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duhragonball · 12 days

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JoJolion Ch. 107-108

Remember when JoJolion got insanely popular for a while, and everyone was spamming "Inca No Mezame Potatoes" memes all year long? Those were good times.

At this point, the final battle is nearly finished. Toru's Stand is still extremely dangerous, but Josuke was able to get past his defenses, with a little help from Yasuho. He's not dead, but he's badly hurt, so if you just stand back and leave him alone, it should just be a matter of waiting for him to die.

However, Toru ate the last fruit off the New Locacaca Branch, so he could recover from his wounds, but only if he can touch someone to act as a donor in the equivalent exchance process. That's how the New Locacaca works, by the way. The original version healed one body part in exchange with another. If you've got too many injuries, like Toru here, the Old Locacaca wouldn't do any good. But with the New Locacaca, you can absorb health from a second person, and they end up taking on your injuries.

And that's the situation Caato Higashikata has walked into. She's been renting an apartment lately, and she made a stew for Jobin, with Inca No Mazame potatoes, just the way he likes 'em. But when she brought it over for him, she found the apartment wrecked and Jobin dead.

Yasuho's fear is that Caato will try to attack Toru in a vengeful fury, except this would play right into Toru's hands. As soon as she gets close enough, he can grab her and heal himself with equivalent exchange. Even if she attacks him from a safe distance, his Wonder of U power is still active, so a calamity will strike her down. So Yasuho is desperately begging Caato to just do nothing. The only winning move is not to play.

But Caato has a plan, much to Yasuho's chagrin. She tosses some of her playing cards around him, and reveals her Stand abilitiy. Space Trucking can hide objects between playing cards. The cards themselves are no threat to Toru, so simply demonstrating all of this is not enough to trigger a calamity. She even uses the cards to hide Toru's arms, but this isn't an attack either, since it doesn't hurt him. It's just to keep him in one place.

That's an interesting angle, actually. Is it possible to simply trap Toru in a place where he can't escape? Like, if he falls down a hole and he can't get out, that's not an attack, and I don't think his Stand has the kind of physical power it would need to pull him out. Could you defeat him that way? That's not Caato's plan, but it's something to think about.

I'm skipping over a lot of stuff here, because most of this chapter is just Toru and Caato cutting promos on each other. Toru keeps taunting Caato about how her dead son's dreams were never realized, and Caato keeps explaining things. He's trying to goad her into making a mistake, and she's just dragging this moment out, for various reasons, but mostly just to keep Toru guessing.

Then we get this flashback to before the Wonder of U arc began. Caato came over one day and Jobin revealed to her the New Locacaca branch that he had secured during the orchard fire. He had been stressed out about keeping it hidden, and the stress of sharing that secret with Tsurugi, and the danger of losing the branch to enemies. Caato reassured him and offered to hide the branch--pot and all--inside her cards if the need arose.

I'm not sure what the point of this was, except to make it clear that Caato knew about the branch and the powers of its fruit. Specifically, Jobin showed her how two of his beetles did an equivalent exchange. I guess they just got close enough to the plant that they ingested some of the sap? There were only two fruits, and they hadn't grown yet in the flashback, so I don't know. The point is that both Jobin and Caato understood that the branch actually had this power.

So finally, Toru begins to get flustered, and demands to know what she's hiding in her cards. She didn't come out to the garage just to talk to him while he died, so what is she up to? So Caato finally shows him...

Turns out, she hid Tsurugi in there, and now the kid rolls out onto the floor and his body contacts Toru's, which initiates the equivalent exchange!

But which way will this go? Toru's the one who ate the fruit, so that should mean his injuries will be healed, not Tsurugi's disease. Well, Caato thought that, which is why she hid the plant in her cards too, and made sure to crush the branch so as to extract the sap. She drips this into Tusurugi's mouth, and that seems to do the trick. I'm not sure why this gives Tsurugi precedence in the exchange, but sure.

As Toru dies, he tries to talk his way out of this. He warns them that they'll never find another plant like this again, and if they destroy it now, there'll never be another. I would have thought they could just find another Old Locacaca plant in New Guinea, plant it near the Wall Eyes, and there you go. But Toru seems to think there were other coincidences at play, like the earthquake and everything else that happened in this Part. The New Locacaca that Kira and Josefumi unwittingly created was truly unique.

