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duhragonball · 9 days

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JoJolion Ch. 100-104

Yeah, that'll happen.

Continuing from last time, Josuke has lured Toru's Stand, Wonder of U, into the Locacaca lab in the hospital. But instead of attacking Josuke as expected, Wonder of U deploys a rock insect with bullshit powers. It can hide in flat surfaces, and its poison sting makes asbestos fibers come out of "every hole in your body" whenever you extend your limbs.

This is stupid because Josuke's expereinced this about three or four times, and it doesn't seem to be causing him that much difficulty. Hell, Rai takes a shot from the stinger to protect Josuke, and I can't help but wonder why it matters. It barely seems to bother Josuke at all, and it doesn't slow Rai down much either.

Also, every time the asbestos fibers appear, it looks like they're coming out of the characters' pupils, which sounds really distressing, but they just pull it all away and they're fine. They need to pull it away, or they won't be able to see or breathe. But Wonder of U said "every hole", so I have to assume that Josuke's urethra and anus are just lousy with asbestos fibers right now, and that won't be fun to remove.

Anyway, Josuke's problem with the Rock insect is that he can't attack or defend against it, but Rai manages to slither up to the ceiling and get the drop on the thing while it's setting up another attack on Josuke. He takes it out with a single strike of his body-cord.

And that just so happens to put Rai within striking distance of Wonder of U. We already know how this will go. If thinking about pursuing Wonder of U will get you pulverized with killer rain, how in the hell can this be a good idea? I think Rai's logic is that if he can kill the Stand quickly enough, the calamity effect will be canceled before any reprisal can occur. Or maybe Rai is willing to sacrifice himself just to get off this one shot. Or maybe Wonder of U's description of its ability is just a bluff. Maybe it's only good at repelling people from a certain distance, and once you're close enough you don't have to worry about it.

Wonder of U admits that Rai might be on to something, since this situation is unprecedented. No one's ever managed to get this close before, which I guess is a testament to Josuke's original strategy. Wonder of U can keep its distance from Josuke in this room, but it's still in the room, and there's only so much space to maneuver around. And Rai got this close because he was sneaking up on the Rock Insect, not approaching Wonder of U. It just so happens that they were fairly close together.

Josuke pleads for Rai to back off, but Wonder of U reminds him of his dead father, so Rai takes the shot.... and it doesn't work. This is what I was talking about when I said I misremembered Jobin's death scene. I thought he and Rai both got an "almost-got-'im" moment against Wonder of U, but no, it was just Rai.

Here, the calamity that strikes Rai is the soap bubbles Josuke placed throughout the room. Even though Josuke was controlling them, they still went wild and carved out chunks of Rai's body, leaving him with fatal injuries. How and why did Josuke set up bubbles with such a destructive power? I'm not so sure that he did.

Rai's missing a chunk of his head, but he still lives long enough to encourage Josuke to keep going. He explains something important to Josuke about his Stand ability: The bubbles are made of strings that spin very fast, and this is part of an unseen phenomenon.

Then he opens his.... coat? I don't know. The point is that a bubble carved a hole through Rai's torso, but it did not go through his clothing. It was an invisible bubble, something different from the usual Soft and Wet powers, and that's what Rai desperately needs Josuke to understand.

Now, this whole development bugged me a lot when I first read this part of the story. This is, of course, a callback to "Spin", the power weilded by Gyro Zeppeli in Steel Ball Run. Over the course of Part 7, Gyro taught Johnny Joestar how to do "Spin" himself, and this greatly advanced the abilities of Johnny's Stand, Tusk.

Now, in Part 8, Rai is telling Josuke to apply "Spin" concepts to his own Stand to overcome Wonder of U. Well, not exactly. Rai is actually telling Josuke that he's already using "Spin" all the time. He just needs to become aware of this and use this property to his advantage. But how would Rai know anything about "Spin"? He's not a Neapolitan executioner, he's a Japanese Plant Appraiser. That's what bothered me so much in 2021.

Since then, I've watched a Hamon Beat video about the topic, and it clarified some of the relationship between "Spin" and Stands. The "Spin" relies on the Golden Ratio, which is a fundamental property of life (according to the SBR lore, anyway). "Spin", like the Arrow and Stone Masks from Parts 1-6, are advancements that allow humans to approach the kind off powers found in Stands. This is why Johnny was able to combine his "Spin" techniques so effectively with his Stand ability, and why Gyro eventually developed his own Stand, Ball Breaker, near the end of Part 7.

