#get set

I don't want to spend too much time on the part where Josuke meets the Higashikata family, because they'll each get some time in the spotlight soon enough, starting with Daiya. This car ride to their mansion pretty much sets the tone, though. Norisuke Higashikata IV is the head of the household, and he acts like a vapid asshole some of the time, only to drop his facade now and then to reveal a quieter, darker side of himself.

Here, he asks Josuke whether he likes stuffed animals better than robot toys, and tries to psychoanalyze him based on his pick, which is the sort of thing a bullshit personality quiz on the internet would do. He takes his shoes off when he rides in the car, and apparently Josuke does the same, so he tries to bond over that. Yasuho takes her shoes off in solidarity, but no one seems to notice.

Also, he keeps trying to take pictures while he's driving, so he just comes across like a total clown.

But once they get home and the introductions are made, Norisuke takes him aside and sets some ground rules for Josuke's residence here. First, he has to look after his daughter Daiya, who is legally blind. I don't think she's completely blind, but her vision is pretty far gone by this point. Second, he tells Josuke never to go to the upstairs room. He doesn't even want him on the staircase, for that matter.

There's something kind of sinister about the whole thing, and the way he tells Josuke that "what I say goes". And this sets the tone for the whole family. Hato is some kind of fashion model, and pretty vain about it. Joshuu's a belligerent incel fool. Jobin ditches the family altogether before Norisuke can take a family picture with Josuke in it. The photo is a fiasco in itself, because Joshuu gets upset about having to cede the center of the picture to Josuke, and then Josuke wants Yasuho to be in the photo so she won't feel left out, and then Norisuke calls off the whole thing when he realizes Jobin's left.

Also, when Yasuho leaves the property to go home, their maid, Kyo Nijimura, passes along a message from Norisuke, warning Yasuho to never darken their door again. He doesn't want her tempting Joshuu with her feminine wiles, and he threatens consequences for her family if she tries to contact Josuke. Yasuho doesn't know what to make of this.

The joke's on Norisuke, though, because Yasuho's family is in pretty bleak shape anyway. She returns home to find her mother passed out drunk with a hickey, and she leaves the house in shame. She doesn't know where to go or what to do, and then she finds she got a letter back from a private lab that does DNA testing.

When they found Kira's corpse in the last arc, Yasuho didn't trust the police to investigate his connection with Josuke, so Yasuho took DNA swabs from both of them. I'm kind of impressed that she not only thought to do this, but collected the samples on the fly. Anyway, she sent them off to a lab for analysis, and report says that both samples are from the same person. This makes no sense, but as Yasuho gets how her phone to complain to the lab, she notices the photo she took of Kira's body, and the symbol on his right wrist. She remembers having seen it in her childhood, when she and Jobin used to play at the Higashikata house.

And Josuke has made the same connection, as he spotted the same symbol on the handrail of the Forbidden Staircase.

But Josuke has to deal with Daiya Higashikata first. So she's a music lover, with a particular fondness for prog bands like Yes. She claims to like Queen, but I know she's a fake Queen fan because she doesn't know the words to "Bicycle Race". But it gets worse.

So Daiya contradicts her father's instructions and tells Josuke not to make a fuss over her. In fact, she warns him against acting unnaturally, or getting worked up about her at all. To prove her point, she tries to pour herself tea, and Josuke sees she's not even over the cups, so he moves them into position. But this was a test to see if he was listening. Daiya knew where the cups were, but Josuke's overreaction triggers what she calls "a land mine". In fact, this activates her Stand, California King Bed.

Now, I'm not quite clear on how it works, but the upshot is that California King Bed plucks out a memory from the victim and turns it into a chess piece that Daiya can collect and "experience" for herself. It's sort of like Whitesnake from JoJo Part 6, but not exactly.

However, it seems like part of the Stand's power involves creating the illusion of a grotesque wound on Daiya's leg. Like, you can see bone in there, that's how bad it looks. Josuke thinks it's a burn, which is ridiculous. I think the idea is that the illusion wound is supposed to stimulate feelings of guilt and worry over Daiya, which facilitates the memory extraction. The thing is, she uses this power on Josuke three times, but the wound illusion only happens once.

Anyway, the first memory she takes is the symbol Josuke noticed. This upsets him, because he considered it an important clue to solving the mystery of his identity, but now he can't remember what it was or why he thought it was important.

Daiya explains her power to him in the interests of fairness, so I guess this is like a game to her. She says she fell into the "faults" where the Wall Eyes rose up. Soon after that, her vision got worse, but she developed her power, which she calls a "Stand". This seems to confirm that the Wall Eyes, or at least the fault line they emerged from, are somehow responsible for these characters getting Stands. I think the common theme is that you fall into or onto one of them. Josuke had that bite mark on him when Yasuho found him, and then Joshu pushed Yasuho to the ground in chapter 1, and then Josuke knocked him out soon after that, and they both developed the same bite marks. Now we see Daiya probably experienced the same thing when she was 2 or 3 years old.

I guess her blindness is just part of the Stand's ability? Either that or she suffered some injury that damaged her vision when she fell.

