JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E17 Review: Sweet Child of Mine

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 17: Babyface; Episode 18: Head to Venice!

This review will cover the entire Baby Face fight, and thus I'm covering the entirety of Golden Wind episode 17, and the first five or so minutes of episode 18. 

The episode starts off with Melone, who is probably one of the most creepy villains in Vento Aureo, for the simple fact that he has a lot of rape-y vibes thanks to this very first scene. He doesn't actually rape or sexually assault anyone, but his Stand and all the talk of 'impregnation' and searching for an ideal partner while not caring about the woman's consent or personality... yeah, it's pretty creepy. That whole scene where he randomly shows up in that train cabin with a stuck-up lady and just interrogates and creeps him up, and later slams her against a wall before we cut away... it's all pretty damn creepy. And honestly, the Stand that results from this, Baby Face, is also pretty damn creepy. I do appreciate that we don't actually get into any actual rape, with the poor, poor lady actually touching her but and noting that, yes, Melone didn't do anything in that way. 

It's interesting, though, that apparently the passengers of the train that Team Bucciarati leaves behind are just... they're just fine, and complaining? Apparently none of them remember being turned into old people, and despite several passengers clearly dying -- Pesci clearly kills someone in the cabin, even if you can justify the train drivers' bodies falling out of the train during the fight. 

One of these passengers, who is the woman that became Baby Face's "mother", is one hell of an angry, stuck-up bitch, and Melone is quickly drawn to the woman's health and general angry energy. After imputing some bizarre data like the lady's blood type and birthday, Melone talks about how she's compatible to be the mother of his child, and how she is compatible to hunt down Bucciarati because they're very incompatible. The most creepy is perhaps Melone's question about which sort of kiss from the Kama Sutra that the lady prefers. 

Melone's Stand, Baby Face, is apparently the huge briefcase laptop he's lugging around, which then transforms into this horrifying laptop-monster with a face and legs, and then Melone just slams the poor girl onto the window of the train cabin and notes that 'conception is complete'. It's some twisted, fucked-up version of Alien as the woman wakes up, not realizing that Melone and his Stand has implanted a baby within her. I this case, the neck. 

And we get a creepy sequence of Melone sitting in another cabin, communicating with the offspring created by Baby Face, who keeps asking him from the laptop about what "kill" means, what "piece of shit" means, and all sorts of bizarre, unsettling questions as it draws in the angry thoughts of his host mother. Throw in some pretty horrifying bit of Melone pulling out a picture book about animals and toys, and then flashing from "this is a lion! This is a zebra!" to "THIS IS HOW THEY KILL! LEARN TO KILL!" all with the tone of a parent cooing to their child. Baby Face, at one point, pisses on his 'mom', causing the 'mom' to scream about how gross and dirty it smells (apparently Stand piss is also invisible to normal people), and then quickly grows to become so hungry and thirsty that he 'eats' his mother and reduces her to cubes, despite Melone telling Baby Face not to do that. Goodbye, 'mom'... poor lady.

Melone notes that Baby Face is a very powerful Stand since it's both remote controlled yet he still has some semblance of connection to the baby produced by it, but at the same time, this particular version of Baby Face is way to aggressive. With orders to not kill Trish, Melone decides that it's di molto ('well done' in not-quite-grammatically-correct Italian, something he repeats a lot) and sics Baby Face to murder Bucciarati and his team. 

Speaking of Bucciarati, we get a hilarious scene where Coco Jumbo the turtle has apparently hitched a ride on a truck, but Sex Pistols gets so hungry that they sneak out and steals the trucker's burger, and very nearly breaks their cover. Mista ends up punching the poor truck driver and causing the truck to go into an accident, which is a hilarious bit of black comedy. Mista could've very well killed them all just to cover his little fuck-up! They search for a backup vehicle, and Giorno decides to 'steal' a hundred cars in a parking lot, turning them all into frogs and having them disperse, because that will make looking for the car they actually steal be less inconspicuous. A pretty awesome thing to do, actually. 

And while the B-team goes off to hot-wire a car and thus be basically off-screened for most of the episode, Bucciarati and Trish remains within Coco Jumbo. No one is willing to tell Trish about all this Stand stuff, and Trish's attempts to sneak out of Coco Jumbo ends up with Bucciarati... unzipping a hole at the bottom of a closet, turning it into a toilet, which I thought was pretty funny. Especially with how Bucciarati notes with a deadpan expression that it's probably nutritious for the turtle. Of course, Baby Face shows up, riding a motorbike, before quickly sneaking into Coco Jumbo's internal dimension and attacking both Trish and later on Bucciarati, reducing them into meat-cube blocks. Apparently this isn't lethal, though, as Baby Face contacts Melone and notes that he's 'captured' them. Not sure why he doesn't kill Bucciarati, but eh. 

