JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo S04E30-31 Review: Boulevard of Broken Dreams

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 30-31: Oasis & Green Day, Part 1-2

A pretty fun set of action scene episodes, as our heroes face off against Cioccolata and Secco, a pair with very... interseting powers. I really do like just how much easier Cioccolata and Secco's job if they were no-nonsense in the usage of their powers, and instead of putting Secco on camera duty, have him immediately ambush Team Bucciarati and cause them to sink into the groud before they have time to react. But no, Cioccolata has to have their facial expressions while despairing captured on tape. Ultimately, this three-parter was mostly just action scenes. And, granted, the Cioccolata/Secco fight is easily another one that I would say is the most memorable ones in Part V, but after the speedy, plot-development-after-plot-development dogpile that was the whole Doppio/Risotto Nero sequence, these four episodes focusing on Cioccolata and Secco feel pretty... bland. Thank god for the animation team, is what I'm trying to say, because the animation is really top-notch in these episodes.

And the two villains's relationship is really, really fucked-up, huh? Cioccolata isn't exactly abusive or anything, but the combination of Secco's almost pet-like behaviour and mannerisms, nodding and repeating the same rudimentary sentences over and over, and him just freaking out so much over the idea of being allowed to eat sugar cubes... these are things that are adorable when you're dealing with a little corgi pup, not a grown adult man in a clay gimp suit.

Eventually, Secco unleashes his Stand, Oasis, and dives into the ground and causes a whole section of stairway that Team Bucciarati are standing on to sink downwards. Really do love the reactions of our heroes' faces when they realize what's happening, and the usage of Sticky Fingers and Sex Pistols to turn a street sign into something they can hang on is pretty neat.

And with the reduced cast, it's a lot easier for the writer to really split up the party in ways that make sense as opposed to "only this one character is encountering the enemy because reasons". Narancia is out for the count for the entire battle due to his injuries, while Trish can't risk going out and fighting alongside everyone because she's a VIP. With Giorno and Bucciarati being the two main protagonists, though, this does leave poor Mista as sort of the sacrificial lion, and his attempts to fight Secco with things like bending bullets ended up being used more to demonstrate Secco's abilities (spitting rocks, diving underground) more than anything.

We get a pretty badass moment as Bucciarati realizes that Secco can track them from underground, and takes a literal leap of faith, leaving Mista and the turtle near a truck while he jumps off a ledge... and unleashes a beautifully-animated ARIARIARIARIARI barragre onto Secco, forcing him to retreat back to his tunnel.

It's at this point when we really learn that Secco, while clearly child-like and subservient to Cioccolata, isn't exactly dumb. In the midst of licking his blood, he calls Cioccolata and starts ranting about Notorious B.I.G., asking Cioccolata if his mold would've worked on a Stand that's neither alive nor dead. I'm genuinely baffled how Cioccolata can just rattle off the effects of Notorious B.I.G. as if it's common knowledge, and its user certainly went to the airport with the intention of dying, so I am genuinely baffled the logistics behind just how they figured out how that particular Stand worked.

And as Cioccolata and Secco are confused, Bucciarati regroups with his men in the truck and drives off to Roma proper, and Giorno confronts Bucciarati about his bizarre zombie state. And... in perhaps one of my least favourite plot twists in Vento Aureo, we get the "no shit" explanation that Bucciarati is living on borrowed time, due to a unique reaction with the life force Giorno used to resurrect him after the King Crimson/Diavolo encounter. He's literally a walking dead man who's just trying to get as much done and defeat his enemy before his eventual death, and I really felt like in both the explanation and the execution, Zombie Bucciarati really could've been done a lot better.

We also note that Bucciarati's body is slowly breaking down. In addition to the damage he's not feeling, he's also starting to lose his hearing, because his silence to Giorno in the car ride seems to stem from him genuinely not being able to hear, instead of trying to be stoic and mysterious.

Of course, all this zombie Bucciarati stuff is interrupted by a fucking mold-consumed body dropping from the sky and smashing down onto the car. Some really great animation of Bucciarati using Sticky Fingers to unzip the car to get out of the explosion, and it's revealed that Cioccolata is using a helicopter to spread Green Day's spores all over the city, really not giving a shit if even members of Passione die in the process. Lots of random people die from the Stand attack, and it's pretty dang scary. I don't think we've quite ever seen a villainous Stand being used to wantonly attack so many civilians in one go -- even the more sadistic villains tended to keep their murders relatively constrained to a couple of individuals before moving on to our heroes.

And, of course, there's the whole problem of Secco (who I guess is just flat-out immune to the mould?) who softens the groud aroud them and keeps attacking them. Bucciarati ends up distracting Secco enough for Giorno to sexy-grabs Mista and tell him to 'believe' and shoot the bullets -- transforming the bullets into a gigantic tree that grabs the helicopter and roots it in place, despite it being out of range of Sex Pistols' normal range.

Episode 31 focuses mostly on the Giorno/Cioccolata fight, although we do get a pretty neat face-off between Bucciarati and Secco. Secco gives this long rant about videos and words, and we get some great sound effects when Sticky Fingers and Oasis clash against each other. Vento Aureo doesn't actually have as much Stand-vs-Stand brawls as its two predecessors, but when they do, the sound effects are pretty spectacular. We get the brief note that Oasis vastly overpowers Sticky Fingers in terms of strength and speed, helped particularly by Secco using the elastic ground as something "akin to boxing ring ropes" to help propel his punches. Ah, Araki, you and your turn-a-trivia-into-a-superpower writing style, you. After a badass sequence of Bucciarati using Sticky Fingers to slice off a chunk of the road to drop onto a lower elevation and a confirmation that Green Day doesn't affect him, we basically just sort of focus on the Cioccolata battle.

