Man, they’re not even trying with these translations, are they?
Picking up from last week, Zucchero’s been successfully incapacitated by the group, allowing Pannacotta, Narnancia, and Abbacchio to take their revenge out on his headless body. As the crew’s boat is finally within sight of their destination, everyone seems to be relieved, but Bruno is still massively suspicious about how Zucchero found out about their journey. Guido decides that the best course of action is to torture him until he coughs up the information, so he decides to hang up Zucchero’s head via a fish hook on the eyelid and use glasses to force the sun into his eyes.
One dance number later, Abbacchio figures out Zucchero’s game plan (and the next potential obstacle in their journey) using Moody Blues. Remember how he had a partner he found out about the treasure from? As it turns out, Zucchero kept in touch with him through the ship’s radio, alerting his partner to their location/destination. The group debates how to handle the incoming ambush, with Giorno suggesting that the best course of action is to speed up their journey to Capri and head off their attacker beforehand. Giorno uses his power to craft a fast travel method, volunteering to go off himself, but eventually Guido decides it’s a good idea to tag along as well, feeling the power of Sex Pistols, his stand consisting of 6 humanoid bullet creatures, is equipped for the task.
The two of them reach the Marina Grande port and set up surveillance near the security watch-house. Giorno has the ship’s radio on hand to intercept any communications with the enemy, and Guido… takes a lunch break to feed Sex Pistols. They catch the watch-house guard calling out to the crowd about a radio call for Zucchero, forcing our heroes to get into position. Giorno stays in his position while Guido sneaks into place near the watch-house window. There’s no sign of the enemy at first, but Giorno suddenly intercepts a communication from their attacker, seeing that he’s already snuck into the watch-house. He makes various attempts to warn Guido about the danger, eventually getting through to him and allowing him to attack with Sex Pistols, which successfully ping-pongs the bullets from his gun in the right trajectory to shoot his enemy in the leg. He tries to track down the enemy, and while it seems like he’s escaped, Guido is able to track his blood trail to a nearby truck. He attempts to drive away, but Guido quickly grabs onto the vehicle’s side, pointing his gun at the driver and leaving things to be resolved next week.
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way first: HOLY SHIT, THEY DID THE DANCE!
I know I should probably be a little more professional with this scene, but it’s hard not to be giddy like a child with how David Production handled this scene. The dance itself is one of the most well-remembered and memetic moments in the entire series, mainly because of how out-of-nowhere it comes, with Narancia, Guido, and Pannacotta just breaking out into dance as a method of… torture, I would assume. What was originally 5 panels in the manga gets expanded into a solid minute of moves getting busted. The animators clearly had a lot of fun doing this, as not only are the dances themselves incredibly slick and stylish, but the scene adds a multitude of visual filters and highlights to expand on this, included these multi-colored illustrations that abstractly represent Zucchero’s disembodied head suffering intense torture in the sunlight. While I don’t have a credit for the musical accompaniment as of this writing, the actual song itself is quite the funky jam, almost as if Quad City DJs were an ‘80s act.
With that obvious highlight out of the way, it’s time to get to the plot-important stuff, namely with the introduction of Guido’s Stand, Sex Pistols. For this arc, he follows the precedent set by Hol Horse of being the requisite gun-based Stand user. His particular approach to these abilities uses similar powers of manipulating trajectory to Hol’s, but Guido has the added dimension of multiple sentient bullet-like entities to deal with. This is an interesting angle to take, as it expands on a certain style of Stand/user dynamic from similar to Hazamada and Surface from Part 4. While Stands are often portrayed as overwhelmingly compliant to their users’ demands, Sex Pistols presents a case of a Stand with a stubborn personality that can be at odds with its User if not treated properly. We see this almost right after its introduction with the goofy lunch scene, as Guido proclaims that Sex Pistols needs to be fed at a specific time, or else the bullets get really crabby and uncooperative, even threatening to take a nap at one point. It’s a unique sort of dynamic that can lead to some interesting scenarios.
Aside from that, the episode is mainly setup for the meat of the battle to come next week. The episode’s obvious highlights speak for themselves, and the episode makes sure to include the usual JoJo niceties, such as the narrator helpfully giving a succinct history lesson on the region of Italy we’re about to encounter. While the visuals are the expected level of quality throughout, apart from the amazing dance sequence, there’s a gloriously cheesy moment where Giorno delivers yet another “I have a dream” speech as the shadows from the clouds overhead part ways to shine the natural sunlight on him, marking his words as super important. Things are looking to pick up again next week, and I am greatly looking forward to it.
New episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind premiere every Friday at 1:05 PM and can be streamed exclusively on Crunchyroll.