Hamon Beat's logic, then, is that since Rai's a Stand User and an expert on plants, he would have a keen insight into "Spin", which has ties to both Stand powers and the natural world. We know that's the case, because Rai was observant enough to notice Soft and Wet's bubbles were made of strings way back in Chapter 70, when they finished defeating Urban Guerrilla. He compred the rapidly spinning strings of Soft and Wet to the cords of his own Stand, Doggy Style, so Rai could apply things he knows about his own powers to Josuke's.

So it's not quite so far-fetched after all. The other thing that bugged me about this scene, though, was that Rai explained all of this despite having huge chunks of his body cored out by the bubbles. But Rai's been taking a lot of damage this whole time, and since his Stand lets him unravel his body into cords, he seems to be able to withstand a lot more punishment than the average Stand User. It's kind of like how Jolyne would stitch herself back together, or Bruno Buccellati would use his zippers to disassemble and reassemble himself. Rai is dying, make no mistake, but he's not dying as quickly as his injuries would make it seem.

As far as the whole "unseen power" goes, I think Rai is alluding to the similarities between the "Spin" and Stands. Both are imperceptible to those who aren't familiar with their power. Only other Stand Users can see Stands, and they can become intangible as well. Paisley Park can travel through cell phone signals, so what is it even made of, then? Maybe all Stands are just infinitely thin strands, and the vibrations of those strands is what gives them form.

Meanwhile, at the Higashikata's house, Joshuu has brought the Locacaca plant to Yasuho, because he plans to use the fruit to heal her injuries. He both castigates himself for being so useless in this crisis, and he proclaims that he'll save everyone with the Locacaca fruit. All he knows is that the Locacaca is important, but he doesn't seem to know how to use it. His first step is to save Yasuho, I guess, but he doesn't seem to know what that'll get them.

He also doesn't understand how the fruit works. Well, no one truly does. Nearby, Toru watches this scene unfold, and decides he might as well let them try this, since the branch can always grow more fruit later on. This way, he can see exactly what the new Locacaca can do. Joshuu thinks that it'll fuse his and Yasuho's body together, like how Josuke was made from Kira and Josefumi, but he convinces himself that it'll be like sex, so I guess that's why he wants to do this.

Yasuho is reluctant to try this, because there's so many unknowns to the New Locacaca, but then she realizes the Enemy Stand User is nearby, but the only one who could be here is Toru, whom she called for help a while back. Realizing that Toru is the Stand User, Yasuho suddenly goes for the fruit and takes a bite.

I think the idea here is that Yasuho is all about finding and sharing information, and while she gets stuck in dilemmas sometimes, she gets unstuck when she has important information to pass along. Now that she knows the Head Doctor's true identity, she desperately wants to pass that knowledge along to Josuke, and she can only do that healthy.

Then we flash back to when Toru first met Yasuho. No, I don't mean when they dated in high school, I mean when he just showed up at her first day of summer camp and gave her special rocks to help her light a fire. He tells Yasuho that he's looking for someone important, but he doesn't know his name, only certain parameters that sound more like a database search than an acquaintance. Yasuho manages to track down eight people who match his criteria, and one of them is Satoru Akefu, a 79-year-old doctor in a nursing home.

Of course, Toru's true objective here was to find a human whose identity he could assume using Wonder of U, but Yasuho doesn't realize this, any more than she's aware of her own Stand. By the time they meet again in high school, she doesn't remember him from summer camp.

Yasuho calls him out on this, and asks him how long he's been in her life, stealing from her. I'm not sure what she means by this, but maybe she thinks he sent that hair clip her way, or some other misfortune she may have endured. Toru warns Yasuho that she can be spared the fate he's planned for the Higashikata family, but if she takes any action against him, or even looks at his face, then she'll be the very next one in line to die.

Defiantly, Yasuho looks right at him and holds up Joshuu's cell phone. As she looks for some way to contact Josuke, Joshuu gets upset because his arm was deformed in the equivalent exchange and now he's having buyer's remorse.

