#yoshie

Kira update: He's feeling the urge to kill more women, but he has to hold it in because he's laying low. Kira only managed to escape Josuke and Jotaro by stealing the identity of Kosaku Kawajiri and living with Kosaku's family. It's working so far, but if he starts killing again it might leave a trail for the good guys to find.

There's a couple of problems with this. First, while his "wife" doesn't suspect anything, she does find herself falling for this new attitude her husband seems to have now. She makes him tea and undresses in front of him, and he nearly attacks her before restraining himself. Kira can't allow himself to kill Shinobu, because her death would definitely attract unwanted attention.

Second, Shinobu's son, Hayato, has the whole house bugged, and he saw this entire incident. He's mostly intrigued that this is the first time in a long while that his mom has undressed in front of his dad. He's also very curious to know what his dad is doing. He's trying to learn to forge Kosaku's handwriting, and if Hayato keeps watching him like this, he's bound to figure that out eventually.

I'm not sure why Hayato is spying on his parents like this. I think he's just an A/V nerd who has no one else to try his microphones and cameras out on. Otherwise, he's just a weirdo.

Either way, this subplot rules. Kira picked the absolute worst identity to steal. If his family adored him, then it would take them longer to suspect him. If they hated his guts, no one would believe them because they have an axe to grind. But instead, Shinobu's trying to romance him while Hyato is spying on him for fun. They're both screwing with Kira and they don't even know it.

Meanwhile, Josuke and Okuyasu meet Mikitaka, a new student at their school who claims to be an alien refugee from outer space.

I don't mind the character much, but I don't have much patience with the presentation. This guy is basically Araki's own Tom Bombadil, a goof character introduced to the story for the sake of being enigmatic and inexplicable. Bombadil is unaffected by the One Ring, and Mikitaka is unaffected by the Stand Arrow.

Is he really an alien, or is he just pranking everyone? There isn't enough evidence to say for certain.

Most of his unusual attributes can be explained away by a Stand Ability. Mikitaka is a shape-shifter. He's allergic to fire engine sirens, and they make him break out in hives. He's so desperate to escape the noise that he turns himself into shoes and begs Josuke to help him run away.

In this form, Mikitaka can add his own strength and agility to Josuke's, allowing them to jump super-high and walk up walls. He claims this is natural for his species, but Araki lists his Stand Name as "Earth, Wind, and Fire." Of course, he could just be an alien Stand User, or every one of his kind has a Stand named "Earth, Wind, and Fire."

The only evidence against Mikitaka being a Stand User is that Josuke brings out Crazy Diamond and Mikitaka appears to be unable to see it. But if he can see it, and he's playing an elaborate prank, this is exactly what he would do.

The Stand Arrow pointed itself at him, but it didn't affect him. Is that because he's already got a Stand, or because he's immune to its effects? Or did it give him a Stand, and it just didn't hurt him the way it does Earthlings?

I think the point of the character is that there is no clear-cut answer, and there never will be. You're supposed to be left wondering. The thing is, that would interest me more if he played a bigger or smaller role in the story.

Like, okay, Tom Bombadil is a very minor character in Lord of the RIngs. We don't know what his deal is because he appears so briefly that there isn't a chance to find out. The main plot is too important for the book to dwell on him. He's just an unusual sight you might see on a long journey, like a roadside attraction with a pink elephant statue.

On the other side of things, if the entirety of Part 4 was devoted to Mikitaka's true identity, and the story ended without a clear answer, then I could respect this. The original Terminator movie kind of works this way. There's no way to be sure if Kyle Reese is actually from the future, or if the future he speaks of will ever come to pass. Sarah Connor eventually believes him, but she has no way to confirm his story except to wait for 1997 and see for herself. That ambiguity is part of what makes the movie work.

Mikitaka, however, isn't a bit player or a major character. He's brought in as a new addition to the cast, but he's not a villain, and he doesn't do a whole lot to help the heroes either. He just sort of interrupts the story and dares the audience to decide if he's really an alien or not.

My reaction is: Who cares? If he's really an alien, it never affects anything. If he's not an alien, then the question is: Why won't he give up the bit? But he's not present in the story long enough for anyone to find out.

