JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S03E34 Review: Watch My Back

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Episode 34: July 15th Thursday, Pt. 4

So this episode deals with Rohan's struggles against Cheap Trick, and is the last real "villain of the week" until the final climax of Diamond is Unbreakable. And I do really love the setup of this four-part "July 15th, Thursday" multi-parter. It does make the buildup for the relatively less interesting Cheap Trick and Enigma arc take place in the background of Super Fly, while at the same time ramping up tension and making it look like Yoshihiro has unleashed multiple villains simultaneously, really ramping up the tension of the events going on.

The buildup to Cheap Trick being split up into smaller scenes over three episodes also makes that particular arc feel a lot less repetitive -- and cutting out a significant portion of the repetitive "Cheap Trick fucks with Rohan" scenes from the manga definitely makes the arc flow fairly better. The episode starts off with basically establishing that Rohan is, for the most part, on his own, with Koichi dismissing Rohan as "messing with (him)". It's a bit bizarre -- Rohan's eccentric, but he never really struck me as the prankster type, and considering the shit Koichi's been through -- he spent much of the day as a folded piece of paper -- it's a bit bizarre that Koichi would not actually believe Rohan's words.

The majority of this episode just takes a look at Rohan as he ostensibly makes to go to Jotaro and enlist his help in removing Cheap Trick, doing some fun bits like sticking to some dude and walking back-to-back as he crosses a street, as well as putting instructions in the other dude with Heaven's Door to make sure he doesn't turn back. Rohan's next obstacle turns out to be cats and dogs that Cheap Trick summoned (he can talk to animals... somehow?) but it's at this point that Koichi shows up to save him. But Cheap Trick is actually stuck straight-up to Rohan's back, and Koichi's attempt to use Echoes to rip Cheap Trick off of Rohan's back damages him. "S.H.I.T." indeed.

And then Rohan seems to go crazy as he shows his back to Koichi... but turns out that they're in the ghost alley, and the whole uniqueness and bizarreness of the alley means that... it can just steal the 'soul' of Cheap Trick without affecting Rohan? It's kind of strange, I guess, but I do feel that it's in keeping with the genuine bizarreness of the ghost alley. Bit of a deus ex machina, but it's not like the episode didn't have foreshadowing, with the background being pretty distinctive even as Rohan tiptoes towards the ghost alley. Reimi also makes a brief appearance, noting how "weird" the photograph of Kosaku is among Rohan's collection of photographs.

Ultimately, it's a pretty simple resolution to an arc that's mostly a combination of comedy and horror. The rest of the episode focuses on Kira, who ends up meeting a douchebag couple in the bus that bumps into him, calls him a loser, and generally behaves like a douchebag... and, of course, Killer Queen strikes, and it's a pretty badass and horrifying bit as Kira just stalks into the house, vaporizes the rude boyfriend with a simple touch to the face, and then he just acts like a complete psychopath as he orders the girl to cut his nails, gives him some literal EAR-rings, and then we get her blowing up off-screen as the camera focuses on her hand. Pretty brutal and badass...

But apparently this got caught on tape by Hayato, and Kira realizes that Hayato is running away from the apartment complex with a video camera. Hayato doesn't realize what's going on, why this man-who-isn't-his-father-but-looks-like-his-father can vaporize people.... and we get a genuinely uncomfortable scene as Kira steps into the bath with Hayato, pretending to be his father (while both of them clearly know what's going on, while keeping up the charade) while Hayato is hiding the incriminating videotape. Kira then gets dangerous, noting how he's going to have to kill Hayato, by staging an accident that makes it look like he tripped and fell and broke his head.


And then Hayato drops his own bombshell, noting that he's going to protect his mother, and that he's videotaping the room. It's this little cliffhanger that we leave the Kawajiri family on, and it's a pretty badass one -- Hayato's been more of an irritant than a likable character, but it's hard not to root for the little guy when Kira's at his most psychotic in this episode, while Hayato is, well, just a kid trying to survive. Overall, this episode, again, does some really great buildup with the Kira/Hayato stuff while wrapping up the Cheap Trick stuff. Next up... the multi-part finale!