JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E29 Review: Stand By Me

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 29: Destination: Rome, the Colosseum

I had intended to cover the entire Cioccolata/Secco encounter in a single review, but turns out it's spread out across four episodes, which was a lot longer than how I remembered it being in the manga. Not going to complain, since I do feel the Cioccolata/Secco encounter is indeed one of the better fights in Vento Aureo. This episode is more of a prologue, though, with a good chunk of the episode just building up the two villains as well as delivering some unexpected information revelation about the origin of Stands as a whole, something that I genuinely completely forgot was touched upon in Part V. The first half of the episode, while being more introdump-y, is also bizarrely intercut with scenes of Narancia and Mista running around with the turtle during the actual encounter with Cioccolata and Secco, which I felt wasn't particularly necessary.

Anyway, after Abbacchio's death and Team Bucciarati retreating from Sardini (as well as covering up any evidence that they know of the Boss's face), our heroes end up finding out that, of course, the Boss has removed all traces of his identity from records and the internet. Upon which... their computer speaks to them, name-dropping the Boss's name as "Diavolo", meaning that I don't have to parse his name as "the Boss" anymore, which has been pretty dang annoying. I'm not sure how their mysterious ally is able to make the computer talk like that, knowing what I know about who their benefactor is, but this person tells them to come to Rome, noting that he knows certain information about Diavolo and the Stand-making Arrow, including the true way to use them. 

While all of this is going on, we get to see Doppio doing his usual crazy "ring ring ring" telephone shit, stealing some poor girl's ice cream and later on good-naturedly borrowing a young child's telephone toy. Doppio and Diavolo have a conversation and discussion about sending out Cioccolata and Secco, who are described as "filth of humanity" that disgusts even someone as sociopathic as Diavolo, and that it's such a mark of desperation that Diavolo is even resorting to siccing the two of them out at all. 

But then Diavolo gives a long speech to Doppio, talking about how a long while back, before even the events of the previous Parts, there is a virus in Cape York that ended up causing a man to "shoot out lightning from his palms", and reports tied this virus to a meteor -- and a certain man who craved god-like power carved arrows out of the meteor, and those shot with the arrow will either succumb to the virus and die, but those who 'evolve' and survive are rewarded with an ability, sort of like a forced survival of the fittest. Which... which honestly, is something that the manga/anime never really delves too deep into. Part III and IV always treated Stands as something more supernatural that's awakened due to circumstances, but the fact that the Stands are the results of an alien virus mutating your body... it's certainly interesting, and maybe Mikitaka from Part IV and his simultaneous claim that he's an alien and his possession of a very Stand-like ability aren't so far-fetched after all. It's actually pretty interesting to speculate on what the manga would've been if Araki had chosen to pursue this decidedly more sci-fi based line of thought. 

Meanwhile, our heroes finally arrive in Rome, but when they witness a bunch of drunks arguing, one of the drunkards gets half his body ripped off when his friend drags him off from a streetlight, in typical JJBA horror fashion. Also, the parts where his body is ripped off is covered with green moss, which has to be such a huge relief for the censorship team. And as the other dude jumps off from the staircase, his entire body just dissolves away. Mista's attempt to pull out his gun ends up causing his hand to be covered with the same moss.

And it's at this point we meet Cioccolata and Secco. Cioccolata is a crazy-looking but well-dressed man, even if he has... weird algae hair. Secco, on the other hand, is just a man in a crazy clay gimp suit, and it's clear that this is exactly what the author was going for, because Secco is completely subservient to Cioccolata, who treats him exactly like a pet. Amazing work from both voice actors involved in portraying both Cioccolata's giddy delights and demands that Secco record their expressions of despair, to Secco's hee-hee-haa-haa manic laughing. 

It's at this point that we cut away to Doppio and Diavolo discussing Cioccolata's origin story, and we learn that Cioccolata is a former doctor, who killed patients on purpose and even reduced anesthesia to make them wake up partway in surgery while he's mutilating and butchering them. And as a kid, he worked in a nursing house specifically to whisper demoralizing shit like "your family does not love you" for the sole purpose of driving elderly people to despair and eventual suicide. And... and it's perhaps a bit over-the-top, but the visuals and the narration certainly really make Diavolo's claim that Cioccolata is "the worst piece of filth on the planet" ring true.

I'm also 90% sure that Cioccolata was the one who did the whole "kill a man in front of his lover, then cut him up and send his body in individual friends" bit with the two La Squadra members, and I kinda wished they had at least given a brief of-handed mention to that. 

We cut back to our heroes struggling with trying to figure out how Cioccolata's Stand, Green Day, works, particularly when Narancia as welll as the people inside the turtle are affected. It's Giorno that ends up figuring this out, noting that the trigger for the flesh-eating moss appearing is when you move to a lower altitude or elevation, giving a brief note about entomopathogenic fungus which will kill their caterpillar hosts when they move to a lower elevation (I guess very loosely inspired by the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus?), and you totally know this is like a small little factoid that Araki, in his Rohan Kishibe style of research, ends up reading in a book somewhere and decided to exaggerate it and make an entire superpower out of it.

It's at this point that the main characters discuss how Stand abilities correspond to the user's subconscious will, meaning that a Stand as vile as Green Day that decays everything indiscriminately is truly the manifestation of a sick, sick mind. And Cioccolata is a sick fucker, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of other Stands that don't correspond exactly to their user. I can definitely see how JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, in some degree, has been working with this mentality in mind, though. Like Abbacchio, who's so trapped in mistakes he's made in the past having a Stand that replays the past, or control-freak megalomaniacs like Dio and Diavolo who manifest Stands that allow them to control time itself... but for every Stand that 'fits' with its user's personality, there are probably a couple dozen others that don't. 

The episode ends in a bit of a neat little action cliffhanger as Narancia and the turtle seems to be doomed to be consumed by the mold, but Mista ends up blowing up the boat's engine with Sex Pistols to throw them up into the harbour. I guess bullets and Stands aren't affected by Green Day, huh? Overall, though, a pretty fun, if slow, episode. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Oasis is a 90's band from England, particularly known for their hit single Stand By Me, but also Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova, among others. 
• Green Day is an American rock band known for many, many singles that ended up being popular in the 90's and 00's, among them Boulevard of Broken Dreams, 21 Guns, American Idiot, Wake Me Up When September Ends and Basket Case. Their songs are featured in Hollywood movies a fair bit. Crunchyroll's subs translated Green Day as "Green Tea", which is pretty fucking hilarious. 
• Cioccolata and Secco are Italian for "chocolate" and "dry" respectively. Diavolo, of course, is Italian for "demon", and a variant on the commonly-used "Diablo".