“Yukako Yamagishi Dreams of Cinderella”

Fridays at 12:30 pm EST on Crunchyroll

Yukako – wishing to repair her relationship with Koichi – goes to a fancy, totally-not-a-Stand-user’s salon.

Iro’s thoughts

Yukako is most definitely not the best character in Part 4, and that causes this episode to be one of the lower tier ones in this round of the series. JoJo thrives on the absurd, but expecting us to easily accept Yukako as a pining, love-struck schoolgirl is a bit too much to swallow after she stalked, imprisoned, and attempted to murder the object of her affections. Koichi may be Morioh’s #1 Bachelor, but come on dude, there are some lines that just cannot be crossed if you want to have a proper relationship with a girl. Not even a saint would forgive being nearly strapped into an electric chair.

Our new Stand-user this week is Aya Tsuji, who is yet another on the list of people using their Stand for personal (relatively benevolent) financial gain. When your amazing psychic powers manifest as the ability to change people’s physical appearances, what better career is there than a beautician? It’s a great excuse for Araki to draw more creepy body horror stuff a-la Heaven’s Door, with Cinderella cutting off face chunks as part of its procedure. It is also a great excuse for the anime staff to go as shoujo as possible for a show like JoJo, with intricate, stained glass style splash shots popping up at every opportunity and plenty of blushing, love bubbles, et cetera. On the other hand, it means we get awkward fanservice shots of Yukako and Aya, which are worth nothing more than a roll of the eyes. Araki’s style is not great for drawing cute girls, and especially not in scandalous poses.

Overall, it’s a decent enough filler sort of episode. The thing I appreciate most about Part 4 is the willingness to not have every arc be some pitched battle with high stakes, and that still holds true even when the day-to-day adventures aren’t necessarily great.

Dorarara-bservations

• The anime staff did some shuffling of events to fix up the overall pacing, by which I mean airing this arc before the one that comes next. It’s no big deal.
• There is indeed an 80s rock band named Cinderella, but enough references are made to the fairy tale (and, let’s be honest, “Cinderella” is a name in the public domain) that the name didn’t have to be changed for the subs. Funnily enough, in the Eyes of Heaven video game, Cinderella is renamed to “Fashionista”.