Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable Episode 39: Goodbye Morioh – The Heart of Gold (Final Impression)

“The young people in this town have hearts of gold.”

Isn’t it amazing that we’ve finally come to the end? This show took up nearly the whole year, but now my Jojo Fridays have come to an end once again and again I feel empty. As usual, Jojo endings are usually bittersweet. Even though the heroes succeed in the end, there’s always something that just can’t be fixed. In the previous parts it was major characters dying. In this case, all of our major characters live, but the victims of Kira Yoshikage are gone and their families continue to wonder where they are. As usual, lots of emotions were felt in this finale.

But first

Kira’s hand fetish is so bad that Mona Lisa’s hands gave him a boner when he was a kid. And now I can’t look at the Mona Lisa the same way anymore. Kinky freak.

Firefighters, police officers, and an ambulance arrive to aid Kira. Kira is about to activate Bites the Dust on the woman paramedic, and while he’s getting nasty over her hand, Hayato quickly explains to the other how Bites the Dust works and tells them that they have to stop him. Jotaro is the one that needs to stop him but he’s too far away from Kira. But thankfully Koichi used Act 3 to make Kira’s body heavy, giving Jotaro the opportunity to stop time, be the badass that he is, and beat the shit out of Kira.

Kira actually thought he had activated Bites the Dust but met up with Reimi, who then made him remember how he died.

Now…Kira’s death is one that’s talked about. Unlike the other villains that have been launched into space, and ora’d so hard his body exploded, all of these done by the Jojos…Kira got ran over by an ambulance. His death was so easy and so anticlimactic that he got ran over, and that’s it. The first time I read that in the manga, I just went back and forth with the pages and was all “That’s it? Really?!”. And I wasn’t the only one with that reaction. To me, it didn’t feel fulfilling. However, his “real” death caused by my girl Reimi and Arnold in the alleyway sort of made up for it. I had enjoyed the final fight, but it wasn’t until Kira’s death that I was a bit disappointed. For such an intense fight to end that way…I mean really? I felt that way for a long time, but I then started to look at Kira’s death in another way. Yes, his death was easy and really stupid. It was also very embarrassing. But Kira was a man that wanted to live a quiet and peaceful life out of the public eye. He hated being embarrassed, and his death was ironic because it was embarrassing. His death was made public with all eyes on his corpse with the news of his death getting out, and we saw that his female coworkers talked about it. For once, he was in the spotlight. He couldn’t even have a quiet death! It was completely out there because of the absurdity, so in a way, this death was fitting. At least, that’s how I look at it now to maybe change people’s minds about the ending.

The bittersweetness of this ending shows as Kira’s crimes are never going to be exposed. There’s no evidence of the women’s corpses and even if the Stand Squad knows how they were killed…well, they just can’t do anything about it. And it’s very sad. Though, justice was technically brought.

But I think I feel the worse for Shinobu. Even though she lived with a fake husband, she was honestly in love. Every single day she was becoming more lovely and happy and their family life was actually becoming better, ironically. She had no idea what was going on, she was just living each day. So seeing her wait for “Kosaku” broke my heart. Seeing Hayato say he was going to wait with his mother to eat just made me even more sad. Their relationship was obviously strained from the start, but at this point now, I think they’re relationship will only grow much stronger. Hayato is going to have to live with the secret of the truth and try his best to console his mother in the future.

We get such a happy ending. All the major characters are alive and well. I’m happy that David Pro added some new scenes, showing everyone having fun in their normal lives. I especially loved seeing Okuyasu eating at Tonio’s restaurant again, but this time he was with his father. He had been looking for a Stand user that would turn his father back to normal and seeing his father go through the strange effects of the food actually made me wonder if he would, but he just looked a little more rejuvenated which made me laugh. I always loved the last scene of Josuke seeing Joseph and Jotaro off. Their father/son relationship started off really awkward, but Josuke stealing Joseph’s wallet and grabbing his “allowance”, and the fact that he calls Joseph “Old Man” now, shows just how much closer they’ve gotten. Though damage was done to Morioh, things have returned to normal once again.

Final Impression

Obviously I knew how it was all going to end because I read the manga. I think people have noticed that my reviews were becoming much more shorter and bare. When I was blogging the second season of Stardust Crusaders, I would sometimes run into that problem. But I usually always had something to say because I didn’t know what would happen, and I’d talk about how crazy and bizarre a fight was and so on.

