JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E21 Review: Making Up For Lost Time

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Episode 21: The Mystery of King Crimson

A pretty fun episode! This isn't one that I'll go into too much detail about, though. The episode starts off with basically the events of the previous episode's climax (Bucciarati versus King Crimson), but from Giorno's POV, and everyone else in Bucciarati's cell is just not quite as concerned, not being in the loop with Giorno and Bucciarati's plan to try and figure out the boss's identity.

Of course, suddenly weird shit start happening, like they've skipped forwards brief segments in time like Narancia already eating chocolate, a seemingly teleporting water bottle, Abacchio seeming to teleport and a cat walking over Giorno without him noticing. "Something is bizarre" indeed! I am 99% sure they added the Bucciarati/Giorno scene in particular to showcase King Crimson's ability a bit better.

And then the huge action sequence of this episode is the fight between Bucciarati and King Crimson, with some visually neat explanations of King Crimson's ability. I'm not sure if they altered the dialogue, or if the old scan-lations are just utter ass, but the episode definitely explains King Crimson's ability in a way that's not just "it just works, okay?". It is sort of a meme in some parts of the anime community, and while I certainly think that it's a bit of an exaggeration (it's no less complex than some of the later part Stands, or even some abilities in Bleach or Hunter x Hunter which deserve the "it just works" label better than King Crimson). But even with the added benefit of good translations and visuals, King Crimson is still a wee bit too complex for my liking (and this technically isn't even King Crimson's full ability!) but the setup of King Crimson able to essentially turn everyone into "auto-play" for five to ten seconds while only he is able to react to events outside of time is pretty neat... even if it is sort of an overly-complex power for his own good. I've never been a big fan of a complex power making a battle complex because of the sheer amount of shit that it can do that the author himself is overwhelmed, and I think King Crimson is an example of such a thing in JJBA.

Still, for now, it's still kind of all right when the novelty is still new. We get more Bucciarati brutality as King Crimson karate chops straight through his shoulders, and King Crimson (which is what we'll call the Boss until his name is spoken on-screen) gives a simple motive rant about why he wants to kill Trish -- the two of them, being parent and child, can apparently 'sense' that the are related, and King Crimson wants to eliminate any potential pitfalls. That's... that's a surprisingly weird reason, but suddenly the ladybug brooch that Bucciarati sticks on King Crimson transforms into the god damn turtle, sucking in King Crimson. Apparently Giorno "cultivated" cells from the Stand-using turtle to make his brooch? I wanna call bullshit, but that's honestly the sort of contingency that Giorno would come up with in this situation.

Bucciarati's struggle is well done, and I honestly did think when I was reading this arc the first time that he was straight-up going to die at this point. Of course, Bucciarati quickly tries his best to figure out what King Crimson's limits are, figuring out the 5-10 second time limit, and taunts the boss to "try and see through time". So basically the next sequence of fights is Bucciarati unleashing Sticky Fingers in a way that makes it look like he's doing something, but is actually aiming for something else -- like aiming for a pillar to act as a grapple point, or things like that.

And then Giorno comes to their rescue just as Bucciarati and Trish have zipped their way into the upper level, and while Giorno heals Bucciarati with Gold Experience, Bucciarati suddenly has no heartbeat and some of the parts that Gold Experience uses have disappeared. This isn't Crazy Diamond, of course, but we've seen Gold Experience heal some nasty wounds before, plus there's the weird Bucciarati ghost talking to Giorno and it's a particularly odd moment that's mostly brushed away with the approaching threat of King Crimson. I actually forgot about this particular plot point at all, and it's... it's an interesting one, I guess? We later see Bucciarati seemingly not noticing nor bleeding when his hand gets stabbed through a wooden piece, something that goes unnoticed by everyone but Giorno, so it's interesting -- something's weird is going on with Bucciarati's body, it seems.

The arrival of the rest of Bucciarati's cell ends up causing King Crimson to pussy out, with him realizing that Bucciarati planned for this -- even if King Crimson is powerful, fighting six Stand users at once would reveal his identity and face to one of them inevitably, and he cannot have that. Definitely an interesting way to get out of this sticky situation.


The rest of the team get the explanation from Bucciarati about what's going on, and we get the expected "I will not order or beg for you to come with me", telling the other four members of his cell that he's going to take down the boss with Giorno and protect Trish, and it's up to them to go or not. The scene is definitely very emotional, and I'm a huge fan of how everyone panics. Fugo is the one that is the most confused, not wanting to go on the boat, Abbacchio does this whole show-off of pledging loyalty to the organization before relenting and being the first to step on the boat, noting that he's most at ease with Bucciarati. Mista is next, what with his happy-go-lucky attitude and how much he trusts that Bucciarati will figure out a plan. "After all, I can get to be capo, right?"

And it seems like this is going to be the state of things going on, with half of the quartet joining Bucciarati and Giorno, and the other half being left behind. Narancia just wants someone to give him orders, but Bucciarati refuses, while Fugo just keeps ranting about how much of a dumbass everyone is for daring to fight against King Crimson.

Of course, after struggling with himself and looking at the wounded Trish, Narancia realizes that if nothing else, he can sympathize with Trish, who was abandoned by the world and taken in by Bucciarati, and swims after the boat. This leaves Fugo standing alone at the pier, trying his damnadest to justify his decisions to himself. It's a fun start of a new status quo as our heroes are now in outright opposition with the Boss and the Organization, and I'm definitely excited!

In the manga, this is actually where we last see Fugo at all -- Araki had originally planned for Fugo to be a double-agent working for the Boss that Giorno would be forced to kill at one point, but decided against it because he was "working through some grim feelings at the time" and couldn't go through... but still ended up writing Fugo out of the story anyway. Fugo's story would be told in a tie-in light novel Purple Haze Feedback released after the end of Part V, and I am curious if the light novels will ever get adapted into animated format at all.