In the last few volumes of Stardust Crusaders, the color scans team was trying to avoid coloring quite a bit of landscape, architecture, & interiors, but they're back in full force on Diamond is Unbreakable, & the decision to make the sidewalks brown really makes the city of Morioh pop in a nice way, like you wish you could be there.
This series feels very experimental. For irony, Jotaro telling Josuke he can't bring his dead grandfather back to life when he himself did that very thing last series. Why didn't Dio's blood make Joseph immortal? Most of the people who make fun of Josuke's hair are the pot calling the kettle black. In SDC Jotaro was overshadowed by Polnareff & Joseph. Here, he outshines Josuke. This series also has an overall more toned down feel to it, like it went from Seinen to Shounen. The art is more cartoony & there's a drastic reduction in animal deaths. Josuke has some unique abilities that feel inconsistent with the rules set in Stardust Crusaders, like being able to turn a man into a living inorganic object or destroying a stand without killing the user. The character designs are also inconsistant.
Josuke is a very unique protagonist for a 90s shounen series. He frets over his hair & clothes, & you can bet if he doesn't wake up early to spend hours in the bathroom, then he sees a hairdresser every morning, is squeemish around reptiles, amphibians, rodents, bugs, & ghosts, gets angry if anything happens to his hair, cries if his shoes get wet, spends his allowance on clothing, buys fashion catalogues, is more of a nurse than fighter. He's a metrosexual delinquent Yankii, with his gambling & get-rich-quick schemes, & he's surely ditched classes to fight stands. The same hobbies & habits carry over to the lead antagonist Kira, whom is an Ikemen salaryman. Kira refers to himself in the 3rd person more than Dio ever did, likes to remind the audience of his name & stand abilities every 5min, & we get to see him butt-nakked a lot.
Josuke takes after Joseph in having inconsistent levels of intelligence, with most of his brain power working under pressure in deadly situations. A good chunk of Josuke's plans backfire in his face, he frequently resorts to cheating, he's admittedly bad at math, & he has a repeat habit of ignoring warnings & leaping without looking, but he always has a battle plan & can come up with several back-ups on the fly.
Gotta say, I was actually impressed by how Araki turned a healer into an effective combatant. RPG creators should read JoJo & take notes.
While the school chapters of Stardust Crusaders reminded me of the 1990 manga Yu Yu Hakusho, this kicks it up to 11. Okuyasu is Polnareff + Kuwabara. I can also see how Koichi could have potentially inspired Yuugi from the 1996 Yugioh manga. Koichi initially rubbed me the wrong way because literally eveyone, even enemies, want to be his friend, & it comes off a bit like the Everyman protagonist in a harem series or a Gary Stu. However, this is offset by his (& Okuyasu's) role as the unfortunate "chew toy" of the series.Koichi ends up being the deuteragonist of the series, getting as much screen time as Polnareff & frequently overshadowing Josuke. He grows on you.
The first boss villain is in volume 4. She looks like Rule 63 Jotaro, but has Rohan's rude personality & obsessive single-minded determination. Despitether JoJo fans may tell you, she is NOT the first-year yandere, as goddesses & ghosts is various countries mythologies had such obsessive personalities. Her stand is based on a mythological monster woman called Harionago. Her second character arc reminds me of this old Anne Rice book where the witch uses magic to force her love interest to fall for her, but when this is revealed to the love interest, he chooses to stay with her anyway. & I hated that book, so I hated this chapter for reminding me of it.
There's a character named Toshikazu Hazamada who has the most inconsistent character design between his introduction, his battle, & his return. Dude grew his hair out, started wearing makeup, lost half his height & most of his muscle. He started off relatively realistic & transformed into a cartoonish charicature. When he & Hirose are standing next to Rohan, you can already see the jarring transition of the impending art shift, as Rohan & the boys are drawn so differently, Rohan looking more traditional Araki at this point, that they look like they do not belong in the same manga.
Rohan is often referred to as Araki's self-insert character & true favorite JoJo, because he's the only one to get any spin-offs. His clothing is teetering on the edge of avant garde & is apparently the only person in Marioh with more than one outfit in his closet. His characteristic style is a crown headband, fountain pen earrings, rediculously oversized pants, visible boxer shorts, & exposed abs.
This isn't anywhere near as funny as Stardust Crusaders, but the "Let's Go Eat Italian" arc gave me a good laugh & reminded me of Toriko. Another thing I liked about volume 5 was that it showed another healing stand user who abilities work very differently from Josuke's. Another funny chapter is "I Am an Alien."
Morioh, aka Duwang, is a time capsule of Meiji &/or Taisho period Sendai, built before & during the time America had flappers & speakeasies. If you were to visit Sendai today, you'd have a hard time finding the remains of the Edwardian homes & shops with big yards & spacious streets. There was however a Lawson store that changed it's name to Owson in honor of the JoJo franchise. It also gets bonus points for looking more hand-drawn, as mangas & webtoons barely try to kids the fact that they all trace over photographs. The one thing Araki can't draw is blood.
Going back to Stardust Crusaders' animal stand users, there is a rat in volume 7 that would have made for an interesting horror B movie.
Jotaro & Josuke don't really have a friendly or familial bond. They just kind of tollerate each other.
like a teacher & a student. The only thing Jotaro & Josuke have in common is the ability to use stands, a personal attachment to school uniforms, & that they wear rediculously expensive designer & custom clothing with taudry gold bling. You think they could at least hang out & buy shoes together.
Shigeshi's Harvest is an arc that likes to remind you that Okuyasu & Josuke are still delinquents & antiheroes, because no one was in the right on this chapter. This also has one of the top 3 most excruciating character deaths since Cars & Danny.
Kira's Stand looks like Mewtwo wearing crotches leather boxer shorts & bondage gloves. Koichi's stand evolves 3 times like a Pokemon.
Sheer Heart Attack had quite a few chuckleworthy moments. Kira's humiliation konga at the cafe, Koichi might not be as straight-edgedvas he seems, since he managed to swipe Kira's wallet effortlessly. Kira gets obsessive compulsive can't bring himself to kick Koichi's ass until he's fixed Koichi's socks. Jotaro stands there gushing fountains of blood making fun of Kira's watch. In "The Cat Who Loved Kira," Kira almost gets his ass handed to him by a tiny flower.
Hayato was a good example of how to put a genius kid in a series without trying to outshine the hero. Too bad this series came our long after Wesley Crusher; Gene Roddenberry could have taken notes.
Drinking game: Any time someone insults Josuke's hair. Any time something bad happens to someone's hand.
I recommend reading Araki's "Under Exicution, Under Jailbreak" one shot afterwards to find out what happened to Kira after this.
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