In particular, he's upset at the thought of Yasuho using the arm she took from him to give handjobs, or to fondle Josuke's balls. Joshuu's the fucking worst. This was basically the moment where he justified his presence in the story, healing the dueteragonist in her hour of need, but he can't have even a shred of dignity about it. As violent as he's acting here, he doesn't even actually do anything to Yasuho, which kind of makes him even more pathetic.

Guided by Paisley Park, Yasuho calls Kyo Nijimura, alias Kei Kira, I guess. I never knew for sure if "Nijimura" was her real last name or not. She's been absent from the story for a while now, but it's not too surprising to find her taking care of her sick mother, Holly. She's probably doing this all the time when she's not working as the Higashikata family maid.

I've often wondered why Kyo kept up this maid job, since she only did it to infiltrate their house and spy on them for Yoshikage Kira, but hell, she probably needs the money to help pay for Holly's medical care, and the Higashikatas need a maid, so why not? I'm not sure if the Higashikatas ever learned the truth about Kei/Kyo, but it sort of doesn't matter at this point.

Yasuho reaches her on the phone and asks her to find Josuke and give him her cell phone so Yasuho can talk to him. And Kei knows exactly where to find Josuke, because Holly wrote it down on her hand before she went into a coma. This kind of supports my theory that Holly's Stand somehow helps grease the wheels for the good guys.

So Yasuho has made her play, but Toru's warning will come true. High above Morioh, a panel off a jet plane has come loose and its heading for her right now.

Back at the Locacaca lab, Wonder of U still won't approach Josuke, so he starts smashing up the place, destroying vials of Locacaca 6251. That annoys Toru enough for Wonder of U to come closer, but then calamities start attacking Josuke anyway. So I guess breaking Toru's things count as a pursuit? I don't know.

Josuke tries to kick Wonder of U, maybe in desperation, and the calamity turns his soap bubbles against him, just like they hurt Rai earlier, and I think this is what gives Josuke the insight he needs to understand what Rai was saying.

Okay, so causing Stands to backfire is a known effect of Wonder of U. We saw it earlier when Mitsuba tried to use her force arrows to flush Paisley Park down the toilet, only for one of the arrows to go wild and blast a hole in the wall, revealing the Locacaca branch to the rest of the family. I don't think Toru caused that specific thing to happen, but it goes to show that it's not just random cuts or falling objects that get caught in the effect. Even Stands can improbably malfunction. I'd like to think Nut King Call has been kicking Joshuu in the groin whenever he's off-panel.

Like I was saying before, I don't think Josuke made these soap bubbles into deadly cutting weapons. I think that happened from them getting affected by the calamity power, the same way those raindrops hit harder than they should have. In other words, Wonder of U caused the soap bubbles to behave in a way that was possible, however improbable. And it's a way that Josuke had never considered before, which is the unseen property that Rai wanted him to know about.

And I think feeling that effect on his own leg might have helped him understand all of this. He lost control of his bubbles, but he could make them do the same thing deliberately, if he set his mind to it.

Then Born This Way rushes into the room, and it freezes the soap bubbles with the cold wind that it generates. This blows the bubbles directly into Wonde of U, and a few of them actually connect! His cane breaks and everything.

And now Toru's finally beginning to understand what Rai was talking about. Among the bubbles he can see, there's also bubbles that can't bee seen. Wonder of U operates on a logic of cause and effect, but if there's something in Soft and Wet that operates outside of reality, then it wouldn't be bound by the logic of Wonder of U. And if that's true, then Josuke might be able to find a way to hurt him after all.

Meanwhile, Kei has already suffered a fatal calamity. When Wonder of U's cane broke, a chunk of it went flying into her eye as she walked in. As she dies, she tosses her phone to Josuke and says it's for him.

Yasuho quickly sends Paisley Park to Josuke, and fills him in on everything she's just learned. Toru is the Stand User. I don't know how this helps Josuke, but at least everyone's up to date now.

So Toru decides to call off his plans to kill Josuke and withdraws. Whatever's going on, he can't afford to take any chances, and if he can just grab the Locacaca branch and leave, he can disappear the way the Rock Humans always do. He can just start a new identity somewhere else and start over with his plan. This might be why Yasuho told him what she knew, so that Josuke would understand the stakes involved. It's not just a question of whether they can defeat Wonder of U. Now they have to beat him, because if he gets the branch and leaves then they'll never get another chance.