Needless to say, this doesn't impress anyone in the garage. The Locacaca has caused the Higashikatas and Yasuho a lot of grief, so who needs more of that bullshit? And even if it were a boon to humanity, if we need Rock Humans like Toru to access it, then it's probably not worth the trouble, since the Rock Humans have demonstrated time and again that they aren't trustworthy. Remember, Poor Tom died trying to bring what he thought was the branch to Toru, and Toru used his Stand to kill him. The Rock Humans can't even trust each other. The idea of them posing as doctors is bad comedy.

But mostly, fuck Toru. Even if he could snap his fingers and cure Holly and resurrect all of his victims, he'd never do it. You know, he might even have that kind of ability. Wonder of U causes misfortune to befall anyone who pursues or attacks Toru, but maybe it can do nice things for people too. We just never find that out because Toru has no altruistic tendencies. Helping someone else isn't in his character. It would never occur to him to try to help Holly or anyone else. So his pleas for mercy are especially pathetic.

Then he starts appealing to Yasuho, talking about all the good times they had together. Yeah, like the time you dropped a chunk of aircraft on her head, remember that? Yeah, Yasuho doesn't budge. She looks concerned, but I think it's just because she's so horrified to watch this horrible creature's death throes. Why is it taking so long?

At last, Toru finally dies, and his last thought is the image of a hornet, like the one he clung to as an infant so he could parisitize its nest. He realizes this was just a memory, but I guess maybe he somehow hoped that he could grab the hornet again and be taken to another nest where he could be safe and warm while he recovered.

That's really all Toru had, in the end. For all his polished facade, he never actually had any relationships with anyone. Not with Yasuho, not with his colleagues at the hospital, not with his fellow Rock Humans. They were all just means to an end, hornets that he could exploit to enrich himself. Toru often spoke of wanting good memories to keep him company. That seems to be what he saw in Yasuho. He never loved her or cared about her, but he wanted the experience of spending time with her all the same.

But in the end, his memories are all hollow. A regular human might die thinking of his family, like Jobin. But all Toru has is is his hornet.

So that's it for Toru, and that's also it for Caato, as she didn't get off scott free with this stunt of hers. When she poured the sap into Tsurugi's mouth, that constituted an attack on Toru, and so the calamity was activated. In this case, Toru had been brandishing a saw when Caato entered the garage, and this got trapped in her cards when she pinned down his arms. Somehow, as he was dying, the saw came out of the cards and flung itself into Caato's belly. I think that might be a malfunction of Space Trucking, sort of like how Wonder of U made Mitsuba and Josuke's Stands do unexpected things. Anyway, Caato lays down and dies, and I'm pretty sure she expected it to end this way.

Yasuho has this internal monologue about everything the Higashikata Family has endured in this story, but in the end, the family has gathered in the garage, not in mourning or despair, but because of hope. That's because, Tsurugi's Rock Disease has been cured thanks to the equivalent exchange, and now, at long last, the curse has been broken.

And this leads us to that moment where Tsurugi drags Norisuke out of his office, which was shown in the flash forward about twenty-odd chapters ago. What I still don't understand is: Why is Tsurugi bringing him out here? There are ambulances on the way, but I'm pretty sure they could come in the house and get Norisuke.

I think the more important thing Araki was trying to get across is that Tsurugi is finally healthy and free of the dread of worrying about the curse. While the rest of the family is still reeling from today's events, he's back on his feet and taking charge. So that's why he's the one who goes to get Norisuke, and he's the one who informs the others that he's still alive, and Jobin didn't hurt him as badly as everyone feared.

Okay, but Norisuke's right hand still fell off his arm. Like, that definitely happened. I guess he'll live even if they can't reattach it, because people lose hands and fingers in JJBA all the time, and it's more like a bad flu than anything else.

But it's not quite over yet! Toru may be dead, but somehow, Wonder of U is still active? The Stand crawls inside of Norisuke for some reason. It aggravates his injuries, though I'm not sure why. Wait, is this how it impersonated Dr. Satoru Akefu? Did Toru find the real Dr. Akefu and send Wonder of U into his body to do some sort of pod people thing?

