JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S04E11 Review: Arachnophobia

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo, Episode 11: Narancia's Aerosmith

We continue with the Narancia/Formaggio fight and reach its conclusion, and it's actually a pretty fun bit! It's not as creative as the previous two episodes' usages of Little Feet, I think, but it's still a pretty fun action sequence nonetheless. The fight starts off with Formaggio returning back to normal size while Narancia's still small, leading to a rather pretty horrifying bit as Formaggio just pours water from a bottle to drown Narancia.

And then, of course, just like Abbacchio and Mista before him, Narancia finally gets a flashback of his own. It's interesting how long this fight ended up being -- three episodes -- because both Narancia and the Squarda both get flashbacks. We learn that Narancia's mother died at a young age, and he was raised by a very distant father. He fell in with a bad crowd, and his "big brother" convinced Narancia to dye his hair blonde... but only so that Narancia will get framed and take the blame for a crime that his "big brother" did. And at age 15, Narancia ended up having given up on life until Fugo and Bucciarati find him, give him some spaghetti and treatment.

It's actually pretty heartwarming considering how much Fugo and Narancia bicker all the time in episodes leading up to this -- this actual brotherly relationship between Fugo and Narancia is something that completely went over my head in the manga, and I'm not sure if it's just the fantastic voice actors that made the scenes memorable, or if they actually added new scenes.

Also a big fan of how Bucciarati and Fugo refuse to let Narancia join a gang, telling him to finish school first. And Narancia does -- although, rather ironically, we did see in the first episode that Narancia still doesn't have arithmetics figured out. Idolizing Bucciarati, Narancia went off and went through Polpo's test on his own to obtain Aerosmith.


It's not the most elaborate backstory, if we're being honest, and it is sort of a combination of Abbacchio and Giorno's backstories, but it's a neat story nonetheless. And then we get tiny-Narancia being shoved by Formaggio into a bottle with a fucking spider, and we get a pretty horrifying description of how spider venom works. Did... did JoJo's author do the same sort of research with spiders as Rohan Kishibe did in Part IV, I wonder? I mean, hearing those clinical JoJo Fact lines delivered by Formaggio makes me seriously wonder.

Of course, Narancia ends up getting a petty badass action scene, stabbing the spider with a shard of glass, and then using Aerosmith to fly around and basically shoot at the largest source of carbon dioxide -- the car that was shot up a couple of days ago. The resulting explosion burns Formaggio... and I actually do like the pretty fun usage of Formaggio's ability, slashing his wrist to cause a huge torrent of blood, and then shrinking himself -- but not the blood -- so that the blood will put out the fire.

And with Formaggio having seen Narancia's map and unable to be detected by Aerosmith due to the gigantic amount of CO2 produced by the flames, we get Narancia's elegantly simple and hilarious solution -- BURN EVERTHING, as the restored Aerosmith just straight up napalm-bombs the entire street, with Narancia delivering a pretty badass line about how he's actually willing to burn down the entire city if he has to. We actually get a pretty badass Mexican standoff, leading to Narancia shooting through Little Feet and killing Formaggio, and you know what? Formaggio is a scum, but the way he went out is actually not bad, considering JoJo villains.

With that fight over, Narancia returns back to the vineyard, and we get a bit of an argument between the members of Bucciarati's cell about their next move. Giorno rightly predicts that the Boss would have prepared a contingency escape route, and that Narancia did the best he could do under his circumstance. And, of course, the Boss does contact Bucciarati and lead the team to their next objective -- go to the town of Pompeii and retrieve the key to an escape vehicle.

I did think that the pacing of the actual Narancia/Formaggio fight is a bit hurt by the flashbacks, although admittedly I'm not sure how to get around that. It's all right, all things considered, and I do enjoy the fight for having a lot of fun set pieces thanks to the usage of Little Feet's ability. Overall, it's definitely one of my favourite Stand battles in Vento Aureo, and I'm pretty sure that's going to be a huge point of why I love this Part so much -- the battles.