Somehow, Rai encourages Josuke from beyond the grave. This also annoyed me in 2021, but we've seen dead comrades do this in other JoJo parts so I guess it's okay.

Toru advances on Yasuho to get the branch, and when Joshuu tries to defend her a falling leaf cuts off some of his fingers. Serves him right.

Yasuho warns Josuke that Toru has the branch, so there's no time to play it safe now. He has to pursue Wonder of U and try to attack with this unseen power Rai was talking about. And he has to do it now, before it's too late. So Josuke takes aim and fires...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojolion #jo2uke higashikata #yasuho hirose #kyo nijimura #toru #joshuu higashikata #rai mamezuku #holly joestar kira

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jjba-info-cards · 2 years

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similar cards under the cut

#jojolion #other cards #higashikatas #caato higashikata #norisuke higashikata #daiya higashikata #joshu higashikata #hato higashikata #mitsuba higashikata #jobin higashikata #tsurugi higashikata #josuke higashikata #yasuho hirose #josefumi kujo #yoshikage kira #holly joestar-kira #holly joestar kira #kyo nijimura

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goatpaste · 6 months

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Kofi commission for a lil Holly joestar from JJL :)

just a lil redraw of her over some DiU panels!

[Commission Prices][Etsy][Buy me a Kofi]

#kofi #commissions #jojolion #jojos #jjba #holly joestar #kira joestar #kei nijimura

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foodlesoodlesdoodles · 2 months

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i would love to know more about ur jjba ocs :D

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ AN EXCUSE TO YAP . GODSPEED BELOVED CITIZEN. FOR SPACING I MAY HAVE TO DO A MULTI PART BUT I THINK ILL START WITH THE OGS. Honestly I wouldn’t mind an input about which one to clarify about,,,,, also Godspeed because you did this anon off which I could never be brave enough to do (positive) OKAY OKAY SO.

The Primary setting is Diamond Is Unbreakable. Featuring my favorite four gay college aged losers.

JOUJIROU HANABUSA is, quite obviously, yet another illegitimate child of a certain old man. 20 years old and studying to become essentially a professional bug researcher? She was actually made separate from the entire groups theming. She’s kindhearted and struggles to stand up for herself or take things serious, as she feels great remorse for who she was previous to college. She used to be a big hothead boy (‼️TRANSFEM BTW) who was the classic archetype of kid having a rough time at home (or at this case, lack thereof as she was in the foster system at a very small age) and took it out on other people. She struggles with feeling like she’s constantly left out or behind, which emphasizes itself when shit kicks into high gear in the story. (AU pictured briefly here where Joseph finds her at 11 and takes her to be apart of the family)

This kind of reputation proceeds her in the small town, and as such she’s become much more withdrawn and introverted. She left for a period of time as to help her adoptive father on business trips. After which, she came across her little half brother after he accidentally bumped into her while she was frozen looking at a millipede on a streetlight. They didn’t like eachother at first! But brother, once the moms found out it was OVER.

Her stand is The Seven Plagues of Egypt, a very odd place for a stand such as this! But that’s sort of her whole point, she’s sort of an echo of someone she never knew and the issues resulting sort of warping her life and behavior forever unintentionally. (Fun fact: she was 11 when the SDC arc happened!) her stand itself is disturbing and odd, manifesting itself not just out of the material it controls (locusts, fire, blood, etc etc) but also her own internal issues.

The stand itself is crazy, but it’s in the hands of a person who never wants to hurt anyone. Her favorite bugs are of course locusts, having certain earrings and a ponytail holder resembling the insect. It’s range is rather questionable, as Seven Plagues did fuck up— Y’know— Egypt. Or at least a wide range. I don’t have an exact number, as it’s very hard to pin down! She sees through the eyes of the locusts, and can pretty much go anywhere with it even though she can’t use her abilities through the bug outside of a certain radius.

Speaking of, as to how she takes damage— a lot of her stand is multiple organisms in hordes, and she often uses these creatures passively. Whether it be one or 30 all hidden around the room to listen and watch. They appear as small cuts on her body whenever they die, which is HIGHLY annoying for her. (and, newsflash: she DOES get headaches from being rattled around in a jar)

(AU pictured briefly here where Joseph finds her at 11 and takes her to be apart of the family part 2) I’ve tried drawing it only a handful of times once before, but I do struggle to capture it in a way I like. I have far better sketches I know I’ve deleted but can find! But I’d rather not accidentally delete all of this as I’m on mobile.

