Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind (Berry’s Final Impression)

Coming back from my vacation, I’m here to give my own thoughts about the Golden Wind finale. Thank you for your patience!

First off, I want to mention how much better the Gold Experience Requiem version of the opening is. I’m just shocked that David Production would make another special version of the opening after King Crimson’s, but I’m all for it. It was very cool and the Dio reference was fantastic. The anime team really knows how to deliver.

That said, I think David Production did a great job with Part 5. I mentioned in the beginning that I wasn’t really a fan of Part 5 after I forcibly and grudgingly made myself finish the manga. Maybe it was the terrible translation I read and the fact that the scans were low quality, but in the end I still have most of the same complaints that I had the first time I read it. However, I went from disliking Golden Wind to liking it as the anime really elevated the material and made it more engaging for me, even changing some of my viewpoints from before and making me look at it more positively.

The anime made Diavolo’s loop of death even more unnerving and terrifying. His fate is probably the worst of all Jojo villains (that I know of) and just thinking of it kind of makes me feel bad for the poor bastard. Having to go through scenario after scenario, “dying” in each one, becoming paranoid as you never know when it’ll happen or how, and still being able to feel pain (making the autopsy scenario even worse). It goes on and on and on and it’ll never end. He’s stuck in this loop forever, and he’ll never feel the satisfaction of death. Eventually I assume that he’ll eventually just break…not even feeling the pain anymore, just accepting this fate of his. It’s unbelievably cruel, but I feel like it’s wasted on a villain like him.

I don’t necessarily dislike Diavolo, I just think he’s an okay villain. The problem was that his actual reveal was way too late. Sure, we saw him as a shadow and he absolutely made himself to be intimidating and not someone to mess with, but we learned about him too late in the game. It’s not like with Dio in Part 3 appearing so late, the big difference being we already know who Dio is. With Diavolo, for the longest time we only knew him as the Boss. Which I guess was the point, since he did so much to destroy all trace of himself from others. But that itself worked against his character, and I can’t even compare him to how brilliant a villain Kira Yoshikage was.

As for the episodes themselves, they were fine. The Rolling Stone arc was interesting and really pushed the fate theme of Part 5, but its inclusion in the story was very strange. We went from the final fight, to suddenly going into this flashback arc, back into the proper finale. I know what it was trying to do, but I felt like it kind of messed up the pacing. I also kind of wished David Pro. could have added their usual anime-original epilogue scenes specifically for Trish and Fugo, but they ended it just like the manga did with Giorno becoming the new boss of Passione, with Mista as his right hand man. And yes, Giorno in black looks absolutely amazing, I sure wish we could see more of that. :/

I’m still in the boat that the final fight was anticlimactic, and it didn’t exactly feel like a final fight anyway. But the series is over, and the new chapter begins for Giorno. It was a long journey and it had its bumps, but it was a mostly enjoyable one.

Pros:

• This was probably the best looking Jojo part we’ve gotten so far. Part 4 had issues with it looking so dull and flat, but Golden Wind was the opposite. It was dynamic, bold, colorful, and had many fantastic shots. It was visually very appealing, and because of this one of my gripes from the manga has been fixed. Because of the low-quality scans, and the fact that it can be hard to tell what’s happening in just black and white, the stellar animation helped make some Stand fights very exciting.
• The characters: Specifically Narancia and kind of Mista, and also La Squadra. I’ll be honest, I had forgotten the entirety of the La Squadra guys except for a couple, but some anime-original scenes really helped make them a lot more memorable, while also really making them feel like a tight-knit group. I was always indifferent towards Mista and Narancia, but the anime made me care about them more, especially Narancia. He annoyed me in the manga, but for some reason I grew to care about him a lot through the anime and I can’t pinpoint the reason why. Daiki Yamashita’s performance was excellent, though.
• I just really liked the main group in general, except for Abbacchio (and Fugo). Bruno is everything.
• Araki continues to deliver very unique and interesting stands, making for some interesting fights. Metallica, Purple Haze, Black Sabbath, Sex Pistols, Sticky Fingers, just to name a few of my faves.
• The Diavolo/Doppio dynamic is just absolutely fantastic, and Doppio is definitely my favorite of the two.

Cons:

• This is Jojo, I know there’s a lot of ass pulls, but the ass pulls here are a little much, mostly referring to the final fight.
• The final fight. This one was probably the more boring and strange of all Jojo final fights. The body swapping was entertaining but the race to the arrow was dragged on, and Giorno attaining the arrow just like that was pretty underwhelming. His “final showdown” against Diavolo was so short it happened in a flash, and their “fight” didn’t have the same intensity as others.
• Plot holes. Knowing what we know about the arrows in Part 4, and suddenly learning different things in Part 5 was just…hm.
• While most Stand fights were good, some were really boring.
• Diavolo as a villain, but I’ve already mentioned that.
• Some of the characters: Abbacchio. I was never a fan of him and I’m still not, so that hasn’t changed. He was an unlikeable jerk from the beginning, and what’s worse is that he hardly did much in the group. I also felt like he never changed from who he was in the beginning right up to his death, and that’s because he barely got any spotlight. Even though his death was very well done, I didn’t feel much.
• What the hell happened to Fugo? I was hoping the anime would do something a little special for him, but other than the short anime-original scene from Narancia’s death, we got nothing. I don’t know the reason why Araki got rid of Fugo, but he just did. And never brought him back. So what even was the point of Fugo? It’s so frustrating to me because Purple Haze is one of the coolest Stands in the Jojo series, even better when it represents Fugo so freaking well, and…Fugo just disappears. Not dead, but he’s just wandering around. Somewhere. It’s so goddamn lame and disappointing.
• Passione didn’t feel as tight-knit as the Crusaders in my opinion. I feel like we didn’t get enough bonding time with them, but the weird meat conversation in the finale was amusing.

Giorno. Now, I really like Giorno! But he doesn’t cut it as a main character, which is another disappointing thing. It was really interesting reading Midnight’s impression and seeing her say the same thing as many people in that Bruno felt more like the main character and not Giorno, to which I also agree with. The problem is that while Giorno is very interesting (at least in my eyes), he was cast aside and overshadowed by the other characters, namely Bruno. His time alone in the beginning while dealing with Polpo’s test was great, and I especially loved how ruthless he could be sometimes like with the intricate way he killed Polpo, the same brutal ruthlessness showing again with his beatdown of Cioccolatta. I love that side of Giorno but unfortunately we got to see so little of it. Instead, he was usually in the background giving his side of things and also partaking in fights here and there. It’s also disappointing that Araki didn’t do more when it came to Giorno’s father being freaking Dio! I mean, how can you just mention that and not do anything more significant with that? There’s so much more Araki could have done with Giorno, or done differently, that would have made him into a more memorable Jojo. Though I do like him, I do admit that he was given the short end of the stick.

Even though it has these issues, I still did like Part 5 more than I did the first time. It’s not up there for me, but it’s certainly better than Phantom Blood. David Production really outdid themselves this time in style and presentation, and as always my hat’s off to them. They also did a great job adapting the manga, but that’s no surprise since they always do such a fantastic job. Now we have to wait to see when Stone Ocean is going to get its adaptation, which I hope is soon but I understand that it’ll take awhile, especially with Fire Force being another big project of theirs. I’m just dying to see Jolyne and the gang animated, I absolutely need it. Well, until next time, whenever that may be!

7.5/10