JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E33 Review: Simpatia Per il Diavolo

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 33: His Name is Diavolo

Episode 33 is easily the mark where you can clearly see that Part V of JoJo has enterred the beginning of its end. We've ran out of mini-bosses, and have just completed a particularly long Stand user battle with Cioccolata and Secco... and now we start off the episode in a confrontation where a wounded and practically blind Bruno Bucciarati is face-to-face with Doppio, thinking that Doppio is just some random young man.

And it's pretty tragic, really, that Bucciarati essentially brings their biggest threat into the very doorstep of their ultimate plan. We get a relatively long sequence of Doppio (and Diavolo) trying to essentially gain Bucciarati's trust, and even with Doppio very nearly breaking cover when he gets a bring-ling-ling-ling episode, they quickly figure out that Bucciarati now views the world via... "auras", which you might think might be a reference to Hamon or something, but is honestly just sort of a handwave in order to get Bucciarati to bring Diavolo into the midst of his allies, because apparently Doppio/Diavolo has the exact same aura that causes Bucciarati to view him as Trish. And... yeah, I know there's a lot of weird, weird shit that goes on in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but this is perhaps one that I really can't justify due to how random and out of nowhere it comes. Essentially, Bucciarati at this point can only 'see the souls' of living things, meaning he can avoid cars since those have people in them, but he can't perceive things like railings.

And then we have the encounter with Jean-Pierre Polnareff from atop the Colosseum, and while we really don't get a whole ton of Polnareff, it really shows just how paranoid and experienced he's became over the years, aiming from afar and observing Doppio and Bucciarati with binoculars. I really do like how Diavolo essentially instructs Doppio to play along with Polnareff's confusion that "Trish" is a girl, and Doppio-Trish pretends to be an indignant... crossdresser? Tomboy girl? A member of the LGBT spectrum? Either way, it's a fun way to essentially tell Polnareff off for being 'rude'. and it's honestly kind of a hilarious way to wave off suspicions.

Polnareff then demands "Trish" to show off "her" Stand, and that, of course, is something that Doppio/Diavolo can't really do considering that Polnareff recognizes their Stand. It's at this point that Diavolo sort of takes over from Doppio, and the response to the murderous intent that he/they are giving off, we get... a flashback to past events!

First, we get Diavolo's point of view, where he found the arrowheads from the whole meteorite story we learned a couple of episodes back, and... again, I completely forgot that Part V delved relatively deeply into the technical origins of Stands. Diavolo met good old Enya the hag in Egypt and Enya ends up telling Diavolo all about the arrows, and... Diavolo ends up keeping a single arrow while selling the rest to Enya, meaning that however indirectly, Diavolo was the cause of Dio's massive amount of  Stand users in Part III. Not all of them, perhaps, but a significant enough amount. And since one of Enya's arrows end up finding its way to Morioh, Diavolo's arrow-digging is also indirectly responsible for the grief of Part IV as well.

We then get Polnareff's side of the flashback and it's pretty dang beautifully done. Polnareff notes that in the 90's Jotaro and Polnareff (drawn in sexy-eyed Vento Aureo style) go around the world investigating the arrows, and eventually split up to cover different continents. Presumably this is when Jotaro ended up in Morioh? Meanwhile, Polnareff's arrival in Italia quickly alerted to him to the organization Passione, who essentially rules every aspect of the city in the shadows with Stand users, leading to a showdown between Diavolo and Polnareff on a cliff-side.

We get the surprisingly brutal dismemberment of Polnareff's limbs by King Crimson, who drops Polnareff into the rocks beneath the cliff, all the while leaving a little monologue about the sheer power of King Crimson. But, y'know, Polnareff lives. Somehow. That wasn't exactly explained, but it's not like that's a huge plot hole or something.

