“He’s not a bad guy, but he just doesn’t stand out very much.”
What They Say:
As Yoshikage walked through the town at lunchtime, declined the offer to eat lunch with his female coworkers, and heads to a bakery to buy lunch. While enjoying his lunch outdoors, Shigechi walks by and accidentally takes Kira’s sandwich bag by mistake, thinking it was his own. Realizing this, Kira quickly goes after Shigechi, because the contents of that bag definitely did not contain a sandwich…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After plenty of teases and short cameo appearances, we finally get a proper introduction to Yoshikage Kira–diamond is Unbreakable’s main villain. So what’s a day in the life of a serial killing, hand fetishist?
Well, as much as I’d love to delve into the subject matter, there really isn’t much to sink your teeth into in terms of getting to know Kira as a person. The opening scene as he declines to eat lunch with his office co-workers is the most the episode offers in terms of what he’s like in front of his peers, with the following scene of him and his latest victim’s severed hand offering only the tiniest taste of the clearly twisted, perverted character.
While following up the scene with his co-workers with a scene showing Kira’s more twisted side does offer a large disconnect between both lives, it isn’t nearly enough to whet viewers’ appetites, especially having seen him accomplish plenty in the way of sick-and-wrong in his previous appearances. Yes, the scene at the sandwich shop demonstrates how Kira’s serial-killings are seen by him as something mundane and completely normal, but we’ve been given plenty of similar scenes in episodes prior. If anything, considering how this season of Jojo tends to focus on creating characters out of settings, it would have been interesting to see the office scene padded out to really give us a feel for what Kira defines as ordinary and whether or not that fuels his killer instincts or keeps them at bay.
Instead, the majority of the episode goes to Kira further crossing paths with our main cast, as Kira’s sandwich bag (severed hand inside) is mistaken by Shigechi for his own. And while the gradual overlap between heroes and villains is just as strange and goofy as you’d expect from Jojo, it also feels unnecessarily long, to the point that I was hoping for something else to happen, only to have the Loony Tunes shenanigans continue onward. The noticeable drop in animation quality only further brought this point home, the episode a far cry from the crisp fluidity from episodes past.
Don’t misunderstand, though—seeing big bad Kira be at the mercy of a stupid middle-schooler and his supposed sandwich bag was a fun watch. It just didn’t provide the emotional depth I was expecting from a proper villain introduction. Perhaps come next week’s episode, but as it stands, I just wasn’t feeling it.
In Summary:
“Yoshikage Kira Just Wants to Live Quietly, Part 1” does an okay job of providing a more proper introduction to this arc’s new villain. However, mixing his story with the daily doldrums of the rest of the Jojo protagonists feels more like a Loony Tunes bit, and less like the murder mystery I was anticipating. And while one can say such has always been the premise of most Jojo stories, the two have yet to mix together in an efficient enough manner to be wholly enjoyable.
Grade: B-/C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