It'd be like Kyle Reese if the Terminator never shot up that police station. It wouldn't matter if he's telling the truth or not because there's no urgent need to trust him. Or, it'd be like if Tom Bombadil put on the One Ring, nothing happened, and then he just kept doing weird stuff like that for several chapters without any payoff. We'd know he's special but it doesn't matter because nothing comes of it.

Back to the story at hand, though. Mikitaka offers to reward Josuke for his help getting him away from the sirens. Josuke proposes that Mikitaka transform himself into dice, so that he can help him swindle Rohan Kishibe at gambling.

Okay, so last time I said the Rock-Paper-Scissors arc was the worst arc in all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. This begs the question of what the second worst arc might be. Well, this one about dice games seems to commit a lot of the same sins. At least the main character is in this one.

I'm going to skip over a lot of bullshit about the rules of Cee-lo. All that matters here is that Rohan knows Josuke is up to something, but he's too arrogant, curious, and spiteful to turn down the game. He wants to spring whatever trap Josuke has laid. First he insists on using his own dice, but Josuke saw that coming, so he somehow smuggled Mikitaka into his house beforehand.

Then Josuke wins three rounds in a row. Mikitaka can make any numbers come up, but he doesn't understand the need for subtlty here. Rohan can tell Josuke is cheating, but he can't figure out how, so he cuts off his own pinky finger to punish himself for not being able to solve this puzzle.

See, this is why Rohan drags down Part 4. There's a fucking serial killer loose in town. His undead father is running around creating new enemies to menace the good guys. And these two idiots are using a shapeshifter to play dice. For some reason, we have to derail the whole story to explore how obsessed Rohan is with uncovering secrets or whatever.

Here's a dumb question: Why doesn't Rohan use Heaven's Door on Josuke to find out exactly how he's cheating? Well, he believes he can't because he thinks Josuke is immune to his power, but... does he, though?

So Rohan's big idea here is to call in Tamami Kobayashi, whose Stand can help him discover who, if anyone is cheating. But Rohan wagers two million yen that he can figure out Josuke's trick on the next roll of dice. He refuses to allow Josuke to heal him with Crazy Diamond unless he fails to solve the mystery.

Josuke decides the only way out is through, so he just keeps playing and tries to act natural. But then a fire engine siren sounds off nearby and Mikitaka starts to react to it. Josuke thinks he's been caught, but no...

The fire engine was coming to put out Rohan's house. Earlier he got out a magnifying glass to inspect the dice, and left it out in the sun, where it started a fire. This distraction gives Josuke enough time to heal Rohan's finger, grab Mikitaka and run for it.

So the net positive here is that Rohan lost seven million yen in fire damage, and his finger hurt for a while. Josuke won a bunch of money, but I don't think he took his winnings with him.

Later, Josuke meets Mikitaka's mother, who scolds him for telling those ridiculous stories about being an alien. However, Mikitaka claims that he simply brainwashed a human woman into thinking she's his mother. And that's as close as we ever get to an answer on what this guy is. It simply does not matter if he's an alien or not.

All right, so we finally made it through the "Rohan Plays Rock-Paper-Scissors" arc and the Rohan Plays Dice" arc. Well, it's been a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but at least this next arc will give us a break from Rohan for a while. Let's see what we've got...

Fuckdammit, it's Rohan again.

So this is the Highway Star arc, and it's mostly about Josuke saving Rohan, but we gotta show how Rohan got in trouble in the first place. The story starts with the two of them meeting on a bus, and Rohan acts like a gigantic bitch. Like, they don't like each other, and Josuke is content to steer clear of the guy, but Rohan wants to revel in their feud like a pig rolling in shit.

He says the fire ruined a bunch of furniture he bought that was used in the set of the movie "Pretty Woman". Is this supposed to make anyone feel bad for him? He's the idiot who left the magnifying glass lying around, all because he was obsessed with beating Josuke at dice. Fuck this guy and fuck his stupid house.

Anyway, the bus goes in a tunnel, and Rohan sees a weird room in the tunnel wall, where a man kills a woman. He wonders if this is somehow Yoshikage Kira that he's seeing, and is determined to investigate, but Josuke just thinks he's screwing with him some more.