Fortunately, Josuke's here to save the day, having just returned from the TG University Hospital. I think the idea in these two chapters is that Toru was recalling Wonder of U back to his side, and that's why it was floating around in the garage, but Josuke was also on his way back, which is why he made it on the scene not long after. Now that he's here, and there's no more bullshit Rock Insects to get in the way, Josuke can just shoot his Go Beyond bubbles at Wonder of U without any problem. He does as Yasuho to stand clear, though, because the bubbles are invisible and that makes it really difficult to aim them precisely.

And at this range, Josuke can't miss. Wonder of U explodes, and Yasuho holds him like the girlfriend in old B-Movies after the monster finally dies.

So that seems to wrap things up, right? No more Rock Humans, no more Locacaca, no more branches to fight over, no more curses, and no more Jobin to get in everyone's way. Also, Joshuu lost his right arm, so that probably just makes the whole town safer overall.

Wait, what about Holly? And what about Josuke's memories? Also what was the deal with that baby who washed up on shore the night Johnny died in 1901? And Karera said she would be back, so what happened to her? Also, Josuke and Yasuho need to kiss or something, right? There's a lot of loose ends we need to wrap up, but fortunately there's still two more chapters and...

Huh...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojolion #jo2uke higashikata #yasuho hirose #jobin higashikata #toru #caato higashikata #tsurugi higashikata #daiya higashikata #hato higashikata #norisuke higashikata iv

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duhragonball · 16 days

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JoJolion Ch. 95-98

Yep, we're still in the "Wonder of You" arc.

So the last Rock Human, the mastermind of the whole Locacaca business, is currently fighting on two fronts. His Stand ability basically punishes anyone who tries to pursue him with bad luck. If you chase him, try to look at him, or even think about approaching him, a bunch of improbable things will happen that will hurt you, badly. I think the "calamities" get more and more severe over time, but it might also be random chance.

On one front, Josuke, Rai and Yasuho were trying to find the Head Doctor of TG University Hospital, Satoru Akefu, and the Stand sent so many calamities their way that they had to split up. Josuke wound up in the hospital, Rai's in jail, and Yasuho went to the Higashikata estate to see if she could find the Locacaca Branch there.

But this put Yasuho in the middle of the second front, where the Enemy Stand just keeps lurking around the mansion, and every time Mitsuba sees it, she recognizes it as the Head Doctor and some sort of calamity happens. Then Jobin captured Paisley Park snooping around and trapped her in a smartphone in a toilet. Finally, the next calamity made Mitsuba's stand backfire, which attracted the attention of Norisuke.

Norisuke confronts Jobin for apparently attempting to murder Yasuho, and also about the Locacaca Branch, which has now been revealed from its hiding place. Jobin insists that what he's doing is the "Right Path", and he explains that his plan is to use the New Locacaca fruit to cure Tsurugi and end the curse. But the fruit has to remain a family secret, which is why Yasuho must die.

Norisuke removes the phone containing PP from the toilet, but before he puts it near an outlet for PP to escape, he seems to assent to Jobin's way of doing things. But before he does, he uses his own Stand, King Nothing, to check on an unusual odor he's detected from the Locacaca's pot. Remember, King Nothing can reconstruct objects based on their odors, so when it locks onto the scent, it forms the image of a man who once held the pot: Ojiro Sasame, who was reported dead along with his girlfriend. Since Jobin had the pot before and after Ojiro's death, it's pretty clear to everyone that Jobin killed them both with his Stand.

This would seem to prove that Jobin's "Right Path" is anything but right. That still don't dissuade Jobin, though, and he uses Speed King again, this time to incapacitate his own father. Everyone freaks out because they think Jobin killed him, but he assures them that he only knocked him out. I'm not sure why his right hand comes off during this, though.

Everyone's upset, but Jobin keeps insisting that this is all necessary for the good of the family, and that they just have to wait three more hours for the fruit to be ripe enough for Tsurugi and they'll be home free. He keeps saying they're winning, but then he finally notices that Norisuke dropped the phone containing Paisley Park.

And he dropped it close enough to an electrical socket that Paisley Park can escape the house now. I'm not sure if Norisuke planned this or if it was another calamity produced by the enemy, or maybe it was just dumb luck. The point is that it makes Jobin look really incompetent, since he's the one who was adamant about preventing Yasuho from escaping.

