JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S04E10 Review: Dude (Looks Like A Lady)

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo, Episode 10: Hitman Team

A pretty interesting episode, and one that ended up giving me enough to talk about even if we're still not over in the Narancia-vs-Formaggio fight. In fact, this episode actually ends up feeling split into two parts -- an opening act with Narancia fighting Formaggio, an episode that feels like it takes up the bulk of the episode, and then it ends with a final act with Narancia fighting Formaggio again. And I'm going to talk about the present-day stuff first, which I feel is a wee bit less interesting due to mostly being a fight.

And a good chunk of the episode's first act is just Narancia being a bit of a moron as everything shrinks around him and he just... well, we have established that Narancia is kind of stupid, but this sequence really feels like it's playing up Narancia's stupidity when he keeps insisting that "this is not my car, and, no this is not my shoe!" It's a hell of an interesting way to explore a bit more of an ability that shrinks other people, and we get a particularly wince-inducing bit where Narancia gets his neck trapped by an automatic door, although thankfully everything, it seems, can be temporarily solved with Aerosmith shooting things.

And while it does kind of stretch credibility a bit, Narancia eventually realizes that Formaggio is hiding in his back pocket, and very damn well nearly kills Formaggio when he "turns back" a shrunken pen whose repulsion instantly sends him flying. We quickly get the internal monologue that apparently reverting a person back to his original size would take longer. Okay, if you say so? Formaggio does the trick again later, using Little Feet to slice a wheel and then get blown away with the air into the sewers. It is kind of ridiculous how accurate Formaggio can chart out courses with the repulsion from things, but eh.

In an actually cool bit, we actually get to see "figure out the enemy's unknown ability" from Formaggio's bit. Formaggio runs into the sewers, chased by Aerosmith, which apparently has some sort of tracking ability, and Formaggio ends up figuring out that Aerosmith is able to detect breathing, which explains why it's been shooting up rats. And we cut away to see Narancia with a little pop-up radar over his eye, which is simultaneously adorable and ridiculous and awesome all at the same time.

We get a bit of an advantage switch back and forth as Formaggio appears to have masked himself from Aerosmith's "radar" by riding a rat (!!!), and then Narancia realizes that one of the rats is breathing a bit harder than before, forcing Formaggio to return back to his full size to prevent taking full damage from Aerosmith's bullets... and then it's Formaggio who has the advantage now because Aerosmith's size has decreased a whole lot.

Overall, it's a very great sequence of cat and mouse (actual mice are, in fact, involved!) between both players as they try to figure each other out. Aerosmith's just kind of cool all around, while Little Feet has so much going on with the intricacies of using the otherwise-simple ability that I really do buy into Formaggio's talk about "it's how you use the Stand".

The rest of the episode, the middle act of the episode, ends up building up La Squarda Esecuzioni, Passione's "Hitman Team" (it literally means Execution Team, though, as you can probably tell) through a flashback to two years ago, which accomplishes two things -- it helps to build up the dread of the members of the Hitman Team that we'll be facing in the future, including Formaggio himself, but we also get to see just how far-reaching this enigmatic Boss really is. The flashback is also significantly extended from its original version, and I can only say that this is definitely to the improvement of the storytelling. This is something Vento Aureo does well, and with the exception of Diamond is Unbreakable, I don't think any other JoJo parts actually tries to develop any of their lesser antagonists as well as Vento Aureo.

Granted, mind you, a lot of La Squadra's flashbacks ended up being heavily expanded on by the anime, particularly in this episode (but as well as certain scenes in the future of the anime). It's a huge, huge boon to the series for sure, and while I don't care enough to do a one-to-one anime-vs-manga comparison, I really do like it that the anime really makes La Squadra feel more like a proper team, like a darker version of the Bucciarati bunch, with their own camaraderie and quirks and what we'll find is the fact that they're mostly driven by revenge against the Boss.

First, we get to see an execution actually take place, which... we've seen pretty horrifying deaths throughout JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but this adds an extra layer of horror, with Formaggio dropping a little shrunken car into some poor schmuck's drink, and the way it slowly expands and rips out of the poor dude's stomach is just... it's just horrifyingly well-done.

And in that scene, we sort of get to learn a bit more about the other members of the team. We've got the broccoli-necked Pesci, who's a squeamish dude who honestly doesn't have any business being associated with the mafia, let alone the Execution Squad, and he doesn't even drink coffee! We've got a Kira-lookalike dude, Prosciutto, as well as Melone, a half-naked pervert with a mask that makes even other gangsters repulsed. There is the 'home base control' guy, Ghiaccio, who stays at the base with his laptop and complains that they don't get the attention they deserve, and appears to have a One Piece devil fruit as his hair. We've also got Illuso, who's just... the long-hair guy, and Risotto, a dude wearing a BDSM webbed shirt and completely black eyes.

And I do like how we move quickly through all of these colourful designs without trying too hard to highlight their personalities and powers. In fact, the scene ends up introducing how they operate as a group more than anything. They end up having to look for two missing members -- Sorbet and Gelato, a gay couple (it's a lot more ambiguous in the manga, but they straight-up say it here) who have been missing meetings.

And then... apparently Sorbet and Gelato have been trying to rebel against the boss, and have been dealt with. The execution squad find Gelato's body dead, seemingly suffocated on a mouth-gag with an expression of pure terror on his face. And then La Squarda Esecuzioni ends up having 36 picture freames... and they realize that those 36 frames are the pieces of Sorbet's body, having been cut up and turned into artwork as a message from the boss. It's just such an insanely brutal sequence that I am surprised was actually left in the anime relatively untouched. JJBA has never shied away from censoring blood or death, but this particular bit could've been implied more than explicitly shown, and I'm actually impressed that they did it.

Anyway, this "punizione" sequence ends up really setting up just how dangerous the nameless Boss is, functioning as a pretty damn well done buildup, while at the same time giving the La Squarda Esecuzioni a significant amount of backstory and motivation in what they're trying to accomplish, and why they are so desperate to hunt down Trish.

Overall, it's a pretty damn well-done episode, with a great flashback that explores and builds up a group of antagonists, while the framing fight sequence is beautifully animated and executed.



The JoJo Playlist: 

• The remaining members of La Squarda Esecuzioni have had their names revealed, and, of course, they all mostly borrow names from Italian food. Pesci means fish in Italian, Risotto Nero literally means black risotto (a style of Italian rice dish), Melone means melon (duh), while Sorbet and Gelato are named from styles of Italian ice cream. 
• Not so much a naming reference, but the idea of a pair of gangsters being attacked, with one killed and butchered while the other watches in horror and elects to kill himself by swallowing his mouth gag is taken straight out of the Godfather novels, where mafia hitman Luca Brasi does the same thing to a pair of rival gangsters.