After the end of Diamond is Unbreakable, the near immediate demand for a Golden Wind anime was staggering. So now that it’s out, how is it? Let’s check it out.
My manga reading friend informs me that the first part of the episode with Giorno Giovanna walking around the town is anime only. It does well to set the scene and the tone of the city, showing it rife with crime, drugs and homelessness. After the establishing shots, we cut to the airport where a mobster named Leaky Eye Luca is demanding his protection payment from someone working in the area.
In a vague attempt to save himself, the guy says that he is not the only one not paying his protection fees and names Giorno as someone else who is stiffing them on money.
Clever to try to shift the blame, but it didn’t work out for him.
Giorno is running his own scam business around the airport and runs into Koichi, from part 4. Who has come to Italy to search for the son of Dio Brando as a favor to Jotaro. Koichi was one of my favorite characters from part 4, so i’m really happy to see him here. Unfortunately, I hear he’ll only be in this episode unless the anime decides to give him more to do.
Well, as we know from previous parts, stand users are drawn to one another.
So Giorno targets Koichi and steals his luggage using his stand. His stand powers aren’t exactly clear to me in this episode, they turn items into other things and then any damage that comes to that thing is transferred back to the person who uses it? I get the damage transfer part, but the part i’m not entirely clear on is the transformation part. In the episode we see him turn money into butterflies, Koichi’s luggage into a frog. Does he only turn things into living things? Yeah, I’m sure this will be better explained later, but right now i’m really confused about it’s full power.
After his run in with Koichi, Giorno runs into Leaky Eye Luca. Who tries to bully him into paying his protection money, only to meet an unfortunate ending when he attacks the frog that was Koichi’s luggage.
Gonna be honest with you, with his design and a semi-assigned backstory about why his eye was constantly leaking a tear I was convinced that Luca was going to be a more important character. Good job on the fake out.
Another run in with Koichi leads Koichi to gain some suspicion about Giorno’s stand powers and call Jotaro saying he located the son of Dio. How DARE you assault me with feels with that Stardust Crusaders group shot anime! You can’t have all those people sitting there in that picture frame smiling as Jotaro admits to having killed Dio. Speaking about how Giorno’s hair changing from black to blonde probably means that the Dio blood inside of him has awakened and given him his stand.
The trigger though, what could it be? Jotaro’s guess is another powerful stand user and it seems like he’s right because as Giorno is on the train he runs into Bruno Bucciarati. Who is looking for the person who took down Luca.
He has seemingly two abilities? One the ability to be able to tell when someone is lying to him by the taste of their sweat. Two, the ability to create zippers and transfer things to places. Such as fingers into Giorno’s mouth.
Gross, really really gross. It’s a super gross ability and the use of it for torture is also super gross. Can’t say it isn’t fun looking while animated though, the purple swirls in the skin as the zippers rip apart the flesh is like looking into a deep void and it’s just really cool to look at.
The episode ends with Bruno and Giorno ready to face off with their stand powers on the train.
I really liked this episode. I liked seeing Koichi back again, i’m pretty sad at the idea that we won’t be seeing him again unless the anime begins down a different path. I can’t say too much about Bruno off this episode since he really only comes in at the end of the episode, but Giorno. Oh boy, Giorno is a character that I feel has a lot of room for growth.
It’s pretty obvious that he’s related to Dio, I don’t mean just in the blonde hair either. In the way he uses “Useless” in his speech, in the way that he’s kind of underhanded and sleazy and in the way that he is entirely smooth. This isn’t a bad thing, and not all protagonist need to be good. Still though, if he’s going to be a character the audience is going to want to back and root for, we’re going to need a reason. Perhaps that reason is a villain that is even more sleazy then he is.
Who knows. I for one, as an anime only viewer am looking pretty forward to seeing how Giorno will grow as a character and learning more about the stand powers in this part. I’ve been told we get some pretty neat Stand designs this time!
Possibility of watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of blogging: Guaranteed
Berry’s Impression
Hey, this breaks my heart every time. :’)
If people don’t know, someone had leaked the entire first episode awhile ago and I ended up watching the whole thing. I just couldn’t resist. After I had seen the art for Part 5, I needed to check out the first episode and I thought it was great.
Now, I said this in the preview but I’ll say this again. I’m not a fan of Vento Aureo. It was really hard for me to get into it, so hard that I had actually thought about skipping it and getting to Stone Ocean, and then going back to finish Vento Aureo. But I decided against that and forced my way through Part 5. I’ve seen all kinds of opinions for Part 5 and saw that this part was kind of controversial, but now as of late I’ve seen way more positive views and the more mixed reviews are for Part 6. Well…what can I say? I wasn’t very sure if I was going to blog this part, but I love Jojo too much to pass it up. I have issues with Part 5 that I won’t say right now until it’s at an appropriate time. Maybe my lack of enjoyment was also because I read the badly translated scans? Maybe. Either way, I’m going into this with an open mind again. I have my opinions about this already, some may change, and some may not. But that’s what I want. I’m hoping that some of the negative opinions I have about some of the things in Part 5 with change for the better.
I mean, this is really exciting! Jojo has gotten so huge that we’ve gone beyond Part 3! This episode, as usual, was very good. I loved the anime-only segment with Giorno walking around the city, it really gave us a good feel of the city’s state and really set the mood. The art this time looks fantastic, not flat like Part 4’s art. The seiyuus are doing a great job, Giorno’s pink, and the sky is blue! This first episode followed the first few chapters really well. David Pro has always done a great job in following the manga, so I can’t wait to see the rest.
Koichi is back and I love him, Jotaro will literally only appear in this episode (spoiler?) so I’m sad but that’s okay. This isn’t Jotaro’s story, as much as I love him. This is Giorno’s, and things are kicking in already with his meeting with Bruno. My other love. I can’t say why I love Bruno because of spoilers, but I love him. This probably wasn’t the best episode to say that, but whatever. *lick*
Possibility of watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of blogging: Guaranteed. I’m happy to share this with Midnight! 🙂