Meanwhile, Rai is in prison, and while his powers would allow him to escape whenever he wants, he doesn't dare risk it because of the calamity that would hit him if he tried to link up with Josuke at the hospital. Instead, he explains the plot to his cellmate, then uses a phone he swiped from the evidence locker to try to get a photo of the Enemy Stand, which occasionally floats around outside the cell window. He also took a knife from evidence, and when he explains that they both belonged to his cellmate, the guy gets enraged and tries to attack Rai with the knife, only to injure himself instead, becuase it was his phone that took the picture.

This was Rai's plan from the beginning, as his cellmate was a mass murderer, apparently, and he knew it wouldn't take much provocation to get this to happen. Now that he's injured, the police will take the guy to the hospital, and Rai uses his abiliity to unravel his body to hide inside his cellmate's clothes.

Back at the Higashikata estate, Yasuho is reunited with her Stand, so she's out of immediate danger, but she's still badly wounded, and she can't reach Josuke, so she calls Toru instead. He... does head her way, though he doesn't seem too fussed about her predicament.

Inside, the image of the Head Doctor continues to haunt Mitsuba, and now she's seeing it inside the house. Jobin's already adopted a siege mentality, because now that Yasuho's Stand has escaped, he believes that word of the New Locacaca in his possession will get out to the outside world, and so they have to fend off anyone who might try to come get it. But he's mainly worried about Yasuho and Josuke. I don't think the Head Doctor is even on his radar.

Mitsuba explains to him that they're under attack, but she can't quite explain it. All she knows for sure is that approaching or attacking the Head Doctor is a bad idea, but it's kind of the only tactic Jobin seems to use these days.

They think they see him on the nightstand, so Jobin attacks the bed with his Stand, but it turns out all he hit was an aerosol can of hair spray. The can springs a leak and starts flying around the room as the pressure bleeds off.

Jobin gives another bullshit speech about how he has the matter well in hand, and he's not worried about this new enemy at all, and then he goes out to search the rest of the house for the guy. He catches a glimpse of Toru in the security camera feed, and then suddenly he notices he's bleeding from the mouth. Somehow, the dip tube from the can of hairspray came loose while it was flying around and it launched itself straight into Jobin's chest. How did he not notice this until now? Chalk it up to the calamity, I suppose.

Then he stumbles through the hallway and the pot presses up against the dip tube, driving it further into his body and making his injury even worse. He finally collapses, dropping the pot and calling out for his wife and son as he dies.

You know, it's weird, but for some reason I totally misremembered this part of the story. I knew Jobin died around here, but somehow I convinced myself that he put up more of a fight than this. It's like when a supporting character has a pretty clever way to beat the main villain, and it allllmost works but then the villain prevails and kills the guy. I thought Jobin had a scenario kind of like that, but no. He brazenly attacked the Head Doctor and continued to pursue him, despite Mitsuba's explicit warnings, and then he died without accomplishing a damned thing.

And this takes me back to Jobin's strategy during that beetle contest with Josuke. He had that one beetle with the hole in the back of its head, and he put wax in the hole which could then be melted in order to make it more aggressive or something. The hole would eventually prove fatal for the beetle, but it would still live for at least twenty minutes, and Jobin only needed the beetle to survive for two or three minutes to finish the battle.

And that's Jobin in a nutshell. For all his high talk, he's too shortsighted and too sloppy to be a leader. He wants the power and the prestige that his father has, and he wants even more power and prestige on top of that, but in the end he's just like those beetles he collects, which only have 45 seconds' worth of useful memory. Also, he died a lot like that beetle with the hole in its head. Jobin got a fatal injury, and he was so aggro that he didn't even notice it for a few minutes and then dropped dead.

Meanwhile, remember that package Josuke sent? Well, it finally reaches its receipient, which is... some reporter. He's got pimples and little girl pigtails. It's a bold choice.

Not long after, the reporter finds Dr. Akefu and confronts him with the contents of the package: A sample of Locacaca fruit, and video records of Holly's present condition. The reporter concludes that Akefu and his colleagues must have created Locacaca 6251 from the fruit, and they tested it on Holly, resulting in her illness. Akefu is bemused at first, but once he establishes that the reporter intends to expose him with this evidence, he asks him if he opened the jar with the fruit in it.

Akefu reasons that the reporter probably examined the jar, and would have gotten some of the fruit juice on his fingers, which he probably inadvertantly got in his mouth. This leads to an equivalent exchange, but since the calamity effect in is play, the results are disastrous. The reporter's acne clears up, but the middle of his neck turns to stone and breaks apart, killing him instantly.

