JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Golden Wind, Season 4, Episode 36: Diavolo Rises
We continue the final arc of Vento Aureo with this episode, and it's... interesting. It starts off with Doppio-in-Bucciarati finally waking up properly and we get one last scene with poor Doppio as he dies. He mutters to himself how they have victory assured if the Boss is "there", but then as he fades away, he pleads and reaches for the phone, begging the Boss to call him one last time because he's so lonely. Awww, poor Doppio! It kind of is a sudden gut-punch and I honestly had wished that Doppio had more to do after the Metallica fight, but other than just being what amounts to be a shield to get Diavolo into the midst of the good guys, Doppio was just sort of... there? I guess it's symbolic that Diavolo would so readily abandon the only thing he's shown to care about in pursuit of his ultimate goal.
Perhaps that's my biggest complaint with Vento Aureo? Some characters are just introduced to have a huge, spectacular first battle (Doppio, Trish, Fugo) but then end up just being a backgroud character for the most part? I dunno, though. Always felt like the actual overall pacing of Vento Aureo was pretty well done and it didn't fall into the repetitive lull of "fight, fight, more fighty-fight that could have been cut out" like Parts III and IV sometimes felt. Eh, I digress.
Meanwhile, after that brief interlude that takes place before the opening sequence, a good chunk of this episode plays out like another Stand fight, albeit a lot more tense in the wake of Narancia's abrupt death. As Requiem charges in to attack Turtle Polnareff, Mista-in-Trish is about to shoot the arrow away, but his revolver's chamber mysteriously falls apart. And then turns out him shooting the pervert not-cop in the previous episode has a point, because he stole the cop's berreta! And he shoots Requiem with that gun... but Requiem is just single-minded in wanting to wipe out Polnareff because he's touched the arrow once. Gold Experience and Sex Pistols rip apart Requiem's limbs (the Stand-reversal power doesn't apply to attacks directed at Requiem, only at the arrow) but he's still charging around. We get a fun sequence of scenes as Mista-in-Trish jumps aroud and climbs up a pole with Turtle-Polnareff, and the animatino is pretty smooth throughout all this.
Suddenly, Requiem halts his attack, and just starts walking again, and Polnareff realizes that he now understands another part of Requiem's ability that he didn't before. "The starting time" is about to begin, and Polnareff yells as his body starts to change -- a fish head and lobster claws horrifyingly sprouts out of the side of Polnareff's turtle body, and Polnareff gives some exposition that this is a further evolution of Requiem's original power, which is to swap souls and minds... it's the ability to "change everything into something else". And we get to see a horrifying montage of the citizens of Rome being... Cronenberged, to borrow a term from Rick and Morty. Some dude grows extra eyes, some dude's face mutates into a lump of flesh... pretty horrifying stuff, while Polnareff's narration talks about how the 4.5 billion history of evolution on Earth will be torn to shreds in a matter of hours.
I remembered that in the older translations this was noted as "bringing forth creatures from other dimensions", which... I'm genuinely not sure which translation is more accurate. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Chariot Requiem's fucking shit up, that's all that matters. And, sure, neither soul-swapping or evolution-mutating or Stand-reflecting has anything to do with Silver Chariot's original ability, but, again, I digress.
Meanwhile, while all of this exposition is happening, we get ominous cuts to Diavolo. Or, rather, King Crimson, muttering about how he's been observing the good guys trying to figure out how to beat Requiem, and he's formulating his own plan to steal the arrow from Requiem. I do really like the choice of depicting everyone else's souls (for lack of a better term) as their 'original' human appearance while being stuck in someone else's body, but Diavolo/King Crimson is depicted with just his Stand, not as the pink-haired stripper-esque human form. Is the Diavolo personality just the King Crimson Stand, then? I don't think we ever got confirmation either way.
But then as everyone starts to slowly get mutated by Requiem's powers (well, mostly just Trish-in-Mista's finger) they quickly decide to stop trying to assign blame... but then as they are about to sprint after Requiem, Giorno tells everyone to stop moving because he's figured something out. Because of course Giorno does. He's been confused about that one part of Mista's revolver that snapped off, and had used a Gold Experience ground mole to find the missing piece from the revolver -- and it's clear that someone used brute force to break it. Giorno notes that no one was around them when Narancia was killed, so clearly Diavolo has entred one of them like a parasite -- and honestly, considering Diavolo was essentially a parasite in Doppio's body originally, it makes sense?
