JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 19: White Album
We start off this episode right where we left off the previous one, in the midst of the White Album fight... and it's just an episode-long battle against Ghiaccio and his ice armour. It's actually pretty cool, even if it does suffer perhaps more than other similar fights by the very ambiguous speed of White Album's ability. Sometimes you have it suddenly freezing the very air around it, and sometimes you have Ghiaccio just gawking like an idiot while Mista monologues and does a lot of stuff. The relative time to someone freezing over is also honestly very arbitrary. While you can chalk some of it up to general anime-time, the fight honestly feels a bit oddly-paced. I did re-read this part of the manga, though, and I definitely admit that the anime's pacing is definitely better than the manga. Still, the episode mostly focuses on Mista, interestingly enough, with Giorno acting more as a support character thanks to Gold Experience not really having much effectiveness against Ghiaccio's cold aura. We do get a lot of talk about win conditions and resolve, which ends up being a running theme not just for Mista and Giorno, but for Ghiaccio as well. It's kind of a rehash of the Man in the Mirror arc of sorts, though, where it's an argument on whether to prioritize the mission or survival, with Giorno, of course, wanting to keep both him and Mista alive. It's not delivered as well as the Man in the Mirror fight, I feel.
We do get a fun bit as Mista tries to swim to shore and ends up distracting Ghiaccio from killing the otherwise immobilized Giorno, and we get the utterly ridiculous bit of Mista using the tundra grass that Giorno grows as a surfboard. Somehow. That is a hilariously ridiculous image, but it also kind of another part of this fight that works under the "just go with it, okay?" mentality. The grass surfboard bit is a bit silly, but having the grass revert back into car parts and throwing them as ricochet material towards Ghiaccio's head is admittedly pretty cool.
Mista then foregoes getting the diskette and wants to just end the fight immediately by going into the canal after Ghiaccio, and I do like the bit where Mista purposefully misses and shoots a bunch of random fish in order to make Ghiaccio look downwards and expose the breathing pores on the back of his neck. Mista's attempt to send a ricocheting bullet into Ghiaccio's neck ends up being foiled by a new ability of Ghiaccio, White Album Gently Weeps, which basically turns the air in an area around Ghiaccio into basically a whole lot of ice shards that cause the bullet to ricochet around and go back to Mista.
And to save Mista, Giorno ends up showing off his resolve with a pretty badass speech about how resolve does not mean sacrifice, and exposes the diskette to distract Ghiaccio's attention, sacrificing his arm as it gets torn apart in the process. (He gets better, because of healing powers) Mista then gets a brief recap of his old flashback, talks about how he can see the 'path of fate', and ricochets his bullets off of a telephone pole and sends a barrage onto Ghiaccio, but it is pretty cool that this impenetrable armour is honestly just barely cracking throughout all the assault. But then it's apparently all part of Mista's plan, so that he gets shot by the ricocheting bullets... and then the blood-splurts from his wounds will block Ghiaccio's vision when it freezes and hardens on the visor screen. That's... that's kind of dumb, I'm not going to lie, but also kind of cool. Even cooler is the brief little foreshadowing of Mista using a particular metal pole to shoot all the bullets for this 'path of fate' attack, because he's sharpened it into a spike that stabs Ghiaccio's neck when he stumbles backwards.
It's... it relies a hell lot on coincidence, though, and while it definitely is cool at the moment thanks to the pretty dope animation and soundtrack, when you stop and think about it it's kind of a stupid plan.
Still, Ghiaccio ends up making use of his own blood, using his own blood to basically support his head in place and stop the metal shard from digging even deeper, and as Mista's bullets get reflected to Mista himself, Giorno shows up and rescues the day. And I do kind of feel sorry for Mista that his badass last stand is negated, but this is a pretty good scene for Giorno, particularly with the sudden change in music and the altered colour scheme.We get a good MUDA MUDA MUDA kick barrage as Gold Experience drives Ghiaccio's head into the spike and kills him, and we get a speech from Mista about how great and inspiring Giorno is. The final scene is Giorno fixing Mista, noting that while he replaces the organs, the pain will still be there, so it's not an instant time-rewinding ability like Josuke's Crazy Diamond. We get a bit of a comedic 'mistaken as gay' moment thanks to Mista's screaming when Narancia and Bucciarati finally show up, which... is kind of funny, actually, I'm not going to lie.
The post-credits scene is Risotto Nero, the final member of the Execution Squad, standing over a bunch of dead dudes, with the shadowy Boss being ominous. Overall, it's... it's a fun action episode, but one that I really feel was paced oddly and had too many action sequences that while animated well, doesn't really stand to proper inspection.
The JoJo Playlist:
- White Album Gently Weeps is based on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of the tracks contained in the Beatles' White Album.
No comments:
Post a Comment