Back in the present day, Polnareff and Bucciarati are left alone as Doppio ends up disappearing, while the tell-tale signs of King Crimson's activation is felt by everyone there. Polnareff's binoculars lie smashed on the ground, while Giorno, Trish and Mista realize what the hell's going on. We then get an interesting scene as Polnareff looks down a flight of stairs into the advancing Doppio, in a neat inversion of Polnareff's own encounter with Dio in Part III. Doppio takes off his shirt and physically transforms into Diavolo as he steps behind the pillar, becoming a lot more jacked and showing off his weird... uh... whatever those spider-web-stripper-net-things are supposed to be.

Hey, if you can physically transform your appearance and voice, randomly cause space to appear around you while you transform, and also have a Stand that can erase time, you can dress however the fuck you want. I ain't judging.

We get a lout "DIAVOLOOOO!" cry from Polnareff, while Diavolo himself mutters about what I really think is the theme of him as a character. While Kars and Dio were different sorts of megalomaniacs who essentially view themselves as gods, and Kira just wants to be left alone to continue murdering people in peace, Diavolo is a man that is obsessed about wiping away the past, only to have the past come back to haunt him. From his bizarre origin story, to how he murdered his mother and burned his hometown, to his obsessive desire to hide his identity, and now the fact that this entire conflict is precipitated by Diavolo's attempt to wipe out the only remaining part of his past, his bastard daughter... it's pretty interesting, and one that I am glad the anime properly showcases.

The subsequent confrontation between Polnareff and Diavolo is pretty neat, with Polnareff using dripping blood as well as the sheer speed that Silver Chariot can attack the area around him to drive away Diavolo. I still sort of call bullshit on this, considering how, hey, Diavolo really could've taken the however long he's able to move freely in an auto-played universe and really could've attacked in the moments before Silver Chariot is moving, or attacked the ground or something, but... eh. The more you try to dissect King Crimson, the more you'll be left with nothing but a migraine, so I'm not going to.

The point is, Polnareff manages to put enough of a fight to draw blood from Diavolo, and then Silver Chariot just straight-up throws Polnareff, wheelchair and all, away from Diavolo... but then Diavolo uses King Crimson to splatter blood onto Polnaref to fuck up his warning system, and then rants about how he's going to defeat his weak self from the past. Polnareff himself still tries to do... something with the arrow and his stand, but ends up getting punched straight through the chest by King Crimson and just straight-up dies, something that's quite... interesting and a neat little half-subversion where the 'legacy' cameo character from a previous part ends up basically being curb-stomped.

And as Polnareff is mortally wounded by Diavolo (who, hilariously, isn't fully understanding what Polnareff is trying to do), we get to see Silver Chariot, seemingly melted into a goopy state, squirm and swim away with the arrow, while the dying Polnareff mutters that this is his last gamble to keep the arrow away from Diavolo. We get a beautiful little flashback to Part III before Polnareff seemingly expires. Diavolo has killed Team Bucciarati's sponsor that seems to have an actual plan to defeat him, and now he's going to be able to wipe out Team Bucciarati, who isn't even aware about where Diavolo is... and then some mysterious, ethereal figure with a hat the arrow's design carved into his body is slowly walking around.

So apparently, Polnareff's final gambit did something! I really, really do like this sequence. On the surface, sure, Polnareff sort of just shows up to die, and you could argue that this is a major character from Part III being hit with the Worf effect just to make the Part V protagonists look better when they eventually defeat Diavolo, but honestly, the way we get the backstories of both Polnareff and Diavolo is genuinely well done, as is Polnareff's pretty damn badass last stand. Again, I do concede the point that perhaps the connection between Polnareff and Diavolo could've been better foreshadowed, as is the role of the arrows -- there was a huge gap between Polpo and Polnareff where the arrows weren't even being discussed -- but honestly, as a whole, episode 33 was a pretty damn satisfying episode of JoJo.

Also, also, the fact that the previous episode is called "My Name is Doppio" and this one is called "His Name is Diavolo" really puts into perspective which personality that at least a staff member in the anime team considers the original, huh?