Why You Should Watch/ Read Jojos Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable

imagine being Hirohito rocky at the conclusion of part three what it would have been like watching the final chapter of Stardust Crusaders be published and be faced with the question of what comes next where do you go after Jotaro after do after the introduction of stands in a story that spawned entire continents and in the process forever changed battle manga well if you're Iraqi the answer is simple you make one of the best goddamn things you've ever made you make part four I love parts one two three but I do feel like you could still see Iraqi struggling with the different elements of the story in each respective one part ones reactionary protagonist part two so so villains and the litany of more minor issues that plagued part three but part 4 part four feels like the culmination of all Iraqis work up until this points it's every mistake he's made and every lesson he's learned from it and the result is a story that feels bold different and confidence and the thing that differentiates Diamond is unbreakable from its predecessors is actually something really simple scale parts one two three with these grand epic globe-spanning journeys ones that culminated in world-shattering clashes of good and evil whose outcome dictated the destiny of the entire planet but in part 4 part 4 is downright intimate by comparison the entire series takes place in a single sleepy town and the events that transpire here don't change the fate of humanity or even have any bearing on any future parts it's just the story of a couple of bizarre months in the quiet town of morio the story begins with previous protagonists Jotaro Kujo traveling to morio in the hopes of defeating a stand wielding serial killer who's recently escaped from prison and it's here he meets josuke higashikata the Jojo of this part who is actually JoJo's estranged uncle it's complicated and from the outset josuke feels entirely different from the previous protagonists when we first meet him he's being bullied by older students and then after a brief misunderstanding gets his face punched in by Jotaro but this is actually important to showing what kind of character josuke is as it immediately establishes the josuke is not the invincible badass that Giotto was instead he's just a teenager and so is Jojo but only really in age as we never got to see him actually act like it the mere presence of do in part three as well as the ticking clock on Holly's life meant that the entire focus of Stardust Crusaders plot involved getting to do as quickly as possible and each encounter along the way only served to bring Joe drew closer to the points and while there is danger in part four there is no world ending threat and this frees josuke from having to be the more traditional kind of hero and instead we get to just watch him go to school and hang out at cafes and play video games we get to see him as a teenager and overall he just feels like a kinder gentler Jojo and what's cool is how this manifests in his stand crazy diamond whose primary skill is to return objects to the way they once were which serves two functions one it provides some creative options in combat encounters and two and more importantly it allows josuke to heal people of their injuries but critically he cannot heal himself this is important because this means Jose K's primary stand ability necessitates a degree of selflessness in the character while also meaning that josuke is at his most effective combat wise when allied with other stand users which is appropriate because a major theme in part 4 is friendship while friendship was a big part of the previous series it always seemed to feed back into the main character's motivation as opposed to being a theme in and of itself take for example the deaths of Dyer Cesar Abdul Iggy and kakuhen all characters who were killed in order to further motivate the heroes of their respective stories to take down the but in part for Joe's Kay's friends play a much more central role in the narrative with a much stronger sense that these are characters who spend time together purely because they enjoy each other's company and not in the pursuit of a larger goal which gives this really Pleasant nearly slice of life style feeling to the occurrences of part four and it's fun watching the different relationships that form between the different characters like Rohan's intense dislike of josuke or joe's Kay's exuberant friendship with Oh chi-su this dynamic also makes it feel far less like just josuke story and instead like a far broader narrative concentrating on a group of friends with the point of view occasionally switching entirely to that of other characters you can see this especially early on with cuicci he's actually the first character we meas and the opening chapter actually takes place from his point of view he initially takes these speedwagon escrow love running commentator but over the course of the series he evolves and develops in a way that feels more typical to they standard shown hero than even josuke with his own character arc relationships and power of moments that effectively move the character out of Joe's case shadow and lets him emerge as something more than just a standard sidekick I could say similar things about nearly every other major cast member of part 4 but my personal favorites are Kay Sheba Rohan and okie Yasuni jhamora Rohan is an especially interesting character as many see him as a self-insert for a Rakhi and this adds up he is an eccentric hyper skilled manga artist but I think more specifically what Rohan is and what makes him so damn fascinating is that he's a distillation of Iraqis philosophy towards creating manga in Iraqis book manga in theory and practice which is a fantastic resource everyone should read Iraqi talks about how to be a manga author you need to sustain an infinite curiosity for the world around you and that curiosity is the very basis of Roland's character in particular in the infamous scene where he cuts open a spider and licks it purely to gain a deeper understanding of how the creature works internally so he can more accurately depicted and languor I it's this obsessive curiosity that drives personality but is also expressed through his stand heavens door which transforms people's bodies into grotesque books allowing Rohan to read their life story and peer into the very fiber of their being and so it's the same character trait that defines him as a person drives his stand and even brings him into conflict with josuke as Rowan develops an unhealthy obsession with Quechee tearing his pages out for study setting up for a gruesome but striking introduction but also giving great insight into how Rohan works internally Rohan also appears to be one of Iraqis favorite characters in all of Jo Jo's which he himself denies but this picture he drew of himself and Rohan hugging says otherwise but it's also led to Rohan starring in several of his own one-shot stories such as millionaire's village and Rohan at the Louvre I think the latter is especially interesting as it takes place 10 years after the events of Diamond