So Rohan goes back in alone, and immediately falls into the trap of an enemy Stand. Heaven's Door... is basically useless, since it can only tell Rohan the Stand's name and powers, which doesn't help since the enemy has already defeated him.

Highway Star drags Rohan back to the room in the tunnel to drain his life force or whatever, and then Josuke shows up, because he's too nice to just let Rohan die to whatever he saw in the tunnel. Highway Star offers to spare Rohan if he lures Josuke into the trap to take Rohan's place, but...

From the Deadly Lips of Rohan, "I Refuse!"

Most good guy characters would just reject this kind of offer on moral grounds, but Rohan has to explain that he's still a spiteful bitch who hates Josuke, and he's only turning this down to be a contrarian.

But Josuke enters the trap anyway because he's also a stubborn cuss. Rohan uses Heaven's Door on Josuke to make him fly out of the tunnel fast enough to keep Highway Star from catching him. Huh. Rememeber when Rohan couldnt use Heaven's Door on Josuke? I guess he can do it after all, then? Sure would have come in handy when he needed to know how Josuke was cheating at dice.

Okay, so from here the comic suddenly gets good again, as Josuke emerges from the tunnel, gets on Rohan's motorcycle, an desperately flees from Highway Star in a mad dash to attack the Enemy Stand User. Also, in a completely unrelated statement, Rohan is absent from this part of the story. I'm not sure why I bring this up. It's a weird coincidence when you think about it.

The rule here is that once Highway Star touches you, it gets your scent and pursues you relentlessly at 60 kph. If you can go faster than that you can outrun it, but even if you get a comfortable distance ahead, you can't stop because Highway Star will just teleport to your location and the lead will evaporate. So Josuke has to keep moving about 60kph. He can't stop or slow down at all. Too bad for that lady pushing the baby carriage across the street.

So Josuke uses Crazy Diamond to smash up Rohan's bike...

... launches himself over the baby...

... then has Crazy Diamond reassemble the bike once he's thrown clear of the baby. Fuckin' sick.

Josuke can't stop to make a phone call, so he swipes a cell phone from a pedestrian and... breaks the phone, because he was going so fast. Cell phones were made out of paper mache in 1999. Why didn't he use Crazy Diamond to fix it? Because he saw another guy on his cell phone up ahead and just took that guy's. He calls Koichi for help and Koichi just so happens to know about a biker gang drunkenly crashing in the same tunnel where all this started. There was one survivor, and he's still in the hospital now.

Josuke finds it hard to imagine an Enemy Stand User being in the hospital, but Koichi reasons that the guy is stealing life energy from hapless travelers to heal himself, so maybe it all makes sense.

Josuke's immediate problem is that Rohan's bike is almost out of gas. So he has Crazy Diamond smash a hole in a car so Josuke can fall into it, then he rolls out just before the car reassembles, trapping Highway Star inside.

This holds the Stand just long enough for Josuke to siphon gasoline from the car and top off his bike. Now he just has to find the hospital.

Rohan beats him there and asks the nurse on duty where to find that biker guy who crashed in the tunnel. She refuses to tell him anything because he's kind of a jerk, so Koichi uses his Stand to knock over her important peanut butter collection or something. So she tells him what he wants to know in exchange for his help. Moral: Don't fuck with Koichi.

Josuke rolls into the hospital soon after and Koichi directs him to the fifth floor, and uses Echoes to hold off Highway Star for a little bit. But by the time Josuke reaches the User, he's lost too much power, and he can barely stand.

The User, Yuya Fungami, doesn't sweat Josuke at all, and he goes on showing off his powerful sense of smell to his three groupies. For example, he can tell rotten peaches from fresh from across the room. Also he can tell that someone in the room is really pissed off.

Yeah, it's Josuke who's pissed. How is he back on his feet? He drank Yuya's IV fluid to restore some of his nutrients. This gives him just enough power to do this...

Highway Star is still on Josuke's tail, but at this range, it doesn't matter, because Crazy Diamond can beat the shit out of Yuya much, much faster than 60kph. Yuya agrees to let Rohan go free. After all, he's already in the hospital, so there's no point pushing things further. Josuke still wants to beat him up, but it'd be dishonorable to pummel an injured man, right?

This is why Josuke used Crazy Diamond to heal all of Yuya's injuries. This way he can beat him up with a clear conscience.