The important point is that she plans to steal Josuke's memories one by one, so he basically has to do exactly as she bids, or she'll make him forget everything else but his duty to her. Also she wants to seduce him, so that's a thing.

She does tell him that her Stand has one weakness. If she steps on his shadow, the effect is canceled and the stolen memories return to him. So Josuke tries to trick her by turning off the light in her walk-in closet, which will allow the bedroom light to cast his shadow into the closet where she's standing. His own Stand, Soft and Wet, is useful for silencing the sound of the light switch, but it doesn't work. Somehow, Daiya figures it out. Maybe she can hear the faint electrical hum in the light bulbs. As she confirms this, Josuke realizes he's in deep shit, so he tries to call Yasuho on Daiya's cell phone to get help. But it's too late, Daiya catches him on the light switch, and she removes another memory, this time of Yasuho herself.

From here, Daiya tries to seduce Josuke, and it almost works, but he's sure that there was something important he had to do, so he's not quite putty in her hands just yet. Meanwhile, Norisuke sees them in bed through her open door (!), and he's furious at first. Then he decides that he's cool with it, because this means Daiya will completely enslave him, which suits his plans.

Daiya tries to go on a bike ride with Josuke, and they meet Yasuho on their way out. Daiya can't see her, and Josuke no longer recognizes her, which Yasuho finds suspicious. Okay, here's my beef. She says she wants to sing "Bicycle Race" with him while they ride, but she wants to do the part where he says "I like my bicycle better than Star Wars".

Those are not the words, dammit. They weren't the words in 1978, when Queen released the album "Jazz". They weren't the words in 2011, when this story is set, and they weren't the words in 2017, the last time I complained about this. It goes:

You say black, I say white You say bark, I say bite You say shark, I say hey man Jaws was never my scene And I don't like Star Wars

Get it right, Daiya.

Anyway, Josuke makes another attempt to get her to step in his shadow. He uses Soft and Wet to throw his voice so it sounds like he's behind her telling her which way to steer the bike, when in fact he's hanging from a tree, I guess hoping she'll bike over his shadow? It doesn't work because she can't feel him holding on behind her. So she takes a third memory, this time of Soft and Wet. Josuke still has his Stand, but now he doesn't remember that he has one or how to use it. Ouch.

Daiya thinks she's won, since Josuke has no way to protect himself from her ability, but there's just one more loose end. Her phone rings, and it's coming from the refrigerator. Seems Josuke hid the phone in there earlier while she wasn't looking.

So Daiya orders Josuke to get it for her and close the door. She plans to answer the phone, and if it's Yasuho calling him back from before, then she intends to destroy his captured memories, deleting them permanently. Josuke can only follow instructions, but...

He left a soap bubble active when he hid the phone earlier. Yeah, he doesn't remember Soft and Wet now, but he did when he set this up. That bubble imitated the sound of him closing the fridge door, and so Daiya didn't notice that the fridges light was still casting Josuke's shadow near her feet. Check and mate.

Josuke gets all his memories back and takes the call. He thanks Yasuho for calling him back and says he'll call her in a minute. As for Daiya, she concedes defeat and asks Josuke if he loves her, and he's like "No, your kind of a creep, but you're honest at least." He says he'll like her better if she lets him have her phone from now on, and if she agrees not to tell anyone about him going into the room on the second floor. Then he gives Daiya a little of the ol' Josuke Sugar on the cheek to seal the deal. Daiya never had a chance.

This works out well for Josuke, because Norisuke thinks that Daiya is controlling him, when it's actually the other way around. The next morning he goes to the... I guess only bathroom in this entire mansion? He has a shave in front of Joshuu and Hato. He shaves his face like he's some sort of deranged maniac, but his Soft and Wet powers make it work. The side-effect is that all of the stubble on his face gets transferred to Joshuu and Hato. Oops.

Finally, Josuke and Daiya go into the upstairs room, which is a study full of old books. The symbol is that of a publisher, and it matches a book written by Norisuke Higashita I, the patriarch of the Higashikata Family. The book is a chronicle of the Steel Ball Run race from 1890-91. This was a transcontinental race held in the United States, and Norisuke I got second prize. He returned to Japan soon afterward and invested the money in the fruit importing business, which then led to the rise of the Higashikata Family's prosperity in the 21st Century.

The book also contains a family tree, and Josuke notices that Yoshikage Kira's name is on it. Turns out Norisuke I had a daughter, Rina, who married an American named Johnny Joestar, and Kira was their great-great grandson. So that gives Josuke a clue about the connection between the Higashikatas and Kira. He looks up other names on the Joestar wing of the family tree, but the only one he can track down is Kira's mother, Holly Joestar Kira, an ophthalmologist. So now he's going to see if he can find her and see what she knows.

You know, it's funny. I haven't kept up with Part 9, but I do know that some other names have been added to this family tree. Jodio and Dragona Joestar, and maybe their parents, are still out there, although they probably wouldn't know anything about Kira or any of this business. Also, they're in Hawaii or whatever, and that's probably what Josuke means here when he says his searches show that he won't find the rest of Kira's family. It's not that Holly is the only one left, but she's the only one that he can track down in Morioh.