is unbreakable and it has this particularly beautiful little spread where a crying woman collapses into Rohan's arms and his first instinct is to use heaven's door to find out what's wrong with her but then he decides it wouldn't be right to peer into her without her consents something that never would have occurred to the Rohan apart for like in the 10 years between the two events he's learned to respect the boundaries of others this scene is also emblematic of something Iraq adores like few others his ability to believably age and mature characters Jotaro in part 4 is still the same stoic badass we came to know from part 3 but he's also significantly kinder and softer this time around which I like to believe is a change brought about by the concluding events of part 3 but I might be reading too much into that but it results in Jo trow feeling like a supportive cooler older brother to the younger cast of part 4 I'm especially fond of one scene in particular midway through episode 2 where Jo dro displays a warmth and compassion towards josuke that was never present in starters Crusaders Joseph Joestar also returns but in an older frail erstes but his treatment is a little more melancholic we've watched this character grow throughout his entire life and watch reaches twilight years and lose the ability to engage in stand battles is oddly moving but it's also a little sad in particular in the scenes where he struggles to relate to josuke who is his estranged son and it gives this real bittersweet tinge to the pair's reunion as well as their interactions that follow their feels like much more of a willingness to explore these kind of complicated familial relationships this time around something that would be further explored by the protagonists of part 5 and 6 but is also present in my dear sweet idiot boy oku Yasu he enters the story as a minor villain in the show's second arc but does so under the manipulation of his sinister older brother Kaito Kaito soon exits the story leaving oka Yasu alone without anyone to really anchor him which is a problem as under his own admission oka Yasu is not especially intelligent and has difficulty making decisions for himself and so nearly immediately after their battle concludes okay yeah Superfriends josuke in a way that's kind of comical but it also makes you feel a little bad for the character it's like he really just needs someone to ground him and doesn't want to be alone this same simple nature that makes him both comedic and endearing is also a trait that defines his battle style o kiasu stand is the hand which has the rather terrifying ability to erase anything it touches which is potentially an ability that is insanely overpowered but it's limited by okie AHS whose basic straightforward outlook with him often trying to crush his opponents with direct frontal attacks as opposed to using any strategy and you can really see him struggle when his opponents make use of the more complicated mind games that are inherent to stand battles and so just like josuke and Rohan there's an internal consistency to okie Yasu the character trait that limits his potentially overpowered stand is the same characteristic that defines him as a person and also what leads him to fighting and then befriending josuke if it feels like I'm spending a lot of time breaking down these characters well I I am but I think it's important to highlight just how much more developed they are than the cast of previous parts I couldn't write paragraphs like this on a VL kakuhen or pollen arif because the same level of writing and nuance just isn't there and as results the cast apart for feel a lot more fully formed which means that when Stan battles do happen were a lot more invested in the fate of these characters and incidentally the writing behind the Stan battles has also greatly improved the abilities of the Stan's tend to be a lot more reflective of their users personalities and a lot less directly suited to combat but this allows for a lot more creativity in the encounters as there's now a much greater emphasis on stand users manipulating their opponents into the hyper specific situations where their stands will be most effective take for example Kobayashi stand lock lock has the ability to manifest a giant lock on people's chest that grows larger and heavier than guilty or the victim feels so Kobayashi she's battle style is to manipulate his target into feeling as much guilt as possible activate his stand and then extort them for his own gain as we see in his showdown with Koichi where he inflicts his stand on queeg's mother and sister in an attempt to have them sign over the property rights to their house I see this fight as particularly important in the evolution of part 4 as it's not directly really a fight at all Locke's objective isn't to harm Koichi or his family his objective is to steal their home and cuicci in turn isn't trying to kill Locke he just wants to get him to stop targeting his family compare that to these simpler battles of part 3 where every enemy stand user is a service of do and the objective is always to eliminate Joe drone Co but by contrast the lack of a central uniting villain in part 4 means that each individual villain has their own specific reasons for encountering our heroes such as UK Co falling in love with Koichi and then kidnapping him in one of my favorite arcs of the entire series her motive isn't simply to eliminate our heroes and she's not a pawn of a larger villain she is just an admittedly unhinged person doing what makes sense to her which makes her battle with Koichi and how she applies her stand feel entirely different from any other encounter and it's this kind of writing that constantly leads to part fours less kin setups scenarios like let's go eat Italian food Kashima Rohan's adventure or I am an alien don't even really have battles or enemy stand users instead the focus of these arcs is just on our heroes exploring more EO and encountering the various oddities that exist within it and as results they're some of the most unique and enjoyable of the entire series now don't get me wrong it's still JoJo's it still has invisible ghost aliens beating the [ __ ] out of people and in one case a plate of spaghetti and it still occasionally dives headlong into nightmarish horror but the increased focus on its characters and the more distinctive encounters means that we get a JoJo's that's far less focused on a typical good versus evil story and one that's a lot more a bit exploring what it's like to be a teenager living in the town of Mario and in the process creating a beautifully enjoyable hybrid of the most bizarre slice of life series that's ever existed crossed with all the battle based excitement you'd expect from a JoJo's part 4 also serves as a pivotal milestone for rocky as an artist from Part 1 all the way through to the currently running part age you can see a massive change in how a rocky draws his characters which we've talked about a lot in previous videos but what's fascinating about part 4 is that it's the direct center point of this artistic shift and I don't mean that numerically you can literally watch Rocky's