And as Requiem is moving away, I do like that paranoia starts to settle in. Giorno points out that Diavolo doesn't have contl over the body he's inhabiting, otherwise Diavolo would maintain pursuit over Requiem, but everyone (particularly Mista and Trish) start to freak out. Giorno points out that Polnareff is out of suspicion, because he was nearly killed and Diavolo wouldn't have allowed that to happen. And because apparently that's something Gold Experience can do, Giorno can detect the amount of souls and life energy in a body.
And as Giorno does the same blood-dripping trick Polnareff did during his fight, Giorno is about to scan every other member in the group for Diavolo. Mista-in-Trish points out a pretty interesting counterattack -- first, asking Giorno how they can be sure if Giorno isn't possessed, and later on, being afraid of what would happen if Diavolo was really in him. Giorno decides to scan Bucciarati-in-Diavolo first, but then King Crimson takes this chance to attack -- with the resulting strike ripping off Giorno and Gold Experience's arms.
Not the biggest fan of this sequence of events, because we briefly see King Crimson seemingly come out of Mista-in-Trish's body, but it's actually Trish-in-Mista that King Crimson is parasitizing, and Trish calls out Spice Girl in response to try and attack King Crimson... but while the audience is certainly fooled because we were watching from Giorno's POV, wouldn't Trish realize King Crimson came out of her? Apparently, Diavolo had wanted Trish to activate Spice Girl, in order to have King Crimson choke Spice Girl and essentially puppeteer the body tied to the Stand. Which is... a hilarious mental image, for sure, but an odd one. We get another cool sequence of King Crimson's ability being shown, with Mista realizing that "shit, I've already fired my pistol", and Diavolo-in-Trish-in-Mista (yeaaah) is able to dodge all the bullets.
All the while, Diavolo makes a little rant about how he's figured out Requiem's gimmick. It's the shadow, and thanks to the anime adding a couple of extra scenes to illustrate, Diavolo realizes that regardless of where the sun is in the sky, Requiem's shadow always moves in the opposite direction from whoever views it, and that the shadow is in different places depending on the user. Somehow, Diavolo also realizes that this means that the shadow is the "shadow of one's soul", since Requiem can control everyone else's Stands... and that because of that reason, Diavolo realizes that he has to destroy the light in his own 'soul'... and punches a glowing ball of light behind his own head. And that... blows up Requiem.
No, I don't get it either.
It quite literally comes out of nowhere, and, sure, the shadow thing is certainly consistent. Hell, even in scenes where we, the audience, see Requiem alone, the shadow is certainly pointing away from us... but the fact that we jump from the shadow observation to "the shadow of the soul of the light behind me head and I can punch it" is honestly so absurd and random that it's probably one of the bigger ass-pulls in this climax.
That's it for Chariot Requiem, and as Diavolo gloats over having the arrow, Giorno activates Gold Experience, which, of course, is something he has prepared earlier. This, meanwhile, is the sort of Gold Experience ass-pull we're more familiar with. Ants appear from the blood droplets in Diavolo's hand and bite through the arrow shaft, while Mista manages to slow down King Crimson with bullets... but an improvised civilian being used as a shield later, and Diavolo starts ranting about how he's been able to defeat his past, while also acknowledging Bucciarati as someone who's pushed him a long, long way.
But then turns out that Trish is still conscious, and had used Spice Girl to soften the bullets and immobilize King Crimson's arm, allowing the good guys to toss the arrow their way... but then with a declaration about "if you haven't been born, my daughter!" Diavolo uses King Crimson to punch straight through Trish-in-Mista's chest (lots of chest-punching in JoJo), and the momentum launches the body towards the arrow... and King Crimson with it.
And that's the cliffhanger!
And... y'know, I really want to like this climax a lot more than I do. But the whole light-globe-soul thing really felt like a massive asspull and I really wished that they had added a bit more foreshadowing about Chariot Requiem being a reflection of one's soul or something, which I really felt wasn't done quite as well. Still, the Stand action in this episode and the general mystery-solving stuff of "where is Diavolo" is pretty neat, so even if this certainly isn't my favourite sequence of events in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, it certainly is a pretty well-executed one.
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