Her SCARRING is something very important, as it actually doesn’t come from her hurting herself! It’s a close call with Yoshikage Kira, and brother she FELL for that damsel in distress act he put up and he GOT her ass. Luckily he was on the run so she didn’t have to worry about any extra shit, but needless to say her persistent belief in the goodwill of others gets her in trouble. (I am totally certain this won’t happen a second time with a pink haired man who has some weird shit goin on)

This is the most RECENT but UNFINISHED mapping of her scars, body and shape. As you can tell I made the center of the blast sort of blister into a star mark. She gets more later, but as of right now we’re focused on part 4 Jouji. This obviously fucked her up big time, destroyed any feel in that side of her body and definitely needed several surgeries, medications and a cane. Her eye technically survived but it’s very piss poor vision on her other side.

She functions poorly in serious social situations, often opting to do bits or try to lighten up the mood. Though she can hold her own close range as well as a regular buff ass 6’6 woman can, she doesn’t often resort to that unless it’s protective. She at least knows how to try her best in situations where people need support or feel isolated, as she knows those kinds of feelings well and tries to befriend people through food and gifts. This is actually why all of her friends came not from college, but from the cafe Norman works at!

LASTLY, she warms up to her new dad rather quickly! She’s an adult, and she tries to reassure him he couldn’t have known she or her brother were born. (“Though, did you HAVE to cheat on your wife? I mean, thanks for the life and all…… but jeez, dude— TWICE? at your age? Damnn….”) she can’t help but wonder if somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows what her mom is like. who she is. She was left alone in Morioh at like 5, and doesn’t remember her twin brother. (And never learns of him until far, far, FAR later.) She just wants to know why she was left behind, and the only one to be. (It was the destructiveness of her stand, and for a assumedly standless mother— it was far too much to handle. So she took the other less exhausting son.)

Though…….. if she were smaller it would NOT be the case.

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incorrect-jojolands-quotes · 11 months

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holy: who's the pygmy? what's it doing in my seat?

barbara ann: sister, this is your nephew jodio.

holy: ... and who the heck are you?

yoshikage: yeah, i think mom is confused again.

kei: mom, what was the last thing you remember?

holy: *points to yoshikage* that dopey sailor-looking kid who went out for bubble gum ice cream.

dragona: wow... auntie's forgotten the last ten years.

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sorbet-and-gelato · 11 months

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thinking about them

#holly joestar-kira #kei nijimura #jjba #jojos bizarre adventure #jojolion #my art

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kkujo · 1 year

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people who still think kira and josefumi are related are literally the stupidest people ever oh my god

#a) it was literally only a theory based on ONE frame where fumi had the star birthmark. note how #1. kira didn't have it in that pic. 2. josefumi didn't have it in LITERALLY ANY OTHER FRAME including him as a child. 3. it's the first pic #of him and clearly his design wasn't 100% yet bc he had some different details (his eyes & shirt collar)#and 4(?) araki has made mistakes before e.g. the kakyoin polnareff earring thing etc etc #b) it's literally clarified that they're not related with the family trees. the only link between them before meeting #was that josefumi's grandfather found joseph joestars sandal with his name on it and named josefumi after that #IF JOSEPH WAS JOSEFUMI'S FATHER. WHY WOULD HIS GRANDPA NAME JOSEFUMI AFTER HIM.#IT'S LITERALLY CLARIFIED THAT JOSEPH IS A STRANGER TO THEIR FAMILY.#c) people seem to think they're somehow cousins/uncle and nephew bc of the jotaro&josuke link #but??? they're not parallels of josuke and jotaro??? it's a whole different universe #and josefumi is kind of a parallel to josuke but ALSO a parallel to jotaro being a kujo right.#kira is a parallel to jotaro being holly's son but also a parallel of KIRA OBVIOUSLY and kyo is a parallel of jotaro also AND okuyasu #while yasuho is a parallel to okuyasu and also koichi etc etc etc IT DOESN'T LINE UP LIKE THAT !#it's never ever been even implied that they're related 😭#the only reason people think it is bc of theories based on what's most likely a mistake #and people saying they're brothers is even weirder like???? where did you even get that from holy shit #read jojolion again and actually look at the details of their family trees and their backstories. you are literally wrong #and people are always so annoying about it too

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artychaild · 1 year

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KEI NIJIMURA! IS MY BLORBO! GIVE HER PLUSHIES! AND TIME WITH HER MAMA!

