Series: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable
Class: Stand-User
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Age: 16
Birthdate: 1983
Height: 6' (185 cm)
Weight: 180 lbs (82 kg)
Short Description: Young Japanese fellow in a dark suit, some bling, and a really nicely-kept pompadour.
Info: Josuke Higashikata is a high school freshman born and raised in the town of Morioh (located in S City, in M Prefecture). Being the illegitimate son of Joseph Joestar has connected him to the Joestar legacy... and given him a Stand, like all of the Joestar line. Crazy Diamond, besides being incredibly strong, fast, and durable, sports the unique ability to restore objects or people to a previous state. However, his Stand can't heal himself or fix things on his own person, nor can it bring the dead back to life. Cunning and intelligent, Josuke has been known to utilize his Stand's unique mechanics to turn a situation around and pry victory from the jaws of defeat. But for all his smarts, he does have a pretty strong disregard for property damage and personal injury to others -- he can just fix it! And God help you if you insult his hair!
Standing about six feet tall, the first thing that usually draws the eye about this young fellow is that hair. It's in a style called a pompadour (or a "regent", if you're Japanese). It looks very carefully done, as a hair is rarely out of place. His features are slim, but his jawline is rather wide and stable, and his chin is quite strong. His eyebrows up in a slightly pointed way; they too appear thick and strong.
He wears what might be recognized as a high school uniform with a long jacket. Said jacket is mostly buttoned closed, but the top three buttons have been left undone to show the yellow shirt beneath. There are two zippers on either side of the chest of the shirt. The jacket over it has been folded back where it's left open, the lapels pinned to the jacket with two large gold pins -- on the left a golden heart, on the right a golden peace sign. The outfit is loose, but the sleeves are snug, and he wears a pair of gold bands on his wrists. His shoes look really expensive. If one is familiar with brands, one might recognize them as Bally.
- Josuke possesses a Stand, a manifestation of his psychic potential, fighting spirit, and/or mental strength. His Stand is called "Crazy Diamond", and possesses great physical strength, speed, and durability, in exchange for being unable to manifest more than about six and a half feet away from him. Any farther apart and the Stand either fails to manifest or fades (in the case of being pushed/pulled apart while already manifested).
- Crazy Diamond's signature ability is a restoration ability that can repair broken or damaged objects, or heal injured people. For objects, Crazy Diamond can return them to a state somewhere along their timeline -- he can restore the broken-off door of a cabinet, or he can reduce the cabinet to lumber and fastenings. For people, Crazy Diamond can heal injuries, even severed limbs and removed organs. But he cannot resurrect the dead; he can repair the body, but the deceased remains dead. However, in either case, if he's upset or angry, he can botch a repair/heal job, resulting in the object being deformed, or a person's injury not healing properly.
- Josuke himself is also keenly aware of the limits of his Stand's abilities, to a frankly quite unnerving degree. He's been known to use the limits of his powers to his advantage (fusing a serial killer with a rock into a single entity, exploding his bike and then restoring it to avoid hitting someone, using his own blood to make a homing missile out of a piece of glass, etc.). Physically he's also quite skilled, on par with trained athletes (he can chase down a moving bus on foot, physically pick up and throw a person of similar size as himself one-handed with ease, and withstand close proximity to explosions and the injuries this would cause while still remaining lucid enough to consider methods of counterattack).
Stand Parameters
Mouseover where italicized for more info about a stat.
- Destructive power (破壊力 -- Hakairyoku): A
- Speed (スピード -- Supīdo): A
- Range (射程距離 -- Shatei Kyori): D
- Durability (持続力 -- Jizoku-ryoku): B
- Precision (精密動作性 -- Seimitsu Dōsa-sei): B
- Development Potential (成長性 -- Seichō-sei): C
Weaknesses
- Josuke is massively touchy about insults aimed at his hair, due to the unknown student who saved him. When this happens, he tends to attack without thought or regard for his own personal safety.
- Whatever damage is inflicted on Crazy Diamond will appear on Josuke. If Crazy Diamond is defeated Josuke will be knocked unconscious; Josuke can die if enough damage is done to his Stand. Status effects inflicted onto his Stand carry over to Josuke too.
- He has little regard for the law or the enforcers thereof, particularly where helping someone who asks is concerned, though he's not above petty theft to further his aims, so long as no one gets hurt. Also, since Crazy Diamond can near-instantly fix damage/heal injuries, Josuke doesn't worry much about property damage or physical injury.
- Josuke is intelligent and cunning, and his Stand is incredibly powerful. There are times when he over-reaches his capabilities.
- Generally he wants to do the right thing, helping people that need it, even healing his enemies if necessary.
- If Josuke is angry, upset, or heavily distracted, Crazy Diamond can mess up healing someone or ruin something he's trying to fix. If he does this, the person or object is stuck like that.
- Reptiles in general make Josuke uneasy, and he's downright terrified of turtles.
- Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke's Theme - Josuke's theme song from "Diamond is Unbreakable"
- Golden Spirit - Josuke's Battle BGM from "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle"
- Josuke Higashikata (DiU) BGM - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven OST
Background
Joseph Joestar has... always been a bit of a horndog. And so, it shouldn't come as much surprise that a child was born as a result of an affair that he had with a woman named Tomoko Higashikata while she was going to college in Tokyo. She named her son Josuke (the last character of his name can be read as "suke" or "jo", thus marking him as a proper "Jojo" in the series).
When he was about four, Josuke developed a raging fever. He couldn't have known it at the time, but this was due to Dio Brando developing a Stand. Since Dio had transplanted his own head onto Jonathon Joestar's body (Jonathon Joestar was an ancestor of Joseph, and by extension Josuke), everyone in Joestar's line who was alive had their Stands activated when Dio did.
