously up in the air. I also love how Mikitaka randomly decides to talk like a fake robot alien in what is definitely a way to troll Okuyasu. But Mikitaka points out that there's this bizarre man living on top of the electrical tower, and we spend some time showing just how insane this man is, jumping around the tower as he uses really long wires to fish or to grab the plants he plants on a yard (with a circle of life theme going), and jumps around all over the place like a modern-day Tarzan. Our heroes quickly surmise he's a Stand user considering his superhuman ability to avoid falling, and as they meet up with the dude, Kanedaichi Toyohiro, quickly assume that he's quirky, but ultimately harmless.

But then a polaroid photograph falls out of Toyohiro's pocket, and that's of course, Yoshihiro, the ghost-photograph-dad. And turns out that Toyohiro acting harmless is a trap to lure Josuke into the range of the gigantic electrical pylon. Super Fly is the entire pylon, and Toyohiro notes that Super Fly acts like a gigantic trap, trapping a single person in its confines and turning them into metal if they try to get out until someone else comes in.

Josuke is trapped and Toyohiro (who's wearing a full-face mask) gets ready to rappel away, and Josuke and Okuyasu's efforts to physically break Super Fly reveals its secondary ability, and that's to re-distribute anything inside it, and that includes damage dealt to it. Thankfully, though, Mikitaka is there, and after one too many comments from Okuyasu about how he should stay out of this fight, Mikitaka ends up getting the jump on Toyohiro, causing him to get thrown back into the Super Fly pylon.

Apparently Toyohiro's knuckles have became so callused that he can hide a knife in it, though, and he cuts the wire he's hanging on, reflecting the cut damage on the wire  back to Mikitaka. The rather... bizarre powers of Super Fly means that Toyohiro throwing screws at one point of the pylon reflects them like bullets that pin Mikitaka onto the pylon, and Toyohiro is conveniently so  experienced with this that he can predict with 100% accuracy how the things he throws around will be reflected. .

Mikitaka gives this whole speech about how they should leave him behind and that he could be useful in that way, but Josuke repairs the wire to rappel back up, and then fights Toyohiro -- although it's clear that Josuke, being a normal person and not a pylon-living freak, is completely unused to fighting on the pylon. We get a case of extreme billiards as the two exchange just how things get reflected around Super Fly... and then, of course, Josuke manages to make use of reversing where the screws pop out of to send them back to Toyohiro.

In perhaps one of the bigger cop-outs, though, apparently Toyohiro is... is an antisocial, completely nice dude that just attacks them as part of a deal with Yoshihiro, and he actually wants to live in the pylon itself? It's bizarre, and honestly while I do realize that Diamond is Unbreakable wants to portray Josuke as a no-killing hero, it's a bit of a headscratcher why this particular plot twist is necessary.

Of course, Toyohiro then drops the bombshell to Josuke, Okuyasu and Mikitaka that "Koichi has been eliminated"... and we actually see this play out during the two episodes that Super Fly takes place in. Mikitaka is left to keep an eye on Super Fly (for... for some reason?) while Josuke makes a deal with Yuya "Highway Star" Fungami, fixing him in exchange for using his Stand's ability to sniff out Koichi. It is interesting to see how nice of a person Josuke is, having actually fixed up Yuya even without knowing what his answer will be.

Yuya himself hams the scene up and gets a lot of glorious poses and lines, noting how he's not going to be outdone in the coolness department by Josuke, and ends up helping Josuke out to sniff out Koichi's attacker... with the deal that "hey, all I have to do is track, not fight, right?" and then, of course, Enigma shows up and drops Tomoko on Josuke.

So let's quickly discuss the other arcs and the neat little buildups. The user of Enigma first shows up at the Higashikata residence and completely freak the fuck out of Josuke's mother, stealing things from her fridge and pulling off a Rubber Soul creepiy act by licking the cream puff thing as he moves closer and closer to poor Tomoko, commenting about fear, being creepy about panties and shit, and eventually trapping her in some M.C. Escher painting deal that is portrayed pretty amazingly by the anime.

Enigma's user sadly kind of explains Enigma's ability to us by noting that he has to observe someone doing a quirk that shows 'real fear' twice before Enigma can fold someone into paper, something that I really wished the story allowed the readers and the characters to explore and find out on their own. Next up, though, is going to be an episode that immediately throws us into the Enigma fight because the buildup  has been spread out throughout episodes 31 and 32, which is neat!

Meanwhile, the buildup for episode 34, Cheap Trick, ends up happening with Rohan starting to investigate the photograph he takes of Hayato video-recording "Kosaku", causing Yoshihiro to seemingly send the harmless-looking architect Kinoto Masazo, who is a bit... excitable, shall we say, but refuses to show Rohan his back. And Rohan, being who he is, ends up being a wee bit curious especially when Masazo Exorcist-walks up stairs and shit. Also, very clever way of tying in the architect to Rohan's house being damaged in a fire a couple of episodes ago.

Ultimately, it's perhaps the best formatting move that the JJBA anime has done, stacking all the buildup for less-exciting arcs like Cheap Trick and Enigma together with the Super Fly arc, setting up this non-stop set of four episodes of tension, while still keeping the Stand fights relatively self-contained so we don't jump wildly from one fight to the next. This is a nice little alleviation to some of the pacing complaints I have with Part 3's anime adaptation (the Bastet/Set and Boingo-Hol Horse/Pet Shop arcs could've both easily been done in this way, and a lot of the pre-Egypt ones definitely could've taken place at the same time). I'm not the biggest fan of the Super Fly story, though. The concept is solid, but Toyohiro's such a bizarre oddball of a character that I was never super fond of that fight.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Toyohiro's Stand, Super Fly, borrows its name from the Curtis Mayield song Superfly.
• Enigma is named after the 90's band Enigma, with some of their more popular songs being Return to Innocence and Sadeness.