#jojolion #jjba #jjba fanfic #my fic #my wriitng #My writing #kei nijimura #holly joestar-kira #yoshikage kira jjl

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ourpleova · 8 months

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Holly Kira and Her Son

#I don’t think I’ve ever drawn her happy #(digitally i mean)#jjba #jojos bizarre adventure #jjba part 8 #jjba jojolion #jojolion #holly joestar kira #holly kira #holy joestar kira #holy kira #ivan the terrible #kira yoshikage #part 8 kira #josuke higashikata #josuke 8

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schadenfredde · 1 year

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#jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba #jojo polls #jjba poll #poll

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duhragonball · 21 days

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JoJolion Ch. 50-53

This is the "Vitamin C and Killer Queen" arc.

I went over this a little last time, but the idea here is that the leader of the Rock Human smuggler group has come to the Higashikata home to find out who killed all his guys, and as he interrogates Norisuke, he starts explaining his beef with Yoshikage Kira and Josefumi Kujo.

But the audience doesn't know much about Kira, and even less about Kujo, so this arc takes us all the way back to the day they met in 1997. Josefumi and his mother were at the beach, and he wandered out too far and fell in the water without knowing how to swim.

What's important about this is how his mother reacts. Leading up to this, Kiyomi's not even watching her kid. Some guys start to invite her to a party but they see the toys and realize she's a mom, so they ditch her. Then she takes some pills and calls in sick to work, and they tell her not to bother coming back, because she does this all the time. Kiyomi says she'll "start working hard"..... tomorrow. We're left with the impression that she's made and broken this resolution many times before. Also she's got divorce papers in her purse.

Basically she's a hot mess, completely unprepared for the responsibilities of parenting, and when she finally realizes her son is drowning she... hesitates. I don't want to read too much into this, but it's like she's thinking she might still make it into that party she was told about.

Seriously, though, whatever's going through her mind, it's like she's actually debating whether this might be a good off-ramp from the whole motherhood thing. Just let nature take it's course, and she can go back to her old life. She eventually comes around and tries to help him, but the fact that she waited so long is....

No, wait. She didn't have second thoughts. I've just always took that for granted. Kiyomi just thought she had waited long enough for him to be too far gone, and then she called for help so people would find the boy's body and write it all off as an unfortunate accident. Holy shit...

I say this because when he gets taken to the hospital, they say he was in the water for like twenty minutes. He must not have been under for the entire time, but thrashing and struggling to get air. And we'll later see that Josefumi remembers seeing his mom watching him and doing nothing to help. For twenty minutes. Fuck...

Anyway, the doctor who take care of Josefumi is one Dr. Holly Joestar Kujo. She's less worried about drowning and more worried about a head injury he sustained while he was in the waves. There's a blood clot, and she needs help to remove it...

... from her son, Yoshikage Kira. She knows about his Stand, and I get the sense that she's done this before. Kira is annoyed that they'll be late for the movie they were going to see, but he plays along.

Couple of things before we move on.

First, Part 8 Holly is hawt. Just throwing that out there.

Second, look at Kyo's giant hat! That's adorable. I don't know why Kyo and Yoshikage are wearing basically the same clothes as kids that they wear as adults, but it is pretty cute.

So Yoshikage uses Killer Queen. Specifically, he uses "Sheer Heart Attack", which sends lots of tiny Stand tanks into Joesfumi's bloodstream to find and break up any clots. This is a reference to "Sheer Heart Attack" from Part 4, except the application is different. In Part 4, SHA was a remote unit of Killer Queen, capable of pursuing heat sources and destroying them with a powerful explosion. In Part 8, SHA seems to work like Soft and Wet's soap bubbles, except they're little tanks instead of bubbles, and they explode.

Kyo told Josuke a while back that Killer Queen also used bubbles, but this scene appears to contradict her. Maybe she just meant that the tanks were similar to the bubbles, and the image we saw of KQ with bubbles was just Josuke's imagination trying to picture it.

Anyway, Josefumi is out of danger, and Kira informs Kiyomi of this, but he gets the sense that she's more afraid than relieved. He decides to go see Titanic by himself, since Holly will probably be busy a while longer.