In this case, I already read Diamond is Unbreakable so I already knew what was going to happen. So in a way, that took out the wonder and anticipation. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a special series because you never know what’s going to happen next, what kind of strange Stand user will appear, and that’s what makes it so fun. Being new to Jojo and being an anime-only fan at the time, it was really fun to blog. This time with Diamond is Unbreakable, I knew what would happen next so there was a little less fun, if that makes sense. Also, getting to know the story of Part 4 again, I admit that there were Stand battles that were far less exciting than others and for me it was a bore to get through, and then I had to write a review on that episode, which actually felt like a chore. And I felt bad when I put out short reviews. Usually my reviews are 700+ words, and some of my reviews were under 500 words and I hate that. So I guess that’s what happens when I’ve read the source material. I usually don’t read manga. :T

Now as for the anime itself, David Pro delivers again with an almost perfect adaptation. They followed the manga so closely like they always do and only made slight changes to the order of events near the very end, and that wasn’t such a huge deal. They recast basically all of the characters voices from their video game counterparts, where they actually had voices for the first time, and I thought the cast was perfect. I quickly got used to Kaji Yuki replacing Romi Park, even though I preferred her voice more. I also think that Takahiro Sakurai did a splendid job as Rohan, though if Hiroshi Kamiya had kept the part I know he would have done a great job too.

The music was great as well, though I have to admit that I was torn with the openings. Animation  was something I noticed would fluctuate in the show. Sometimes it would look really good, and sometimes it would look really bad. And most of the time it would look just right. The anime team did well in changing their style to match Araki’s changed style of the time, which happened to be my favorite until he changed his style again. -_- They really did away with the shading the manga had, which I actually liked because it added some shape and dimension into the characters, so that left me a little upset but not too much.

As for the characters, there are a lot of great ones. Kira stands out a lot because of who he is. I already mentioned before that I love Kira more than Dio as a villain. Kira feels like someone you can meet on the street and think “Hey, he’s a cool-looking guy” and just walk away, not knowing that he really is a serial killer. He paints himself to be so normal and he lives such a normal life, and it’s so creepy. He’s smart and calculative enough to have hid his crimes before he had even gotten Killer Queen. He’s just so interesting to me. He also happens to possess one of my favorite Stands in all of Jojo. Josuke is a great Jojo as well. I do have to admit that he’s a Jojo that doesn’t have much character development because he didn’t really change from beginning to end. He started off as a sweet, spoiled, chill, and friendly guy, and he ended as a sweet, spoiled, chill, friendly guy. Josuke was always the person to help others, and only fight when he needed to. He’s just all around a good kid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Koichi is another great character who had tremendous growth and I know the fanbase hardly ever talks about him, which is a shame. Then there’s Okuyasu, Rohan, Mikitaka, and Reimi. There’s so much to like about them. And the fact that Joseph and Jotaro came back was also a huge plus.

We did not get a hint that Vento Aureo is going to happen, we’ll just have to wait for it to be announced. As to how I feel about Part 5…

I didn’t like it. Vento Aureo is a controversial part for the Jojo fanbase, where one half loved it while the other half hated it, and I’m part of the latter. I don’t want to say anything that’ll spoil the story in any way, but I did not enjoy pretty much all of the characters, I hated the villain, the fights dragged out, and most of the Stand fights were with the characters I didn’t care about. Whereas I read Part 4 in a flash, I was having a hard time reading Part 5 and was basically forcing myself through it. It wasn’t until much later in the manga near the end that things actually got good. I liked the setting and the idea, but I didn’t like how it was executed.

So, if Vento Aureo were to get an anime, I don’t think I would blog it. I could give a quick first impression of the first episode, but to actually cover it week to week is something I would pass. I like to think that maybe I’ll enjoy Vento Aureo’s story more if I see it animated, but I’m not so sure. And I don’t want to write out half-assed reviews. I’d most likely write something for the first episode, and then write an overall review when the anime finishes and give my full thoughts.

Of course, that’s only if Part 5 gets an anime. We’ll have to play the waiting game again for a Part 5 announcement, but I have high hopes that it will. They could have just stopped at Stardust Crusaders since it’s the most iconic part in all of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but they actually went and gave us a Diamond is Unbreakable anime. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has always been popular, so why would they stop here? There’s still so much that needs to be adapted into an anime. Animating the rest of the parts will only bring much more new Jojo fans that were too daunted by the long-running manga. Which means they’ll make more money. The fact that Jojo’s never got a proper television anime before is amazing. We got Stardust, then we got Diamond, so now I only think it’s proper that we get Vento Aureo. I don’t think the fans need to worry.

Now, when we’ll get a proper announcement, I don’t know. I hope soon. Jojo’s is going to hit it’s 30th anniversary on the New Year, so maybe then! The Diamond is Unbreakable anime was fun, so let’s keep spirits high and wait for good news. 🙂

9/10