His mother Tomoko wasn't sure Josuke would make it. Eventually she tried to take him to the hospital, but her car got stuck in a snowdrift. But a young man appeared, a high school student, who threw his jacket down under the tires of her car and stood behind it to push the car so that she could get traction enough to get out of the snow. However, he disappeared before Tomoko could thank him. The student wore his hair in a pompadour.
Josuke recognized that this young man had saved his life. And so, when he got better (Dio was killed in Egypt, thus ending the "disease" that afflicted both him and Holly Kujo), he began to wear his hair the same way. And he started taking insults to his hair as insults to the one who'd saved him.
The year Josuke was supposed to start high school, his life went off the rails. Jotaro Kujo, Joseph Joestar's grandson, showed up to reveal that his unknown father was indeed Joseph Joestar. Josuke refused his part of the inheritance. But that wasn't Jotaro's only reason for coming. There was a serial killer in Morioh, one who Josuke's own grandfather Ryohei Higashikata had arrested five years before. Anjuro Katagiri, known as "Angelo", was now targeting Ryohei, Tomoko, and Josuke.
Josuke's intelligence led to the killer's Stand, Aqua Necklace, being captured -- the Stand entered his mother through tap water she drank as coffee; Josuke emptied a bottle of his cologne, and used his Stand to literally punch THROUGH his mother's body, broke the bottle, "fixed" the bottle around the Stand, and then healed his mother. But Angelo still managed to use his Stand to kill Ryohei, by disguising itself as cognac. It was here that Josuke discovered that he was unable to resurrect the dead. Tomoko was moved out of Morioh for the time being, to keep her safe.
Angelo waited until it rained to confront Josuke, as his Stand could move through water. As the rain fell on the whole house, Angelo could all but control the entire house. Again Josuke displayed an unconventional cunning -- realizing that Aqua Necklace had to be inside him to hurt him, he had earlier shredded a rubber glove and ingested it; when Aqua Necklace entered him through breathed-in steam, he directed his Stand to "fix" the glove around the Stand, thus trapping it a second time. In the confrontation that followed, Josuke used Crazy Diamond to fuse Angelo and a large rock that stood on a street corner into a single entity.
With that over, it was time to relax, right? NOPE! The portals started opening between Morioh and NeoTokyo, pulling people and pieces of things in. Josuke was pulled into one of these portals, into NeoTokyo proper. Oh no! What would he do now? Seems like this Jojo's "Bizarre Adventure" is only beginning!
Personality
Josuke is basically the typical teenager -- playing video games, going to school, listening to music, hanging out with his friends. Unlike most of the products of the Joestar line, Josuke is pretty passive, and not generally prone to violence. He tends to think of others first, a quality that was first fostered in him with the student who helped his mother, a student who was clearly injured himself, yet he concerned himself only with helping others. This quality's reflected in Crazy Diamond's restoration/healing abilities too, and Josuke will heal an enemy in batlte as quickly as a friend. Josuke is also remarkably tolerant of even harsh bullying, so long as it doesn't involve his friends or his family. He is a loyal friend, and will fight for those he counts amongst his friends as hard as he'll fight for his family.
That said, he does have one berserk button. His hair. He wears it in the pompadour/regent hairstyle to pay tribute to the unknown high school student who rescued him when he was a toddler. Therefore, he takes insults to his preferred hairstyle as insults to that unknown student. This enrages him, and when that happens, all his kindness and passivity disappears. Josuke grows rude and violent, and refuses to back down until the he feels like the insult is avenged. Or until he gets his butt kicked, one of the two...
Josuke has a bit of a disregard for property damage and personal injury, which believe it or not stems from his Stand's ability to restore things. He figures he can fix it/heal the person, so there's no need to bother with preventing the damage/injury. So he has no qualms with punching through someone -- even, say... a hostage, to disarm the hostage-taker. He can just repair it anyway, so why worry about it?
While he may not have inherited his father's hotheadedness, he's definitely inherited his father's cleverness. Possibly even gone beyond it. If he has a signature non-supernatural ability it is this; Josuke has a very good idea of what his Stand can and can't do, and is known to abuse his Stand's unique mechanics to change a situation and make it a more favorable one for him or his friends. A few examples were mentioned above in the abilities writeup, but these are far from the only examples of his cleverness.
All in all Josuke is a good example of a clever kid dropped into a world that's beyond him, who does very well in figuring out how to swim when the only other option is to sink. Standard anime fare, overall. And a generous helping of superspeed punching while screaming nonsense from an alien entity.
Trivia
- Josuke's full name, "Josuke Higashikata", only possesses one "Jo" for English readers. However, in his Japanese name, "東方 仗助" (Higashikata Josuke), the second character of "Josuke" ("助" the "suke" part) can be read as either "suke" or as "jo". This is commented upon in the first episode by the upperclassmen who harass Josuke before his first day of school when they looked at his student ID -- "'Jo' and 'Jo', huh?" "Josuke! We're gonna call you 'Jojo' from now on!".
- Fan rumors speculate that the unknown high school student was who assisted Josuke's mother in getting her car out of the snowbank when Josuke was young was originally intended to be Josuke, sent back in time by Killer Queen's time-based ability "Bites the Dust". However, this explanation ultimately did not feature in the final story, and was chalked up by many as JJBA writer/artist Hirohiko Araki forgetting or ignoring a character plot point.
- There is an article that gives a viewpoint as to why it might have been better for Josuke's personal character story that the high school student was just some random kid passing by than if it had indeed been a time-traveling Josuke sent back by "Bites the Dust".
