JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E33 Review: Villains Fight Each Other

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 33: July 15th Thursday, Pt. 3

It's really weird that so much of this episode basically just hinges on Yuya Fungami, and I completely forgot just how huge of a role Yuya has in this episode. As this unwilling participant, Yuya spends a good chunk of the episode's first half insisting that he's just here to track and not fight, and he doesn't want anything to do with the clear hostility that Josuke and Enigma Boy (who isn't named until like his last scene -- Miyamoto Terunosuke) have at each other. It's interesting, though, that Yuya ends up filling a Speedwagon-esque role of giving a commentary via his superhuman-smelling observations.

Enigma is a bit of a bizarre Stand, though, and it's the user's desire to just capitalize on its ability to trap people when they show off their little "fear quirk" that really makes him so, so ineffective. The first scene as Josuke opens the folded piece of paper has a fucking GUN pointing at his face. And Enigma Boy shows how he's hidden things like cars or a paper shredder in his folded paper, so clearly he can hide weapons in them... and he can tear the folded paper up to kill them. But no, the way he dicks around with Josuke, Koichi and Yuya is just to dick around and try and fold them into paper. Enigma's such an insanely powerful Stand even if it's just a Stand that can fold inanimate objects into paper -- but Enigma Boy's just so entranced with one aspect of the ability that he sort of ends up being kind of ineffective.

And the fact that Josuke actually took a very long time to bite his lips for a second time means that the fight ends up being somewhat prolonged, with Enigma Boy taking his sweet, sweet time just tormenting everyone and ripping up pieces of paper with ramen bowls inside. Of course, the thing that makes Josuke actually snap is the threat of throwing the piece of paper with Koichi under a bus, causing Josuke to get folded into Enigma... though not before a pretty badass moment of Josuke fixing a metal rod to try and pull him out of the piece of paper, telling Enigma Boy that he's not stupid -- he knows it's likely a trap, but if there's a 1% chance it's Koichi, there's no way he's going to leave him to die. And that moment when he says in all seriousness that he's lost... but if he gets out of his trap, "I'm going to kill you." It's such a chilling statement from such a normally gentle and non-lethal goof, and it's pretty damn badass as he launches the piece of the street pole towards Enigma Boy.

And it's Enigma Boy's victory as he pulls out a taxi and prepares to leave, thanking Yuya for doing the smart thing and staying out of his way... and then Yuya unleashes Highway Star, because Josuke's manliness has basically inspired him that he can't "be uncool". There's definitely a bit of an inconsistency here, though -- whatever happened to Highway Star being an automatic stand? It certainly does thing as Yuya commands it to do. And didn't it spawn from a room in a tunnel? Ah, Diamond is Unbreakable and your ever-changing Stand rules!

Yuya actually realizes what his quirk is, though, which is touching his chin, and to his credit he tries his best to avoid doing it. Highway Star also does a decent bit stopping the taxi and trying to figure out what's going on, but when Josuke and Koichi's paper pieces are nearly shredded by a paper shredder, Yuya seemingly panics... but then reveals that this was all part of his plan, to... to turn into a piece of paper and get within distance of Josuke? There definitely could've been a better way to frame this, I'm afraid, because it really didn't make that much sense.

Anyway, Josuke and Koichi get out of the folded paper, Koichi frees Yuya and holes Enigma Boy in place with Echoes. And then Josuke unleashes this long speech, basically telling Enigma Boy that, hey, you're the one that's scared now, and you're the one showing off these silly twitches like closing one eye. And one DORARARARARARA later, and Josuke basically merges Enigma Boy with a book, turning him... into a book.

My god, that's as horrifying as Angelo's fate as being bound into a stone, and even if he's a non-killing hero, Josuke does some really fucked-up shit with Crazy Diamond. Can't say that Enigma Boy doesn't deserve it, though.

Meanwhile, on the Rohan side of things, this episode deals with some of the buildup for the Cheap Trick "fight" next episode, with Rohan's curiousity getting the better of him, leading him to set up a trap on the floor to try and get the architect man to show his back... and with a loud "I AM FINISHED!" said back bursts open into blood, and Rohan realizes that the architect never actually knew that he was being attacked by a Stand, hence the lack of information on Heaven's Door. And thus the attacking Stand, the intelligent Stand known as Cheap Trick, manifests on Rohan's back.

Cheap Trick is perhaps one of the most unique Stands in the setting, being one of the few Stands to actually be shown to have an independent personality compared to its owner (Stands with dialogue like Echoes are clearly still subservient to their user), and they did a great job giving Cheap Trick this creepy, half-wheezing nasal voice to really sell that, yes, the fact that Cheap Trick can really only actively talk is going to be annoying if you have this figurative shoulder devil talking to you day in, day out.


Cheap Trick's whole deal, though, is that it jumps from one user to the next, and the criteria for his jumping is someone else seeing the current user's back...  but as demonstrated, that would straight-up kill the current user. And that's the setup for next episode!


Overall, I think Enigma is a pretty complex Stand that... that doesn't quite live up to how it's built-up, and ends up feeling a lot more underwhelming than it could've been. The way the fight was resolved also felt kind of anticlimactic, although Yuya does end up growing some balls and doing something positively awesome. It's a decent, if not spectacular, fight. Definitely agree that intercutting it with the Super Fly and Cheap Trick storylines definitely worked for the better of the Enigma fight for sure -- it definitely felt like it ran a bit too long in the manga, and pacing it a bit faster like this is definitely for the better.


The JoJo Playlist:

• Cheap Trick, first named in this episode, is a reference to the American rock band of the same name. Selected songs include the Flame, Surrender and Don't Be Cruel.