Flash forward to 2009, after Kira has learned of the Rock Humans and their Locacaca Fruit smuggling operation. He's been spying on the baseball stadium, and he got recordings of a ball player with a bad shoulder eating the fruit and getting healed. Now he's pitching fastballs like nothing was ever wrong with him, and he wears masks to all his games because his jaw turned to stone and crumbled off his face.

Kira is convinced that this fruit could help his ailing mother, and he plans to steal some. But he needs the help of Josefumi Kujo, so he approaches him and shares his findings. He does not explain his reasons at first. He just says the fruit could be worth a lot of money, but Josefumi already knows about Holly's illness and figures Kira must be too proud to say why he's really doing this.

Now that I think about it, it seems more like Kira was testing Kujo to see if he would volunteer for this heist just to repay Holly for saving his life. Because that's exactly what Josefumi says. He's been grateful to Holly ever since that day in the hospital, and I think Kira already knew this, which is why he approached Josefumi in the first place. He needed help to pull this off, and he needed someone who shares his motivation.

Also, Josefumi has a clever idea for stealing the fruit. His Soft and Wet powers can be used to graft branches from one tree onto another. So they don't have to bother swiping an entire Locacaca plant from Aisho. That would attract too much unwanted attention. But if they can distract him long enough to just steal a branch or two, and graft other branches in their place, then the Rock Humans won't even notice anything's missing.

Thanks to Kira's spying, they know Aisho Daienjiyama's routine pretty well, and I guess he always goes to the drug store at certain times while he's moving the fruit around. They manage to convince him that there's this super great brand of eye drops and he buys the last box. I'm not sure what the point of this is, or how they could have known it would work. I mean, Aisho got anxiety, so they're probably playing on that, but this seems like a long shot to me.

From there, he goes to an intersection and Kira arranges a motorcycle accident by using Killer Queen to blow out one of the tires. This, and maybe those eyedrops, keeps Aisho looking away from his case. Maybe Soft and Wet did something to the eye drops? I don't know. I suspect Soft and Wet definitely did something to keep Aisho from hearing Josefumi from sneaking up on him and opening his case. He quickly yanks off some branches and grafts new ones on, but this seems like noisy work to me.

I mean, he even takes out a phone and a knife so he can whittle the new branches off to make them look like the branches he removed. I mean, he'd have to do it this way, because it's the first time he's gotten to see the plant up close, but this must be taking forever.

But it seems to work. They take the branches and graft them to a tree somewhere secret, and now they just have to wait for the branch to produce fruit. In the meantime, Josefumi meets Holly. This is before she ended up in the hospital, but her mind is already starting to go. She starts out knowing he's a guest, but then she confuses him for Yoshikage, and thinks his hair is a new hat Yoshikage bought. She's distraught, but there's nothing anyone can do.

It's kind of bittersweet, because at least Josefumi got to meet Holly and thank her for saving him as a kid, but she's too far gone to really understand what he's saying to her.

Later, the boys discuss their plans on a sailboat and Kira says they need to stay away from their grafted branch until it's ready to harvest, and even afterward, they need to be careful, lest the smugglers find out what they've done. Kira notices Karera Sakunami watching them from the dock, and Josefumi has to explain that she's a girl he knows from school who has a crush on him, and she's been stalking him ever since.

This seems at odds with Karera's portrayal in the Love Love Deluxe arc. Not that I'd be surprised to hear Karera was dishonest, but she had a photo of the three of them together, like they were in cahoots. Also she knew the name of the Locacaca plant, and acted like she had something to do with the plan to steal it. And maybe Josefumi told her a few things, but the way he's acting here, it's like he barely knows her at all.

Then it turns out that the Rock Humans are aboard their boat. I don't know how this could have happened, since the Rock Humans are particularly vulnerable to drowning, and neither Damo nor Yotsuyu have abilities that would allow them to sneak on board like this.

Also, Damo says that the date is "Friday, August 19." That... makes no sense. August 19, 2010 was on a Thursday. August 19, 2011 is on a Friday, but this scene can't be happening then, because the earthquake happened on March 11, 2011.

I mean, this moment has to be on March 11, 2011, because the earthquake happens right at the end of it. Damo says it's been 10 months, 18 days since the boys stole the branches, and that would put us around... April of 2010? Maybe the months are in a different order in the SBR-verse.

