The original post of this review had to be taken down and replaced after it was discovered that the initial review was mixed up with a Carole & Tuesday episode. Good thing no one took screenshots and spread it online before we could fix it. …
Picking up from last week, Cioccolata and Secco are observing our heroes as they attempt to navigate their way upward. Bucciarati and Mista have determined that they need to just grab the nearest car they can find and head straight to the colosseum, hoping to get as far out of Green Day’s range as possible. The two of them find some potential getaway vehicles quite conveniently, but as they begin to head up the stairs, Bucciarati notices something odd. Using some beer cans from a nearby victim, he notices that none of them make any noise when kicked to the bottom of the stairway, causing him to immediately panic. Suddenly, the stairs begin to violently descend as they sink into the ground around them, putting them back in the range of Green Day’s abilities. Mista attempts to fire at the ground to free them, but his gun is swallowed by the ground, and Bucciarati tries to use Sticky Fingers to retaliate, but he ends up getting sucked in, slowly realizing the nature of this enemy power: Secco’s Stand, Oasis (shut up, Liam and Noel), is capable of liquefying the ground like it was mud.
Mista is able to retrieveh is gun and free Bucciarati from the ground, pulling the both of them up the wall and onto higher ground. They immediately find a car and its deceased owner nearby, but Secco shows up again and liquefies the ground before they can grab the car keys. In a moment of desperation, Mista decides to get himself caught within Secco’s range so he has a clear opening to fire at his enemy. Despite Secco being able to deflect the bullets away from him, Sex Pistols quickly send them back in his direction, forcing him to dodge and switch focus to Bucciarati. In order to get Secco off their backs, he jumps over the edge of their current location to lower ground, drawing out their enemy and allowing him to unleash a barrage of punches, sending him crawling back into his tunnel. Secco makes a panicked call to Cioccolata, asking about the extent of Green Day’s powers as he didn’t notice any mold on Bucciarati, likening this to Notorious BIG being invincible in death. Unfortunately, during this conversation, Cioccolata notices a car driving away from the village, piecing together that Bucciarati and his crew have managed to escape and are now heading towards the colosseum.
Bucciarati is driving the car as Mista and Giorno sit in the back seat, but Giorno notices that their leader is unusually quiet and unresponsive to questions. He takes notice of the chunk of flesh missing from his right hand and goes to feel his pulse, only to find that Bucciarati has none, his skin feeling exceptionally cold as well. Connecting the dots to previous incidents, Giorno slowly realizes the horrifying truth: Bucciarati was violently killed during his first encounter with King Crimson, and the healing effects of Gold Experience allowed his corpse to move around and act even after death. This moment of realization is suddenly cut off by a mold-infected body falling from the sky on the hood of their car. The body has been dropped from a helicopter being piloted by Cioccolata and Secco, sending our heroes careening off road on a downhill path putting them right back in Green Day’s range. The residents around them are immediately killed by the mold, and with Rome’s population totaling 3 million, the potential range of the mold is extremely vast. Mista tries aiming at the helicopter, but Secco deflects the bullets again and sinks our heroes into the ground. Giorno tells him to give it another shot, firing bullets infused with Gold Experience’s power that graze the edge of a building underneath the helicopter and creating tree branches that grab and weigh down the helicopter. The group is so close to the colosseum, and all that stands in their way are these two sadistic enemies.
Okay I know I ended the recap portion of this piece calling Cioccolata and Secco “sadistic”, but it must also be noted that these two are… really weird and creepy. Looking at the character dynamic between the two and factoring in their backstory, it’s no wonder that even Diavolo finds himself put off by them. The best way to describe the pair is that if Tiziano and Squalo’s portrayal strongly emphasized romantic attachment (or friendship that is as strong as romantic attachment), then Cioccolata and Secco are a man and his very loyal pet. Secco’s intellect and state of mind are portrayed as being heavily animalistic in nature, cemented when Cioccolata rewards his performance in battle with sugar cubes, a treat commonly saved for horses. It’s also driven home by his physique, with animation and designs that emphasize his strong horse-like teeth and what is easily the creepiest tongue featured in the series yet, even outdoing the infamous “rerorerorerorero” scene.
The bond between the two is only matched by the aforementioned killer instinct. Cioccolata’s lust for dead bodies and violence gets pushed to its most wide-scale extreme during the back half of the episode in Rome. It’s not just that he engages in a gritty action movie-style attack on our heroes with dropping dead bodies from above, but it’s also the logistics of his attack as well. As Bucciarati points out, Passione very much has operatives working on location in Rome, ones who would definitely be caught in Green Day’s range. At this point, he is willing to take out our heroes by any means necessary, even if he has to invoke any collateral damage within his organization in order to do it. In addition, the carnage invoked within Rome is pretty intense, with the bodies piling up almost immediately and cars crashing into each other in waves. What puts this scene just a bit more over-the-top to me is the invocation of imagery akin to one of my favorite games of all time: House of the Dead 2. The original manga was published from 1995 to 1999, and the aforementioned arcade game came out in September of 1999, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers took influence from the imagery of this battle in particular with the Roman setting and the chaotic mayhem akin to a zombie apocalypse.
There’s an interesting parallel to be drawn here between the villains and our heroes, and it’s expressed at a couple of key moments. The first is when Narancia is recovering inside the turtle with Trish, and she’s frustrated that Bucciarati seems unconcerned with his well-being, even though we know that he cares very much for his comrade. Conversely, the fact that Cioccolata is willing to risk murdering potential other members of Passione in pursuit of his targets proves that he is really myopic in his intentions. The other major parallel comes with the relationship between both Giorno and Bucciarati as well as Cioccolata and Secco. Secco forms his bond with Cioccolata based on having survived an attempt to take his own life through surgery, while on the inverse side of that is the reveal that Giorno had been keeping Bucciarati alive this whole time through his own power, which is interesting when considering these two first met with a fairly vicious battle. Next time, we’ll see how this battle concludes and our heroes hopefully finally reaching the colosseum.
New episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind premiere every Friday and can be streamed exclusively on Crunchyroll.