I do like the unique gimmick of this episode, with how Melone and Baby Face are in constant communication, and thus we kind of get two villains for the price of one, with Baby Face as, well, a psychotic baby monster and Melone as its 'handler'. Melone tells Baby Face to basically kill the one person standing outside of the turtle -- Giorno -- and then retreat. And Baby Face attacks Giorno via Gold Experience, removing chunks of cubes from Giorno's throat, leg and eye, which kinda looks gruesome. But then Giorno removes the key from the Coco Jumbo turtle, and apparently the turtle's Stand also means that... the living things will be dragged out of the turtle? And this includes the chunks of Giorno's body that Baby Face steals? It's a bit unclear, actually, and feels a bit like an ass-pull. 

Still, we get some pretty awesome animation as Baby Face swirls around as a swarm of flying cubes, and we get the revelation that he can transform into inorganic objects, which was how he ended up fooling Trish and Bucciarati -- by pretending to be furniture in the room. Giorno also realizes quickly that Baby Face has the ability to basically 'chop up' humans and turn them into something else. I do like how Baby Face, despite having a lot of power, basically still depends on Melone on telling him what to do via their primitive e-mails. 

We get a pretty glorious fight that I won't go too much in detail of, but we basically have bits of Baby Face hiding as rocks, a fight over the turtle, and Giorno ending up revealing that his Stand is the anti-thesis of Baby Face. Where Baby Face is able to transform organic matter into inorganic, Giorno has the exact opposite, and we get a... a bit of a new upgrade to Giorno's power, where he picks up random rocks and buttons and recreates the missing body organs from them to slot into his eye and throat. It's sort of a slower, less practical version of Crazy Diamond's healing ability, actually, and perhaps one of the bigger problems I have with Gold Experience -- it just could do anything, it seems. Honestly, the biggest reason why I tolerate it is because the fights Gold Experience participates in tends to be against stupid-powerful Stands like Baby Face, which makes it feel a bit less irritating that Gold Experience seems to draw random powers out of its ass. 

Baby Face panics a lot at this revelation, and his panicked replies to Melone ("his button became an eyeball, fuck!") ends up confusing Melone and causes him to not really be able to advice Baby Face, which ends up giving Giorno an advantage. We get a fun bit as Giorno breaks up the motorcycle that Baby Face is trying to escape in, and then uses the roots to basically fuck up Baby Face's flying cube swarm thing. 

We get a fun bit of bait-and-switch as Giorno advances on Baby Face playing possum, with Baby Face slicing off Giorno's arm, but then Giorno ends up transforming his arm into an invading piranha that rips straight through Baby Face. It's ridiculous, but it's honestly a pretty awesome scene. 

That's sort of the end of episode 17, and we start off with episode 18 with Baby Face angry, panicking and dying, sending a lot of angry ranting yells to Melone, who is just baffled by what's going on. Baby Face then enters an 'evolved' form, which is... it's basically Baby Face, but bigger but with more spikes. But Giorno restores his arm, and reveals that the arm that he used to enter Baby Face's body is actually part of the motorbike, and he restores the motorbike into its full form inside Baby Face's body... and then the gasoline in the bike explodes. And then Giorno MUDA MUDA MUDA punches Baby Face as he burns to death.

There's just a lot of "I turned this into THIS! No, I actually turned THAT into THIS!" bit between the two opposite powers, though, which I don't think was necessarily done well. It's still a fun fight to watch, though this sort of weird more-complex-than-its-own-good powers and arbitrary "aha, I did this off-screen" fights have never been my favourite JoJo fights. It's a bit complex when put into words, but it makes some sense while animated (or while read in manga form), trust me. The biggest eye-rolling bit isn't the sequence of what has happened, it's the sheer ridiculousness of Giorno planning that far ahead in predicting what Baby Face would do. Gold Experience is sort of an 'asspull' ability, and while there are certainly some other moments that I can think up of, especially later on in the series, I've always felt like the Baby Face fight really exemplifies when Giorno's basically just bullshits his way through the fight and wins in the most wacky bizarre way ever. 

Anyway, let's cover what happens to Melone, yeah? Trish and Bucciarati are restored, Baby Face dies, sending "burn-burn-burning" as his last words to Melone's laptop Baby Face. It's interesting that Baby Face's death doesn't actually kill Melone since the actual core Stand is the laptop and not the humanoid baby.

Throughout this segment of episode 18, we get Melone in constant contact with his buddy Ghiaccio (who, ironically, actually has hair looking like a melon) and tells him about how he can just make another Baby Face baby since he still has samples of Bucciarati's blood... but then a snake shows up and bites Melone in the tongue. Apparently, in another example of weird, vaguely-defined bullshit powers, Gold Experience turns a chunk of Baby Face into a venomous snake and it... just apparently slithers fast enough to the train and knows to track Melone? It's always weird and never really properly explained about just how much control Giorno has over the animals he makes with Gold Experience, and just what they're able to do. Still, Melone's dead.

It's not my favourite fight in Vento Aureo, but still a pretty entertaining one in no small part due to the gorgeous animation and the interesting concept. Shame that the conclusion is sort of an ass-pull of sorts. 


The JoJo Playlist:

• Baby Face is a reference to the American musician Babyface, and among some of his more well-known songs are Every Time I Close My Eyes, Tender Lover and Never Keeping Secrets.