JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E22 Review: Teleporting Robot Shark

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Episode 22: The G In Guts

We're sort of more-or-less caught up, holy shit! It's definitely a fun sense of accomplishment. This episode is... it's mostly a typical showing off of a bunch of new villains -- a new set of 'elite guards' -- and basically mostly being fluff and re-establishing the new status quo until the introduction of Squalo and Tiziano at around the halfway point. We start off with some rather out-of-place but hilarious discussions about vegetarians and Mista being baffled at their existence.

This sequence, of course, is also the source of the currently-popular  "Abbacchio Joins the Kicking" meme. I don't really acknowledge a lot of memes since they are fleeting, but this one is particularly funny -- not because of the meme, but because the scene itself is pretty fun. Some random dude bumps into Narancia, who proceeds to smash a wineglass onto his face, and beat him up alongside Mista. "Enemy, enemy!" they yell. We get to see serious-guy Abbacchio take a long sip of wine... before joining in on the beatup. It's hilarious.

We get a brief acknowledgement of Giorno keeping Bucciarati's mysterious zombie condition a secret to himself, Bucciarati notes that they have to be careful since it's unlikely for the Boss to have mobilized too many of his elite guard. Surprised the anime didn't actually add anything in regards to Fugo leaving the group since... yeah, mild spoilers, but last episode was certainly the last we see of him, and that was always a decision that I felt ended without much fanfare.

Trish, finally, decides to stop literally being a prop and a plot device, and pops out of the turtle to talk to the gangsters. She's honestly barely a character before this, so it's nice to have her actually talk about how she now wants to find out about her past and help the gangsters find the Boss's secret identity. It's a small scene, and the episode quickly goes to focus back on Narancia while Trish gets sucked back into the turtle, but it's definitely a nice showing.

And then Narancia finds some weird shit's going on as his spoon disappears, and later on he sees a robot shark swimming aroud in his soup. Narancia immediately summons Aersomith and blows up the soup bowl, but the shark can teleport from one body of water to the next, moving from glass of water to Narancia's spoon, before ripping off a huge chunk of Narancia's tongue.

Everyone panics at the heavily injured Narancia, and Giorno has to resort to a tracheostomy to let Narancia breathe while he replaces his organs, all the while being watched by the two villains-of-the-two-parter, Tiziano and Squalo. Who the fandom basically believes are a gay couple and... yeah, I buy it. JoJo characters have always been flamboyant, but these two are basically all over each other, with hands draped over each other.

Turns out that Clash is Squalo's Stand, but instead of just him alone, Tiziano is also attacking them with his own "Talking Head", which is a bizarre tongue-tumour monster that replaces Narancia's tongue, controlling what he speaks and basically causes him to talk gibberish and give out the wrong information. Narancia tries his gosh-darned best to stop the team from going back into the water and be susceptible to Clash the shark, and Narancia is honestly dumb enough that I can totally buy him not thinking up of the idea of writing down what's going on or giving any sort of sign that he's controlled. Tiziano and Squalo did note that they selected Narancia specifically for a reason, and that reason's likely because he's a dumbass.

And it's honestly a pretty interesting ability as Talking Head makes Narancia direct the team towards sources of water like the bathroom or the river, where Clash can attack them. The scene where Clash appears in Narancia's tears is also honestly pretty hilarious. I'm genuinely not sure why Mista and Abbacchio is so quickly to dismiss Narancia as crying wolf, especially with how panicky Narancia is behaving, but... eh, whatever. Abbacchio calling Moody Blues as he's about to replay events keeps getting interrupted -- the episode would've ended pretty quickly if Abbacchio did replay what Narancia saw while drinking soup.

It does lead to a pretty bizarrely hilarious scene where Narancia fights against his tongue-parasite as he literally pisses and yells out "LOOK HERE, ABBACCHIO" to drive the team away from the sources of water. And then Talking Head slashes Narancia's hand, causing him to bleed (why didn't they just do this in the first place?) and to prevent Clash from appearing in his blood, Narancia uses Aerosmith to blast and heat up a bunch of pipes, allowing him to cauterize his wounds. Finally Giorno realizes something's wrong, but not before Clash appears from the pipes and attack Giorno.

I've always thought that Clash is one of the cooler Stands out there, a teleporting robot shark that moves from body of water to the next... but the whole 'crying wolf' thing doesn't really feel that engaging, mostly just hanging on overdramatic misunderstanding, Narancia being a dumbass and the rest of the team not realizing what's going on. But it's honestly a pretty convoluted way of getting the team to self-destruct and unleash Clash on them, and while it's still entertaining, logic-wise the actions of the characters don't really hold water all that well.

The JoJo Playlist:

• New opening! Traitor's Requiem (Uragirimono no Requiem) is a... pretty fun tune, but it's no Fighting Gold. I do like it a fair bit, though I don't think it's something I'll listen to on repeat the way I do the previous openings. The lyrics are certainly appropriate, though I really wished the visuals weren't so spoiler-y. 
• The ending theme is also new, and it's Enigma's Modern Crusaders. Enigma has previously been the namesake of an antagonistic Stand in Diamond is Unbreakable, and the 'Crusaders' part of the name is certainly appropriate considering Part III's name. 
• Tiziano's (named after Italian painter Tiziano Vecelli) Stand is called Talking Head, a reference to the American rock band Talking Heads, known for Life During Wartime, Burning Down The House and Psycho Killer.
• Squalo's (named after the Italian word for shark) Stand, Clash, is named after British band The Clash, known for Rock the Casbah.