character work for softer looser and more expressive over the course of Diamond is unbreakable leaving behind the more manly 80s style taking on a look that would become more representives later work part 4 is also where you can really see a rocky starting to play around with character design integrating the core themes of the story into the look of its different characters for example take the concept of inheritance or passing the torch a central theme in the broader Jojo story and just look at how he works it into Joe's keys design whereas Jonathan and Joseph were made to look nearly identical as to assure readers it was in fact the same series Joe's case design feels more like a direct evolution of Joe Rose Joe draw was designed around the concept of banjo strong silent linked ones who were especially popular and Japanese fiction in the late 70s however in the 80s the Bancho fell out of fashion and were replaced by the Yankee a different kind of delinquent which were the more rebellious brosher and disrespectful evolution of the poncho and it's the Yankee that Joe skis look is based off with the more flamboyant clothing and pompadour style hair and so you can see the generational shift between Bancho and Yankee expressed through the designs of Joe and Joe ski which to a Japanese public at least would have really effectively signified that josuke is a more modern version of Joe Rowe Araki would continue to play with this concept of evolving character designs a lot more with later protagonists like here the empty space on Joe's Ches chest forms a heart motif in Joe's case design and that motif is then tightened up Frazier knows design before becoming a solid stone in Jolene's and I love this as it's so effectively establishes a visual through line between these four characters linking their appearances but also effectively visually conveying their familial bloodline and shared destiny the shift in art style I imagine would have given David productions the studio behind the anime adaptations some difficulties do they go with the earlier style that's more in line with previous series or the softer artwork part forward eventually evolved into and somewhat controversially their decision seems to be to lean more towards the latter but isn't one 1/2 percent faithful to either and while I do understand the criticisms to me an adaptation should alter the aesthetic of the source material in order to properly take advantage of the medium it's being adapted into and it's for this reason I think the adaptation of part 4 is not only successful but God down beautiful it has its caveats which we'll get into but its strength is how it uses animation and film to really accentuate the bizarre carefree feeling of diamond is not crush and one of the main ways you can see this isn't the editing it's coming for scenes and shots to believe together creating this newly surreal dreamlike experience like take for example this shot of Joe Joe in his hotel he hangs up the phone in his hotel room and then climbs down into a taxi that's waiting for him outside his hotel they're easy to miss but moments like this create a playful quality to how part 4 moves between shots and locations and it both serves to keep the action flowing nicely in the action scenes while also giving this amazing bizarre atmosphere to the town of Mario like it's a place where the laws of time and space don't really apply the same playfulness carries right through to every part of the show's art direction and in particular the use of color rather than grounding the show's palette in any semblance of sanity Mario is a town exploding with eccentric color choices a place of yellow skies and purple trees whose pilots swim and flow too much the emotion and intensity of a given scene interestingly this color treatment actually ties directly into a Rocky's own philosophy regarding color he stated in several interviews how he doesn't view his world or characters with any consistent color palette rather in his mind a character's color is dictated by the emotion and environment of scene and the anime plays with this ethos in a way that black and white manga never could even the line work the characters are rendered in has the same hyper stylized quality with the character art often being drawn in beautifully rhythmic thick black lines giving the character art a fun eccentric nearly pop art style vibe that feels inspired by artists like Roy Lichtenstein this is taken to a gorgeous ludicrous extreme in some of the shows lavishly Illustrated still shots which combined the beautiful line work and vibrant color design to create images that are so striking that I don't even care that they're barely moving and even on that fronts while the movements of the characters is generally pretty limited these simpler character designs do allow for the show to occasionally really bring it animation wise with intense bursts of sakuga punctuating many of the show's action scenes so with all this in mind manga or anime well they both have their strengths and weaknesses the advantage of the manga is the same advantage of any manga you're experiencing the story exactly from the author 100% how they intended and for as much as I'm going to praise the anime there's areas where it does fall short the manga and one area it especially does is in some of the facial illustration and particularly in the facial model of Yoshi cog Akira in the manga Akira has this serene yet threatening Beauty that makes the character both alluring and frightening but that sense never really comes across in the anime which is a real shame given how important he is to the story but I also do wonder if this change was made in an attempt to not get sued by David Boies it stays part 4 is also the most pivotal part in terms of Iraqis evolution as an artist so if you have any investment in him specifically the manga is the way to go the only real drawback of the manga is that the story drags in the third quarter with a few bottles that really feel like padding which is frustrating especially as it's leading into the final conflicts thankfully this same section has been heavily edited down and restructured in the anime and the story flows a lot better because of it the anime also features some additional scenes and stylistic flourishes that I feel are really great additions even just small touches like this shot of Jos Kaede jumping down the stairs exactly how I used to when I was a teenager before my bones had withered to dust and ash switches like this alongside the show strong production and yet another phenomenal soundtrack means that overall the anime is an extremely strong package but there is unfortunately the occasional nosedive in quality one scene in particular being the Shinobu and kira bedroom scene this is one of my favorite scenes from the manga as it's so palpable with tension and danger but the horribly off-model characters and weak storyboarding completely squanders any impact the scene would have these issues were however actually completely remedied by the edits made to the blu-ray version but unfortunately that's not the version available on crunchyroll and the blu-ray has not got a