Still, Dr. Akefu is unnerved, and heads for the Locacaca lab.

Back at the Higashikata Estate, Toru has arrived, but he's not helping Yasuho or doing anything else, really. He just rocks out to Elvis songs until he suddenly realizes that Josuke has stopped "pursuing" and he's now "inviting". That's right, if you didn't already know, Toru is the Rock Human final boss of JoJolion, and the Head Doctor, Satoru Afeku, is his Stand.

I sort of realized this a bit early. I want to say around Chapters 94 or 95, just because it suddenly hit me that the design of Toru's hair kind of reminded me of the shape of Dr. Akefu's hat. Also, if Toru's not the main villain, then his presence this late in the story seems kind of pointless. Mostly, though, it was beginning to seem pretty clear that the "Head Doctor" was appearing in more and more unlikley places, and sometimes in multiple places at once, to the point where it seemed to make more sense for him to be the Stand instead of the user. And if we're looking for a Stand User, hey, here's Toru, a new character with nothing else going on. It all fits.

And yet, what irks me is that I never noticed until this read-through that their names are connected. Dr. Satoru Afeku. You literally can't spell the Head Doctor's name without Toru.

So now, Toru's Stand is heading for the Locacaca lab to confront Josuke, and Rai also shows up at the hospital heading the same direction. To his amazement, he sees the Head Doctor following him instead, and Rai realizes that he has to get to Josuke first or he'll start experiencing calamities again. He makes it to Josuke and he doesn't exactly approve of Josuke just sitting there and waiting for the enemy to come to him. Once the Head Doctor arrives, he'll have all the bad luck in the world bearing down on him, with nothing to help him.

Josuke counters that he has his Stand, and Rai made it here, in spite of everything, and there's still Yasuho too. Josuke is standing firm because he believes there's a way to win. Otherwise, Holly wouldn't have gone to the trouble to help him and give him that advice earlier.

And that's the difference between Jobin and Josuke. Both are driven, perhaps to the point of stubbornness, but Josuke is willing to trust others and take a stand for the right thing. His resolve is born of faith, not overconfidence in his abilities.

Speaking of Yasuho, she's not doing too well, but then she thinks she hears Toru coming to help, but instead it's... Joshuu? And he has the Locacaca branch. He's come here to help her, more out of desperation than anything else.

Back at the hospital, Toru's Stand arrives. I think the idea here is that Toru has been forced to withdraw the Stand from the Higashikata estate in order to go after Josuke. The whole pursuit-brings-calamity effect seemed to have an unlimited range, but now Josuke has flipped the script, so maybe Toru can't attack on two fronts like this. At the very least, Toru seems to have paused his search for the branch. He almost found it, but now Joshuu's outside of the house with it, but Toru's apparently too focused on Josuke to notice.

As for Josuke, he's got a bunch of Soft and Wet's bubbles in the room when the Stand enters, but it's a little too cagey to walk into a trap like this. It introduces itself as Wonder of U, and sticks close to the wall. Instead of attacking Josuke directly, Wonder of U takes out some new Rock Animal, and sics that on Josuke instead.

So this is Do Do Do De Da Da Da, a Rock Insect that looks like it's made of tongue depressors. It lays flat like a placemat, but it can raise itself up like a tower and swing this poison barb around on a string. This is the dumbest looking one yet. I think the only reason it's a credible threat here is because Josuke can't move around too much while he fights it. It stings Josuke, but we still have a ways to go before we can get into its abilities.

Wonder of U tries to taunt Josuke into fighting more aggressively, but Josuke shoots back by asking why he's still trying to draw him into a fight if he's already got the Locacaca branch. Wonder of U doesn't answer, and Rai concludes that he must not have the branch yet, or otherwise he'd just withdraw, confident that no one can stop him or take the branch away.

So there's more at stake here than just Josuke's trap. Toru wants the new Locacaca fruit, but he also needs this lab of his, and he can't seem to secure both of those things at once. So the longer Josuke can keep him tied up here, the better chance Yasuho has of keeping the branch safe. It's not much, but it's a chance...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojolion #jo2uke higashikata #yasuho hirose #rai mamezuku #toru #jobin higashikata #norisuke higashikata iv #mitsuba higashikata #tsurugi higashikata #daiya higashikata #joshuu higashikata #hato higashikata

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