JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

Production

All Jojo seasons are very striking. From the angular art style with heavy linework, the outrageous character designs to the LSD-inspired colours. Once you’ve seen Jojo’s Bizzare adventure, you can instantly recognize a screencap of the show, regardless of how featureless it may be. Diamond is Unbreakable is no different. You can see that it’s a Jojo series.

However, I actually liked the art style a touch less here. The characters are a bit more rounded off and softer. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it simply didn’t appeal to me as much. Jotaru kept looking just a little off and I never got used to it.

This said it’s a great production and very striking as usual. I don’t have any actual complaints. David productions who are also behind Fire Force can create some luxurious visual feasts when they want to.

Story & Characters

You know what, I’m just going to say it, Diamond is Unbreakable was my favourite season of Jojo’s Bizzare adventures yet. And that came as a surprise. Let me try to elaborate, it’s not that I preferred the characters. I liked them, but I like the characters every season. I think Jonathan was my favourite since he’s the biggest dork of all of them. Also, I found Crazy Diamond a touch overpowered and sort of an all-purpose ex machina that had the potential to destroy all the tension in the series.

Oh and I should say, I really didn’t care for how they treated the returning Joestars. Jotaro was reduced to an exposition machine half the time and had almost no personality to speak of. And for some reason they decided to character assassinate Joseph (I loved old Joseph) by turning him into a doddering old fool and a philanderer who abandoned his own son. He was pleasant enough during the series but it just didn’t work at all with the character we had gotten to know in past series.

Yet, despite all that, I still really liked Diamond is Unbreakable. A lot. The suburban setting was more fun to me and I think we had some of the best villains the series has had to offer this season. Also, the narrative structure peppered in a lot more random slice of life type episodes, I guess you could call them filler but most of them served to advance the story and develop the characters in some way.

It made the pacing more dynamic and I got to know these characters in a more balanced way than I did in previous seasons when they were constantly fighting for their lives. There are even some aliens and time travel shenanigans towards the end of the series. In fact, in some of the last episodes, those shenanigans spill over into the OP which is rearranged a few times. I always love when shows do that. It’s a very soft 4th wall break that shows just a little extra attention and care from the part of the production.

Even though the internet tells me Diamond is Unbreakable is a drama, I watched it as a parody like I watch all Jojo series. A smart and exuberant exaggeration of the shonen genre which is as hilarious as it is witty. And in that regard, all the points that I liked less simply work.

The overpowered nature of the main character is part of the joke, and they did manage to balance out Crazy Diamond surprisingly well by making his power not work on Josuke. The inconsistency with past characters is also a staple of the soap opera-like elements of long-running shonen and to see it highlighted bluntly made me smile. Even though I really liked old Joseph and I wish they had let him go out with a bit more dignity.

Also, the last OP of Diamond is Unbreakable is my favourite Jojo OP so far. I’m still humming it! And the main character body count is really low in Diamond is Unbreakable. What can I say, I like it when the characters I got attached to survive…

From what I can tell, Golden Wind is even more liked than Diamond is Unbreakable so I’m super excited about watching it!

You might like this anime if:

You enjoy unusual-looking anime, you have an appreciation for exaggeration and you don’t mind some really gross scenes.

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.