release in the West so if you want to experience the anime in all its glory you're going to have to get a little tricky you're gonna have to fire it ultimately I don't think you can really go wrong with either version but personally I did enjoy my rewatch of the anime more than I did my reread of the manga but that's with the caveat of it being the blu-ray version and not the original broadcast there is one final element to this story that we still need to talk about one critical piece of the puzzle that's missing and it is Yosh a cog a Kyra we already spoke about Kyra as an individual in our video on villains but I think what's nearly more interesting is the larger effect Kyra has on the overall story we made Kara halfway through part four and by introducing him so lace it lets us get to know Morial without Kyra we get to experience the fun bizarre side of life in this town the carefree existence of josuke and his friends and so when Kyra is introduced and immediately kills one of those friends and is revealed to be the serial killer behind the disappearances he shatters that existence we share in the shock and heartbreak of our heroes Kyra's existence scars Mario he destroys the carefree reality we'd been enjoying up until this points at 33 years old Kyra has lived in morio his entire life during which time he's murdered dozens and dozens of women severing their hands and becoming romantically involved with them he serves as the central villain for the story second half but that said he's an entirely different kind of villain to do ore cars those were villains who were loud and charismatic ones who rallied entire armies and were obsessed with proving their superiority over our heroes but Kyra is different he doesn't want glory or a following or to take over the world all he wants is to continue to live quietly in the shadows and destroy as many lives as possible victory or success aren't important Kyra in fact he completely avoids any action that could draw attention to himself something we get a disturbing window into when later on in the series our protagonist explores home and a paints the picture of a bizarre plastic existence he spent his entire life aiming to be forgotten achieving to the point that he's accepted by his peers but never excelling enough to properly stand out as we can see from his collection of third-place trophies and modest academic accomplishments even positioning himself in photographs as to blend in as much as possible it's this social camouflage that I think makes Kyra's so unsettling and there's a number of scenes that play with this directly where heroes encounter Kara out in public but have no idea it's him oblivious to the fact that the killer they've been searching for is hiding boldly in plain sight and there's something so alien and frightening about that and at the heart of why Kara feels so threatening he's the guy at the office you never really speak to the stranger who sits next to you on the bus that feeling that we never really know what's going through the minds of the people around us or what might be happening behind closed doors in the homes of our neighbors he's that deeply unsettling fear personified he is the dark heart of suburban existence this concept gets explored even further later on in the story but be warned were about to go into some major spoiler territory eventually our heroes managed to track down Kira and after a grueling battle expose his identity and managed to corner him but then in a last-minute act of gruesome desperation he escapes but for one brief moments the camouflaged Kira has spent his entire life building up comes crumbling down around him as he staggers down the street battered and blood-soaked only then in a last-ditch effort to blend back into society Kira kills a man and in the process steals his face identity and takes over his life completely disappearing into society once again and I love this turn in the story because it both establishes Kira's horrifying tenacity and ability to survive while also introducing the narrative of Hayatou the son of the man Kira murdered and his identity he stolen Hayatou begins to suspect that his father despite looking exactly the same may not be who he used to be and start recording Kira's every move what's interesting though and this is just my own speculation is that the idea of this arc seems to be based on the psychiatric condition known as the Capgras delusion a delusion where a person believes that someone close to them has been replaced by an identical impostor and I think that's an amazing concept to work into Kara's character as it takes his ability of hiding in plain sight to a horrifying new extreme as our heroes slowly begin to track down Kira Hayatou uncovers his secret and the results in conflict forces Kira stands to evolved a horrifying new ability bite the dust which to dramatically oversimplify traps anyone who discovers Kira's identity in a time loop in which they are murdered over and over and over giving Kira a seemingly perfect defense against our heroes and making for one of the most tense and desperate final battles of this or any other series but it's also in this final battle that we can see the true strength of is breakable and it's a battle that develops and delivers on all the themes the series has been building up to until this burns as unlike previous arcs it's not merely a one-on-one fight between hero and villain but instead everyone together trying to survive against Kira's nightmare with each character having their own role to play in the war against him in other words the friendship and spirit that's formed between Jose Camus friends versus the perverse invincible solitude that Kira has surrounded himself with and it's a fight that's not only desperate and exciting but feels more thematically resonance than any finale that's come before it's not merely hero versus villain but a community of people coming together in an attempt to eradicate a deep insidious evil that's rooted itself in their society and I think that's a really powerful story to tell more than anything else though part 4 feels like the culmination of everything Iraqis been working towards both being an incredibly fun and spirited slice of life slash battle series crossed with a deeply dark and horrifying look at the most insidious parts of suburban life and the resulting battle when those worlds collide this is why part 4 is my favorite part this is why you should watch slash read JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 4 diamond is unbreakable friends thank you once again for joining me today and in case you missed it I'm gonna be at Magfest I'd like to do a meet-up at some point so if you're interested want to come along do follow me on Twitter also if you'd like to do your boy I Apache wolf a little holiday solid and help support the channel then consider heading over to patreon.com/scishow I will of course be back in the new year but in the meantime I invite you to come hang out at the let's fight a boss video game podcast friends enjoy doing whatever it is you like doing this holiday season take care of yourselves and I'll see you next year [Music]