The main point Damo is making is that it took them a ridiculously long time to even notice the theft or to track down the thieves. The branches that Josefumi grafted on were slightly heavier than the ones he removed, so even though the Rock Humans checked the weight before and after a transaction, they didn't see the increase as a problem. It wasn't until the plant wilted that they noticed the branches were different. Then they had to figure out who stole the branches, which basically involved looking up every sick person in Japan. The search took four months, but eventually led to Holly Joestar Kira, whose son just happened to be on the same cargo ship that carried Rock Humans and Locacaca trees to Morioh in 2009.

Damo incapacitates them both with his Vitamin C Stand, and starts torturing them by cutting their liquefied bodies with a folded 1000-yen bill. This is the same thing he's doing to Norisuke in the present-day, by the way.

Damo offers to let one of them live. He figures Holly's doomed to die anyway, so Kira and Kujo are the only loose ends. Even so, this theft has opened his eyes to the tiny flaws in his smuggling operation, so he feels somewhat responsible for this. So he'll spare whichever one of them tells them where the branches have been hidden. He figures Josefumi will crack first, since it's not even his mother they're doing this for.

And as he continues torturing them, Josefumi thinks back to his mother watching him die, and reflects on how he's been abadoned his whole life. So maybe it doesn't matter if he's the one who does the abandoning this time...

But before he can talk, Yoshikage apologizes for getting him into this mess, and tells him to make a run for it as soon as he has the chance. Then he bluffs to Damo, telling him that he has allies. Damo doesn't buy that, but Yoshikage reminds him that he doesn't even know where the branches are, so there's a lot more he might not understand about Kira's plan. Then he calls over Karera from the dock, and that confuses the Rock Humans enough to distract them.

I'm not really clear on how all this goes down, but the bad guys find Josefumi's phone with Karera. I thought it was on the boat, though. Yotsuyu subdues her, and then finds a pair of Sheer Heart Attack bombs in her hair. They go off, destroying pretty much everything in this panel except for all of the people? I guess? Killer Queen: It Just Works.

Josefumi manages to bring Kira back onto land, and he heads for the spot where they grafted the branches onto a tree. He confesses that he would have told Damo where to find it if Kira hadn't acted when he did, so he pleads for forgiveness.

He picks the fruit off the branch and offers some to Kira, but he's too far gone. Damo cut out his liver while he was torturing him, so he's in pretty bad shape.

So Josefumi uses Soft and Wet to cut up the fruit into pieces and force them into Kira's mouth. His wounds heal, but it's Josefumi's body that suffers in exchange. He realizes that the parts of his body that touched Kira's are turning to stone. Somehow, the grafted branch is producing different Locacaca fruit than before.

But it's not enough. Kira has other injuries that Josefumi didn't see before, and one treatment won't fix them all. Then the Aphex brothers show up to finish them off, and Josefumi has to fight them for a bit. I guess this tells us where Josuke got his fighting skills.

At last, Josefumi decides the only thing left to do is to feed Kira another fruit and lay on top of him. He believes this will save Kira at the cost of his own life, but he prefers it this way, for Holly's sake, and because he feels like he's been living on borrowed time ever since that day he almost drowned.

Then the tsunami hits, and the fault lines move, and Yotsuyu and his comrades have to abandon their search for Kira and Josefumi.

And that... pretty much takes us to the first chapter of Jojolion. Kira and Josefumi were buried together, and one of their intermingled bodies was discovered by Yasuho Hirose. She named him Josuke, and they later discovered the other body, which they believed to be Yoshikage Kira. In truth, I don't think it's quite accuracte to say that either body is Kira or Josefumi at this point. They're both blended bodies, and one is alive and one is dead.

Yotsuyu was lurking on the Higashikata estate because he was trying to track down the branch, and Josefumi, and any other answers he could find. And when he never came back, Damo seduced Hato Highashikata so he could infiltrate the mansion and find out for himself.

Speaking of Damo, he's still torturing Norisuke in the present, but we'll check up on him next time...

#jojolion #jojo's bizarre adventure #josefumi kujo #yoshikage kira #holly joestar kira #kiyomi kujo #tamaki damo #yotsuyu yagiyama #karera sakunami #aisho dainenjiyama #aphex brothers

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