JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E31 Review: Enrico Pucci - the Origin

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 31: Heavy Weather, Part 2

And as expected, the backstory for Pucci and Weather is given to us in a massive whole-episode flashback. We cut back to forty years ago, 1970's, where we get Pucci's narration on events that happened. A young woman's child died in her arms, and the desperate, depressed woman ends up swapping her deceased son with another child -- a child from a set of twins... the Puccis. 

The Pucci family buried what they thought was their baby, Domenic, and years passed. Enrico Pucci, the surviving twin, studied religion. It didn't hurt that Pucci's family was wealthy and came from a prestigious family in Italy. As we see from Pucci's monologues, we get to hear him question God why he was the one that survived and not his twin. This led to him having many questions about morality, about good and bad, about destiny, and about so many things that would eventually drive him as a man.

A young Pucci then encounters Dio scuttling around like a cockroach during the 80's, the events of Stardust Crusaders. Dio and Pucci have a conversation, with Dio being surprised that Pucci didn't call the other priests or guards on him, and being interested that Pucci was reading a book about a priest who abandoned his vows to become an artist. Dio claims to be "allergic to sunlight", and Pucci accepts this explanation without question, something that Dio is amused by. His interest piqued, Dio heals Pucci's congenital-defect ankle, gives him a Stand arrow, and disappears into the shadows. 

Flash-forward into some time later, and Pucci is in a confessional booth. By fate or chance, it's the woman that stole his twin brother. She's terminal and dying of illness, and is burdened with guilt because of she stole someone else's son. She raised the boy, Wes Bluemarine (the future Weather Report) well, but she still harbours guilt. Through some word choices, Pucci manages to figure out that this woman stole his biological twin brother, secretly alive. 

Again, a good chunk of what happens here seems to because of hideous, twisted coincidence... or perhaps fate/destiny. And it does really help to see just why Pucci was so obsessed with fate as an adult. Wes Bluemarine is working in a part-time job delivering food, and she rescued Pucci's younger sister Perla from a robber, with rather impressive skill of throwing canned food through a window. Wes and Perla struck up a relationship thanks to this encounter. 

When Pucci finds out about this, he has just made a commitment to himself that he needs to keep up the duties of a priest, and keep everything in that confessional sacred and secret... but then he is conflicted, for he realizes that his biological siblings are in a relationship without them realizing it. Obviously he has to break up the incestuous relationship, but he can't break his vows of secrecy. 

And Pucci turned into a private detective to break Wes and Perla up. Which... is an absolutely stupid thing to do, and even if the private eye wasn't a jackass he probably would've threatened Wes or something. But Pucci's clearly not thinking straight at this point. 

The private detective turns out to be a member of the KKK (something that was very explicit in the manga, but the anime removed the hoods) and made investigations on Wes's family. As Pucci's narration talks about the horribleness of these kinds of people, we get the evil detective capturing Wes and Perla and mocking Wes for being the son of a black man. In this case, referring to Wes's adoptive father. There is the oddity that they didn't have the same problem with Perla Pucci, but I guess since she looks white, they didn't care? Anyway, racists are horrible and consistency isn't something I really expect from them.

They burned Wes's mother's house with her in it, and ended up hanging Wes from a tree. When Perla wakes up the next day, in her grief, she threw herself off the cliff and into a lake, killing herself. Unbeknownst to her, Wes is still alive. 

We get the rather amazingly-acted scene of Pucci, in his grief, running into the lake and yelling at the rescue workers for making the sign of the cross as they dredge Perla's corpse out of the lake. He's wracked with grief, cursing himself, cursing fate, and... then he remembers Dio. The Stand arrow pierces Pucci, giving him the power of Whitesnake which allowed him to preserve Perla's memories as a disc. However, the Stand also grants Wes the Stand powers of Weather Report through their shared bloodline, allowing him to survive and break free from the hanging. 

And we get a rather satisfying sequence of Weather Report just waltzing into the KKK's base, and using the powers of Heavy Weather to turn the detective and his cronies into snails. Very cool scene, and it really shows just how... how angry at the world Weather Report is. Weather tries to end his life after that, using a gun and throwing himself off a cliff... but his Stand automatically protects him, in a scene that I felt was a callback to when Jotaro first thought Star Platinum was a ghost.

Furious at the entire world for fucking up his life, and that he's lost the two people important to him -- his mother and Perla -- Weather Report unleashes his Stand on the town, using Heavy Weather to turn everyone into snails. Enrico Pucci walks through the town, determined to deal with Weather on his own. They fight, and the clash was pretty swift and quick though we do get to see the two Stands do a bit of an ora-ora fight. Weather finds about their relationship, but then Pucci manages to seal off Weather's memories, and with it, part of his Stand's power. Pucci then sends Weather into Green Dolphin Street Prison, before he wanders the world to seek out Dio.

We cut to the present day, where Weather reaffirms his desire to kill Pucci... but then asks Anasui to kill him afterwards.  

And... yeah. I've always felt like this flashback, as fucked up as the coincidences and surprise incest are, is pretty great! Pucci's backstory and how his family was damned and fucked up by fate and by coincidences really would make him get obsessed with how 'gravity brings together' and mankind avoiding undesirable paths of their destiny. Great backstory, and honestly, I really do feel that in addition to him being obsessed with Dio's own Heaven plan, really does help to make Pucci probably one of the more interesting villains JoJo has ever done. 

Again, it really is kind of unfortunate that such an intricate backstory ends up being tied to Weather instead of Jolyne. Considering what happens to Weather in a couple more episodes, they really did write him out a bit too quickly in my opinion, and that Pucci's delicious backstory death grudge with Weather ends up not really being as satisfying as it could be... but that's a discussion for the next episode.

Random Notes:

• In addition to the KKK being de-censored, Pucci's ancestor is changed from specifically being a pope to being a famous clergyman. They also drew Pucci/Weather's father with explicitly dark skin, and cut out the line of Perla's friends saying Weather has a tan. 
• Wes Bluemarine and his birth name, Domenic Pucci, are taken from Blumarin and Domenico Dolce, founder of Dolce & Gabbana. 
• The flashback takes place in 1972 and both Pucci and Weather are still teenagers then. While 1972 to 2011 certainly isn't a far gap, I've always thought that Pucci and Weather were much younger than that... but considering how good Jotaro looks for a forty year old man, it might really just be the artstyle as opposed to some sort of 'Stand slows down your aging' thing. 
• Actually, how did Dio heal Pucci's foot? Vampiric powers? Or is The World just simply capable of doing whatever the fuck it needs for the plot to continue, like engraving a set of evolution instructions onto a bone or whatever?
• People keep questioning why the KKK detective didn't mind talking to Pucci and taking money from him if he's so racist, but I don't think that's necessary a 'plot hole', and more like he still puts up the facade of being a legitimate businessman... and why not take money from Pucci that's voluntarily given?
• "Wes" and "Weather" sound much more similar in Japanese. 
• It really is sometimes hard to match up the more eloquent and manipulative Dio we see in Stone Ocean with the feral WRYYYYY-lunatic we see in Part I and III, but on the other hand, even in Part III we do get to see Dio being charismatic and introspective when he's alone with his minions. His introspectiveness when around Pucci could really be chalked up to him only showing his vulnerabilities around Pucci, or that he's saying what is the easiest to manipulate Pucci in that moment.