And as Giorno and Mista walk up towards the tree-helicopter complex, poor Mista ends up being the sacrificial lion once more to showcase Cioccolata's other abilities. Mista shoots his bullets into the helicopter, but his bullets are unable to find where Cioccolata has disappeared to... and then one by one the Sex Pistol goblin-sprites get sliced up, and Sex Pistols' voice actor really get to ham things up as all of the bullets other than #5 get brutalized and mutilated. This takes Mista out of comission as he, too, gets riddled with cut wounds and lies bleeding on the ground. They're confused because each Stand should only have one ability (ha!) and apparently Mista can't be healed unless he gets all the bullets back.

But... but Notorious BIG totally consumed a bunch of the bullets, didn't it? Plus, between Star Platinum, Killer Queen, Hermit Purple, Echoes, Ratt and a bunch of others, the one-power-per-Stand rule certainly is kind of bullshit. Consistency!

Anyway, Giorno faces off against Cioccolata, and he ends up using Gold Experience to slam the tree and cause the vine-branches to stab through the helicopter... and honestly, if he had gone a bit more brutal in this attack, he probably would've managed to kill Cioccolata. Instead, he goes in, and it's apparently a trap -- Cioccolata jumps out and gets into a confrontation with Giorno's Stand... but then he slices off half of his torso with a scalpel (that is a strong scalpel) and just crawls away as this gloriously hideous mutilated human creature, with half a body scrambling away with his vertebra hanging out.

Also, Cioccolata is also apparently still able to control his disembodied limbs, because his detached hand is able to attack Giorno. Cioccolata goes into a rant about how he knows what parts of the human body can be cut apart while still remaining alive, and he also apparently closes the veins and arteries quick enough to prevent bleeding out. And... I dunno. I'm just going to assume the Green Day mold helps Cioccolata manipulate his limbs or something? I dunno -- between Dio and the Pillar Men, this certainly isn't the first time a character in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was able to manipulate disembodied limbs.

Giorno ends up finding himself in a bind, because he can't afford to fall from the helicopter lest the mold consume him, but then the disembodied legs attack him and kick him apart. And Cioccolata gives this monologue about things he find exciting -- his own despair turning into hope, as well as looking at those in despair. Cioccolata stitches himself together almost instantaneously then gives an ora-ora barrage of his own onto Giorno.

As Giorno gets tossed out of the helicopter, we get a pretty cool scene with bullet #5 tossing a bullet at Giorno, and we get a neat usage of both Gold Experience and Green Day in ways that make sense. Turning the bullet into a branch and a ledge for Giorno to stand on, tilting the helicopter to cause the branch to 'fall' and be consumed by mold, Giorno reverting one of the branches back into an inanimate bullet to shoot Cioccolata straight in the head... pretty neat stuff. Giorno's badass line about "I have been winning from the very start" is also badass.

We then get an extended takedown sequence that felt a bit more of an afterthought, but it does really emphasize just how hard to kill Cioccolata is. Giorno figures out that despite being impaled on the huge tree, Cioccolata is playing dead, and goes into a long descriptive speech about his injuries, and how he's going to spare Cioccolata if he surrenders... and, of course, Cioccolata is totally alive, and is using the time that Giorno wastes mnologuing to hold Mista hostage with a disembodied hand.

Of course, apparently Giorno himself was also buying time, waiting for the little grub he implanted in Cioccolata's brain to burst out as a beetle and properly kill Cioccolata, and Giorno admits that he's always planned to kill Cioccolata either way. Cioccolata's last coherent words are a surprisingly childish "you're so mean!" before we get a genuinely long but satisfying MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA barrage, known among the manga readers as the "Seven Page Muda Muda". Apparently they even had to bring in a "Muda Muda Animation Team" to help animate this sequence, which... damn, commitment! It's so long that Giorno even gets to stick in a WRYYYYY yell in the midst of it! It's a pretty satisfying thing to watch, and the random detail that Cioccolata gets thrown and crushed inside a garbage truck is hilarious.

With Cioccolata gone, the ending scenes show Secco and Bucciarati facing off, and... and Secco gets a voice mail from Cioccolata, and I'm genuinely not sure when Cioccolata had the time to send all this. Before Giorno and Mista shot the bullets, I guess? It's a very, very long speech about the strong and the weak, and how Cioccolata loves Secco (in his own fucked-up way) and... I dunno. This monologue sort of took a bit too long, I think, a bit too much to stretch the suspension of disbelief. Secco's getting serious, though, which we'll cover in our review of the next episode.

Also, we get our first view of Team Bucciarati's enigmatic sponsor, some dude in a wheelchair with what appears to be prosthetic, metallic legs... and a very, very familiar hairdo. Wonder who could it be? It's Part III's Polnareff. Of course it's fucking Polnareff, it's pretty obvious from the get-go. We'll meet him soon enough.


Overall, despite a couple of mild inconsistencies, Giorno's fight against Cioccolata is pretty well-developed and showcases a lot of awesome usages of their unique Stand abilities. Cioccolata himself might be a one-note psychopath, but he's just so entertaining and that random "I can slice my body up" ability is so out of nowhere but ends up giving the fight a fun little wrinkle. A lot of genuinely badass and well-animated sequences particularly in episode 31, which made these two episodes a real delight to watch.