Whenever the anime decides to add in anime-original scenes, they always feel necessary and really push the narrative. We got Abbacchio’s backstory early on but I like that they added it in now, and I also love the original scene where Bruno met Abbacchio and asked him to join his gang.
To be honest, the actual stand fight was a little boring. While the stand’s ability put them in a bind, they were able to figure it out with some teamwork and trust. The trust between Bruno and Abbacchio in this episode makes a lot of sense when we see the scene after the credits. Before joining Passione, Abbacchio had actually been a cop like he always dreamed to be. After high school he finally became a cop but his dream took an ugly turn as his life as a cop was nothing like he envisioned. He learned of the contradictions of being a cop, while he would protect people the same people would criticize him and throw rocks at him, calling him useless and such. Once when Abbacchio took a bribe from a man working with a prostitute, he later finds this man robbing a store, killing its owner. Abbacchio was in the dilemma of: let him go, let him get away with the crime. Arrest him, and the dude would squeal about the bribe. In the end, it got his partner killed and Aba’s dreams of being a cop came to a terrible end. It’s very ironic that one of Passione’s members used to be a cop, becoming one of the people he would go after. Stuck in his own drunken hell, Bruno comes up to him and asks him to join his gang, for him not to dwell in his past any longer. To Abbacchio, Bruno basically saved his life.
That’s why their working together in this episode was very important. While Abba shows complete distrust in Giorno, he puts in all of his trust in Bruno from working with him in solving the enemy stand’s mystery and giving him the clue to solve the mystery in the end with the blood. Abbacchio’s a pretty intimidating kinda asshole-ish guy so it’s huge that he puts so much trust in Bruno, but it makes sense.
It’s really cool what they did with Moody Blues. The whole dial-up sound effects for it was such an interesting touch to add and it makes sense for the type of stand it is. Kind of like a VCR (lol, what’s a VCR, amirite?), Moody Blues can rewind a person to a certain point in time with accuracy to replay everything second by second, minute by minute. It’s a pretty interesting ability but it has to be used at a good time. Using Moody to check out what happened to Narancia, they notice Narancia get the same stab wound that Giorno got and watch as he deflates like a balloon and gets dragged away. Like always, I just can’t believe how creative Araki is when it comes to stands. He can come up with some of the weirdest, grossest, coolest abilities and there’s still so much Stands we’ve yet to see, Part 5 and beyond. Zucchero’s stand, Soft Machine, turned the rest of Passione into…flat things, and he had actually combined two of the boats together to make it so he could hide easily. I say this episode was a little boring because I feel like it was dragging on for a bit. While watching Bruno and Abbacchio figure out the mystery together was kind of fun to watch, the end result was a bit underwhelming. But hey, at least they’re all safe now.
Next week, Mista is going to be getting his time to shine and I really can’t wait to see Sex Pistols in action.
Fun Fact Time:
- Soft Machine is (you guessed it) an English rock band. But it looks like they were jazz-rock, infusing jazz into their music. Which is kinda the shit? I’ve never heard of this band before but listening to a song, I like what I hear.
- Zucchero means sugar in Italian.
- Leone Abbacchio’s name is: leone = lion, abbacchio = lamb meat. I don’t know, I just think that’s kinda funny put together. And characters being named after foods is a trend in this part.
- Guido Mista I guess is named after insalata mista, which is mixed salad.
- Narancia Ghirga, where the arancia part of his name means orange.
- Fugo Pannacotta, panna cotta being a delicious Italian pudding (very good, I recommend it).
- Polpo is octopus.
And there’s plenty more where that came from. Might as well learn how to say some foods in Italian while watching Part 5, huh?
Abbacchio’s backstory wasn’t an anime original. They simply move it up from a later chapter as this contrast with Giorno using himself as bait for Abbacchio to solve the mystery, sort of like how his police partner took the shot from the pimp that tried to kill him.
Moody Blue is the one non-combatant Stand of Bruno’s gang. While deployed for Replay, it cannot be used to defend itself or Abbacchio. Outside of that ability, Moody Blue can be use as a punching ghost, albeit nowhere near as strong or fast as Sticky Finger.