Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable vol. 1

Our long national nightmare is over!

No, not that one.

I’m talking about how it’s been almost three years since we’ve had any new “Jojo’s” stories in print.  The last volume of “Battle Tendency” came out in August 2016 and since then Viz has been dutifully reprinting the entirety of “Stardust Crusaders” in the now-standard expanded hardcover format.  This was great for those who had been buying the series in this format.  Those of us who had picked up the sixteen-volume softcover version that was released during the manga boom were either left to re-buy a story we had already read or wait it out until Viz made it to the next part.  They finally have and now we can all bask in the gloriously ridiculous, over-the-top, and horror-infused action that makes “Jojo” so great.

The series opens in the small town of Morioh, which looks to be as close to the idea of “Japanese Suburbs” as I’ve seen in manga.  This is where new series protagonist Josuke Higashikata lives and while he’s normally a gentle and friendly person, his wrath is unleashed the moment that someone… insults his hairdo.  That Josuke is kind of ridiculous is the impression that Jotaro Joestar gets upon their first meeting. What’s the former protagonist of this series doing in Morioh? Looking to address some family drama that his grandfather’s will stirred up and to find out what another Stand user is doing there.

If Jotaro’s presence didn’t give things away, this series has much closer ties to “Stardust Crusaders” than I was expecting.  Not only does Jotaro figure into a significant portion of this volume, but the main plot revolves around the origins of Stands themselves.  I was honestly surprised that this was the case as the previous storylines were all generally stand-alone tales that didn’t pick up directly from what had come before.

It makes sense that mangaka Hirohiko Araki would want to have things play out this way.  “Stardust Crusaders” was an enormously popular arc, the definitive “Jojo” saga, that its readers followed for years as it was serialized.  You don’t follow up a storyline like that by making a clean break for the new one. So Jotaro is on hand to ensure a peaceful transition from one storyline to the next, and from one protagonist to another.

It’s a generally successful transition, all things told.  Where the previous arc was an epic globetrotting adventure, this new one is basically a small-town horror story.  I like to think of “Jojo” as the answer to the question, “What if Stephen King wrote for Shonen Jump?” and this volume really nails that ideal.  It’s got the high-intensity action and stylized/stylish artwork that you’d expect from a Jump title, but it also has the ordinary people grappling with the supernatural and creatively horrific setups that mark King’s work.  (Both, however, love to traffic in over-the-top gore in case you were wondering.)

So when the first big bad of the arc, a child serial killer who didn’t die by hanging and now has a Stand that can travel through water, shows up he feels right at home in this world.  Same goes for the brothers in the volume’s second half whose Stands have abilities that the reader is best left to discover for themselves. While there is plenty of punching involved in taking these bad guys down, the real appeal of any fight in “Jojo” is in seeing how the protagonist or his friends are able to out-think their opponent.  That remains true here even if some of the methods feel like they’re stretching suspension of disbelief or are being just plain confusing.

As for “Diamond is Unbreakable’s” protagonist, Josuke is a likeable dork.  He’s a good son, always sticks up for and stands by his friends, and never loses his cool unless someone insults his hairdo.  Which, of course, happens a lot over the course of this volume. Likeable he may be, Josuke is also a fairly standard shonen protagonist when you think about it.  That’s probably for the best since it helps to have a conventionally likeable lead given the crazy situations and action this series loves to indulge in.

More interesting is his diminutive friend Koichi who we’re introduced to on the very first story page.  Given his stature and lack of real relevance to the plot, he might as well be wearing a redshirt under his school blazer.  Everything about him says that he’s going to die at some point in order to save Josuke’s life or provide the motivation he needs to beat a key opponent.  Is that what happens here? Well, it’s possible that Araki was aware of how his readers might regard Koichi and decided to do something different with him here.  It involves an egg and I’m curious and also a bit terrified to find out what’s inside of it.

Overall, this first volume of “Diamond is Unbreakable” is a solid start for this new arc of “Jojo.”  I like the small-town horror vibe the series traffics in and even if Josuke may be a fairly conventional protagonist, he works well within the story.  “Stardust Crusaders’” legacy looms large over and within this new storyline, yet I think Araki has found a way to keep things interesting by going smaller instead of bigger.