JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable

Episode 10

This episode is bluntly titled "Let's Go Eat Some Italian Food", and I love it. We have to eat so much Italian food, in fact, that the episode cuts the opening completely to make room for more cuisine. See you later, 'Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town'. Hopefully when you return it's the regular version instead of the EDM remix again. For some reason, cutting the openings or endings and overlaying the credits over the story is the mark of a classy episode. Makes me pay attention, for sure.

The episode opens with Josuke and Okuyasu on their way to visit Keicho's grave. It's a nice touch to see that Josuke is a pal and accompanies Okuyasu to these types of things. On their way they stop at a newly opened Italian restaurant at Okuyasu's request, though Josuke insists he's not hungry. Right away, the audience can infer that there are some Stand shenanigans going on with this restaurant and its sole owner, Tonio Trussardi (or “Tonio Trendy” as the subtitles suggest. I guess he's named after a fashion designer.)

Tonio's fun because even though he's speaking Japanese like the rest of the cast, his voice actor is playing it up with an Italian accent. I always wondered what different accents sound like to different languages. I mean, for all I know it's a super stereotypical and cartoonishly unrealistic accent, but it's something. Okuyasu in particular is enjoying being served by this friendly foreigner, who seems well-intentioned enough but we spend the episode on the edge of our seat waiting for the inevitable turn because we've seen this show enough times to think we know where this is going.

The hook of Tonio's restaurant is that he can recognize a customer's health issues just by their hands, and then prepare a dish that is delicious but also capable of magically curing said ailments. The “curing” part of this process also happens to include some terrifying body horror before the effects fully kick in. Okuyasu's eyes are violently wrung out of moisture before returning to normal and removing his insomnia, he scratches off a softball's worth of dead skin before being relieved of a stiff shoulder, etc.

Clearly, Josuke and the audience think something is up and assumes the worst in Tonio. Josuke uses Crazy Diamond to revert Okuyasu's spaghetti back into its original ingredients (one of the most creative uses of his Stand yet) and they discover Tonio's Stand, “Pearl Jam”, among them. The drama piles up as Okuyasu's stomach begins to wrench from the spiciness of his food, and Josuke heads to the kitchen seeking a confrontation. We have every reason to expect a fight ti break out.

However, this entire episode appears to have been a game in expectations. As far as we can tell, Tonio is a genuinely nice guy, and all uses of his Stand have been in purpose of making Okuyasu feel better. Every painful kickback (including Okuyasu's intestines bursting out of his stomach) comes back around to him feeling stronger and healthier than ever, with no catch to it at all. The episode plays out like a usual JoJo's chapter, with the same level of suspense and mystery to it, but all the drama was simply in our heads based on how we're used to this show playing out. I thought that was pretty clever.

I'm not usually a guy who salivates at pictures of anime food, but Italian is my jam and even just the verbal descriptions of the meals and how they were prepared is appetizing all on its own. I would actually eat most of what I saw in this episode and I do not say that often. This was easily the most fun and interesting episode of Diamond is Unbreakable yet, and the bonus twist at the end where it's revealed Joseph Joestar is on his way to Morioh got me very excited. I honestly have no idea what to expect. I don't think I've ever even seen pictures of what Joseph looks like these days, so I'm excited to find out.

Rating: A

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sam Leach writes and records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw