JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E13 Review: Purple Haze, You're Making Me Blow My Mind

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Episode 13: Man in the Mirror & Purple Haze

A pretty fun episode to end the Purple Haze storyline. The episode starts off where the last one left off, with Illuso and Fugo inside the mirror world, with Illuso realizing that someone is running around in the 'real world', and basically leaves the wounded Fugo behind to chase after whatever it is Abbacchio is running to get near the dog mosaic.

This time around, Abbacchio joins in the fight as a bunch of mirror smashing ensues, realizing that Fugo is warning him about the mirror... but turns out that anything reflective becomes an entrance to Man in the Mirror's dimension. Abbacchio's arm gets dragged in, but then it chokes Man in the Mirror because Illuso dragged in a transformed Moody Blues by mistake -- and, as we know, Moody Blues is able to transform into a copy of a person as it 'replays', which is a fun little usage of what I thought to be just a visual detail. The fact that Fugo is unable to hurt Man in the Mirror due to humans not being able to affect Stands is also a little detail that I forgot to mention in my review of the previous episode.

The subsequent way the fight plays out is a bit... well, to say that Illuso basically pulls a bunch of new powers out of his ass is not an understatement, I think. Abbacchio using Moody Blues to disguise himself is a fun, clever usage of "oh, right, this makes sense!" of a pre-established power. And when Formaggio does all the fancy shit that he did with Little Feet in the previous two-parter, it feels... intuitive, I guess? But Man in the Mirror basically does a whole lot of nonsense like sticking half of Abbacchio with half of Moody Blues or something. It sort of borders on making sense, I guess, but at the same time things sort of just happen and I just shrug and go "yeah, okay, superpowers with their own properties", which isn't a particularly good feeling to have when most other fights in JoJo has relatively been consistently understandable even when they're bizarre.

Abbacchio chopping off his own hand and sending it and the key back towards Giorno with Moody Blues' playback ability is kinda neat, though it definitely feels a lot like it's just a variation of Crazy Diamond's ability. We also get some nice little monologue and characterization for Abbacchio, where he admits that the only time he feels anything now is when he's doing and executing the orders of someone he considers greater. Basically, a mafia-samurai. If you can't tell, this was where the original Abbacchio flashback happened in the manga! Telling that to us earlier does help make Abbacchio feel more like a character instead of just the obligatory dick that disagrees with Giorno all the time, though, so I definitely support the anime studio in this restructuring.

Giorno, meanwhile, has pieced back the original mirror to figure out Man in the Mirror's ability, which is definitely much needed considering Giorno hasn't been doing much for the past couple of episodes. He has apparently used himself as bait, allowing to be infected by Purple Haze and allowing himself to be dragged inside the mirror.

Illuso leaves his infected hand behind in the mirror world while he himself goes out... but that instead leaves him vulnerable to the rampaging Purple Haze outside, and god damn that is a pretty gruesome death. It's mostly offscreen and covered by the titular haze, but being eaten alive by a decomposing virus is just a pretty horrid way to die. We get the obligatory JoJo barrage, and poor Illuso dies screaming.

It's a pretty fun and clever concept, I guess, using them going back and forth from a mirror dimension while an uncontrollable stand is unleashing an instant-death virus cloud... but the execution, for the first time in Vento Aureo, feels like it could've definitely been improved. Thank god for the absolutely stellar animation, though. Because holy hell.

Oh, and Giorno's still infected, but he... also pulls a bit of a bullshit from his ass, about how he turned a brick into a snake, and the snake is 'born' out of the Purple Haze virus, so it won't get sick and has the anti-venom/antibodies within its blood. Which is... what? Maybe part of it is because I have a medical background and this is just so far off from how actual acquired immunity works, but just because Giorno transforms a rock into a snake in an area bathed in poison doesn't mean that the snake has antibodies! That's just utterly ridiculous, honestly, and this sequence would've felt a lot better in any other way.

Still, we do get this arc over, with Fugo and the now-armless Abbacchio stating their respect towards Giorno. They get the key and return to Bucciarati... while the post-credits scene of this episode shows Risotto Nero, the leader of the execution squad, standing over a corpse. It's interesting, though, since if my memory's right we're not going to get him just yet. But hey.

Overall, while I really love Purple Haze, I do feel like this fight is probably one of my least favourites from Part V. It's subjective, though, and if nothing else, the animation studio's amazing work at bringing the action scenes to life and animating Purple Haze, Man in the Mirror and Moody Blues' effects is just utterly beautiful to behold.