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,829,837

Keywords: Jojos Bizzare Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable, Yosikage Kira, Kira Part 4, Kira Jojo, Josuke Jojo, Josuke part 4, Diamond is Unbreakable, Jojo part 4

Id: 8xFZgPclu3c

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/blockington99]

Prior to watching this video I couldn't really describe well why I like Part 4, now I can.

[u/JoeScotterpuss]

How have I never seen that picture of Araki and Rohan? That's fucking great!

[u/jet_slizer]

He said in his last q/a that he wasn't making a DiU video that sly cocksucker crushing and then rebuilding my dreams

[u/AzuresX19]

Just watched this video, it really explains and shows why I love DIU so much, it's a great video.

[u/whenismynamecool]

WHAT IS THAT SICK PICTURE OF KIRA/KILLER QUEEN

[u/jormahoo]

Eyepatch Wolf's video sare always so great.

[u/Weewer]

I have to commend SEW for writing such a fantastic script. It perfectly encapsulates why Part 4 is my favorite piece of fiction, and why it means so much to me. The tone, the creative battles that show Araki finally getting a mastery over his ideas, the clashing themes, the wonderful characters and bold, intense stories. Part 4 is incredibly important to me.

[u/Rem-san]

I love yoshikage kira

[u/Dlark17]

Uuuugh... I wish I had Wolf's skill at articulation. This guy is a master.