JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E16 Review: Shot Through The Heart, And You're To Blame

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 16: The Grateful Dead, Pt. 2

We continue off where we left of in the previous part as Bucciarati and Prosciutto dangle from the train after Bucciarati unzips the train and let the two of them fall out. Hanging on for dear life, we get to see the unfortunate body of the conductor go splat on the rushing side of the train. Pesci, meanwhile, doesn't get sucked out and wakes up, and manages to use Beach Boy to rescue Prosciutto, targeting him and stabbing him in the hand, which is a fun usage of Beach Boy.

This leads to a nice bit of opponent respect moment between the two of them as Prosciutto apologizes for mocking Bucciarati earlier, noting that, yes, Bucciarati is indeed a worthy capo. And we then get a pretty interesting power abuse. Bucciarati was informed by one of the Sex Pistol sprites that all attacks on Beach Boy's fishing line is sent from the line to the tip of the hook, so Bucciarati has Sticky Fingers attack the line in order to send the 'unzip' effect onto the end of the hook, and we actually get a pretty cool scene as Bucciarati tries to unzip Prosciutto's hand away from the hook, while Pesci tries his best to re-hook his aniki. The result of this little conflict is Bucciarati re-zipping the Beach Boy hook around his own hand, while letting Prosciutto fall into the "hell of 150 km/h velocity", which is kind of a ridiculous line.

And I do like that while Bucciarati manages to use the information of that particular property of Beach Boy, he has no idea that Pesci is actually able to tell some information from the targets he's hooked, and Pesci immediately realizes that Beach Boy isn't hooked into Prosciutto. Pesci panics the shit out... before realizing that the people next to him are still aging, meaning that the Grateful Dead isn't taken out of the picture yet.

And apparently the mangled Prosciutto is stuck between the parts of the train, with limbs missing and blood all over his body, which is just gruesome, but like Bucciarati, Prosciutto talks a huge game about how he's got the same amount of determination to see this fight to its end. This actually ends up being an inspiration for Pesci. A recurring insult in some flashbacks we've seen of the execution squad is people mocking Pesci for being a mammoni (Mama's boy), and as Pesci repeats Prosciutto's creed of "the moment we think of killing someone", he kills the random old passenger who insults Pesci as a mammoni. Honestly, for a villain-of-the-two-parter, I am actually very impressed at the character growth Pesci is showing in his limited screentime!

This leads to a re-invigorated Pesci who is determined to murder the shit out of Bucciarati, and I really love the amazing animation of Bucciarati unzipping and rezipping his arms while Beach Boy's hook and line spins around and just tries to burrow its way back in. The train battlefield also gets some great usage, with Bucciarati at one point being forced to unzip a train-roof shield to avoid being sliced by the cables on top.

And as Bucciarati re-enters the train, he uses Sticky Fingers to unzip his own body, scattering his pieces apart, which is... it's kind of a backwards thing to do, honestly, but while watching the episode you just get taken in by the whole theme of "do whatever is needed to win, even if it means sacrificing yourself". Pesci uses an imaginary Prosciutto to calm himself down and just uses Beach Boy's hook to hunt for Bucciarati, ripping off random hearts from different passengers. Bucciarati pulls off a Jotaro and uses his Stand to stop his heart from beating... by unzipping it!

We get a tense scene before Pesci assumes that Bucciarati has moved out of that particular cabin and is gunning for Prosciutto's body, and Pesci stops the train while recalling his Stand. It is very fortunate that this movement ends up causing Bucciarati's heart-halves to get stuck back together. I have... I have a lot of questions about the specific mechanics of Sticky Fingers, and why is it that it's just his heart's unity that apparently dictates whether he lives or dies. You'd think having blood vessels and nerves disconnected would kill him as well.

And... and as Bucciarati walks out of the train to confront Pesci, we do get some genuinely awesome animation as Pesci stands tall in full resolve, and I am honestly surprised at how much I like this villain. A dying Prosciutto tells Pesci some encouraging words before his death, and we get an amazing animation of Pesci immediately launching Beach Boy not through Bucciarati's arm, but straight towards his chest. It's apparently symbolic of Pesci's own growing confidence and determination, because he does the whole 'find a limb and crawl up it' if he can't see his prey. It's badass, but Bucciarati ends up pulling off a badass move of his own, grabs the line, and use the Beach Boy line to wrap around Pesci's neck and snaps it. Holy fuck, that's an awesome scene.

And even then, Pesci's not done yet, as he continues moving around with his neck snapped, threatening to smash poor Coco Jumbo the turtle. Bucciarati then launches Sticky Finger's arm in a fun little zoom punch, and notes that this is just cowardly and not at all like the resolve he had before. I'm... I'm not sure what Bucciarati is talking about since Pesci is an assassin and sneaky stealth-kills is kind of in his job description, but Bucciarati gives a badass speec about how you'll fail no matter what if you are a "piece of shit", and then does an ARIARIARIARI barrage, capping it off with "Arrideverci" (goodbye). Never has gratuitous Italian been so badass, and Pesci gets killed by being straight-up unzipped into pieces of his body.

The episode ends with Trish revealing that she can actually see the 'strange things', implying that she is actually a Stand user. It's... it's a bit weird why she didn't actually question shrinking down and hiding on a room within a turtle, though. I'm not sure what's up with that. The episode ends with the arrival of another assassin, Melone, who finds the train stopped, his two buddies dead, and swears vengeance as he collects Bucciarati's blood sample.

Anyway... it's a pretty badass episode, and if you can't tell, I am a huge, huge fan of both this fight and the two villains involved. The Stands used interact pretty well with each other, and I am a huge fan of the mutual respect Bucciarati and Prosciutto have, as well as Pesci's growth as an assassin and a character. It's honestly a bit of a rarity of minor villains in JoJo to even have character growth at all. It's also a great episode for Bucciarati -- one of the bigger complaints of Vento Aureo is how little Giorno actually gets to do in the middle portion, but honestly, when treated as more of an ensemble cast and not a story that revolves around a main character, Vento Aureo actually splits screentime around the main duo of Giorno and Bucciarati pretty well. Anyway, this has actually been my one of my favourite villain fights in Vento Aureo. Good stuff.