JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S04E04 Review: Golden Eye

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo, Episode 4: Joining the Gang

For better or for worse, Part 5 is where the Stands become pretty complex, with multiple stipulations and alternate powers. I mean, Part 3 and Part 4 Stands do tend to have various properties, but things like Killer Queen, Star Platinum: The World and Echoes tend to be the exception rather than the rule. In Part 5, it's definitely the rule. Especially for the villains.

Take Black Sabbath, Polpo's Stand. In addition to being a Stand triggered by a certain event happening (somewhat similar to the initial depiction of Highway Star), Black Sabbath also has the Stand-creating arrow in his mouth, is able to move quickly and zip around in shadows, and is a long-distance automatic Stand that... that according to Koichi, apparently doesn't affect its user even when it's destroyed? It's a bit bizarre, since Part 3 and Part 4 have been pretty curiously inconsistent with it. Empress and Sheer Heart Attack all damaged their users (and flat-out killed them in the case of the former) despite being automatic and long-range. Whereas Highway Star is never actually damaged by Josuke, Koichi or Rohan due to its ability to split apart. I dunno. It's honestly a bit of a weird little quasi-retcon that I'm not the biggest fan of.

Still, the fight as Giorno teams up with Koichi (who saw the whole 'playing with the lighter' thing from the window) and fights against Black Sabbath while trying to figure out its ability is pretty fun. It's nowhere as fluid or as badass as the original Sticky Fingers/Gold Experience battle, but I have a feeling that a significant amount of the animation budget was sunk into that fight.

The fight against Black Sabbath was... it's neat, tense as usual, even if it's not particularly special once they figure out Black Sabbath's properties. We get some fun usage of Gold Experience, including a bit where he transforms a set of railings into vines, or gave a tree so much "life energy" it withers and dies.  Sadly, Koichi's basically reduced to a simple "make things heavy" ability with Echoes Act Three (which, tragically, doesn't go MUTHAPHUKKIN' like the manga). The anime also makes it clear that the arrow doesn't actually pierce Gold Experience and just cuts it up, which, without spoiling much, is a similar situation to how they animated Avdol getting shot in the head in Part 3.

After that team-up, and a muda-muda-muda barrage, we get a bit of a recap as Koichi tells Giorno about the arrow, automatic stands and a mission statement from Giorno.

Basically, "I, Giorno Giovanna, have a dream!" It's a bit of an iconic and oft-quoted speech, but it's still a pretty neat and interesting bit. Giorno tells Koichi that he believes that everything he's done is in the right, and that there was nothing that he could've done about the old man... but he still feels dirty inside. Just because Giorno is a pragmatic man doesn't mean he's stone cold, and I do like this little distinction.

Giorno also begs Koichi to not report anything about this event to the Speedwagon Foundation, because Polpo is part of a criminal organization, and he's going to lose the chance to infiltrate and reform that organization should that happen. One of the final scenes of the episode ends up being Koichi calling Jotaro and telling him that Giorno is not a dangerous man, and that Koichi sees the "blood of the Joestars" and the bloodline's sense of justice within Giorno, capitalized with Giorno's face set against the faces of Joseph, Jotaro and Josuke in the background.

Interestingly, though, this scene of Koichi insisting that Giorno is a good man is juxtaposed against Giorno meeting with Polpo in the prison. After a tense bit and Polpo admitting to himself if he doesn't care if Giorno actually did keep the lighter on for 24 hours, or if he actually became a Stand user, welcomes Giorno into Passione and tells him to report to Bucciarati. With this, Polpo gives Giorno this passing speech about how the worst thing to do is insulting someone, and that "murder is forgivable even by God when it comes to someone insulting you."

In an amazing bit of addition in the anime, it was at this point that Giorno's Joestar-blue eye colour suddenly briefly change into gold, which is Dio's colour. It's definitely not something from the manga (since, y'know, black and white), but it's such a neat little moment of badassery as Giorno does a pretty "evil" thing as he basically decides to kill Polpo then and there with a time bomb.

Which, in this case, is having Gold Experience transform one of Polpo's guns into a banana, causing Polpo to basically shoot himself in the roof of his mouth in a pretty fucking brutal scene when he tries to eat that banana. It's a pretty awesome and cold way to dispose of a character, and while JJBA might not do a perfect job of it, the balance between Giorno's willingness to murder people and his own sense of honour has always been a neat little highlight and a huge, huge contrast to the gentleman-hero mentality of basically all the other JoJo's before him.

The final scene shows the introduction of the rest of Bucciarati's cell, a quartet of characters from the opening that'll make up the main cast for the rest of the season, which is neat. Throw in a couple of scenes -- Koichi buggering off to go on a holiday, and the shot of the shattered arrowhead -- and it's clear that we're dusting off whatever remaining plot threads from Part 4, and going straight into nothing but this mafioso stuff.  Overall, a pretty simple but pretty well-done episode.

The JoJo Playlist:

• While not named in the episode proper, Polpo's Stand is called Black Sabbath after the English rock/metal band of the same name, one of the pioneers of the genre. Some of the best Black Sabbath songs out there include Iron Man, Paranoid, Black Sabbath, Never Say Die and War Pigs.