JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind – Episode 31 – “Green Tea and Sanctuary, Part 2”

I know this is easily the least pertinent matter to this situation, but is anyone else wondering how the government is going to deal with the fallout from all this?

Picking up from last week, Secco confronts Bucciarati and prepares to film the ensuing battle. He tries to use this opportunity to get the drop on his enemy, but Secco kicks him in the face faster than he can react. He then unleashes a barrage of rapid punches, bouncing his elbows off of the softened ground beneath him to increase his speed and power like a boxer running the ropes. Eventually the ground beneath Bucciarati breaks off to lower elevation, and Secco fully takes notice of the lack of mold. Meanwhile, Giorno and Mista chase after Cioccolata who is now fully trapped within his helicopter by the branches, and Mista sends out Sex Pistols in order to hunt him down. Unfortunately, they’re unable to find him before he finds them, killing all but Number 5 and gravely injuring Mista. Giorno decides to investigate the plane, with Mista sending in Number 5 with one last bullet to help.

Inside the plane, Giorno and Number 5 come across the remains of Number 1 where they are suddenly attacked out of nowhere by Cioccolata. Giorno quickly counters, but the enemy, reduced to just his torso and upper limbs, manages to escape his clutches. His advanced medical knowledge combined with Green Day’s mold allows him to strategically sever body parts, using his now severed arm to punch Giorno out of the helicopter’s front windows. As the mold begins to take over, Cioccolata taunts Giorno as he attempts to climb back to higher ground, punching him even further away from the plane. Luckily, Number 5 uses the bullet in combination with Gold Experience to turn it into another branch and keep him level to the plane. Cioccolata immediately tips the plane forward to send Giorno back beneath him, but the bullet is immediately transformed back into a bullet and sent flying into the enemy’s skull, bringing everyone back down to the roof.

Things seem calm at first, but Giorno suspects that the enemy is still alive, and as he gets closer, Cioccolata snaps back into action, holding the turtle hostage and grabbing Mista by the throat with his severed arm. Just when it seems like victory is impossible, the bullet in Cioccolata’s head explodes from his skull, having been transformed into a stag beetle. Giorno then delivers a massively painful beatdown and knocking him into a garbage truck, allowing him and Mista a chance to recover. Giorno detects Cioccolata’s cell phone ringing, realizing that he was calling Secco in the middle of the fight. Secco, who is hiding in the ground thinking about how to handle Bucciarati, listens to the voicemails left for him by his ally, leaving him some words of encouragement and motivation before signing off. With a newfound resolve in hand, Secco tracks down Bucciarati and sneaks up on him, and meanwhile the battle is being observed by a mysterious man from the Roman colosseum.

The main thing I keep coming back to in regards to this little arc is the sense of scale conveyed throughout, as it is absolutely massive in comparison to the previous Stand encounters. The battle has made its way from ground level in the fishing village to all the way in the skies above Rome with the helicopter. The episode’s shot selection heavily emphasizes just how high up our heroes and villains are above the rest of the carnage underneath, including an excellent scene displaying the fires burning all throughout Rome and around the colosseum. The perspective shots as we see Giorno getting flung out of the plane repeatedly make thinks feel epic in scale in a way that, oddly enough, mimics the climactic battle of Jotaro vs. Dio at the end of Stardust Crusaders.

Cioccolata’s menace is cranked up to max across the events of the battle, in particular with his strategy of body dismemberment. He displays not just a massive penchant for sadism as he always has before, but his terrifying levels of intelligence in regards to the human body is what pushes this fight over the top. The stunningly surreal imagery of Cioccolata jumping around as a torso with one arm and an exposed spine is something that, well, sends chills down my own spine (and made me double check a few times while writing this review to make sure it was still there). He leaps in and out of the shadows with a smile akin to Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal, and he sends his loose arm out to punch, grapple, and choke his targets. There is just pure unrelenting savagery in his attacks, which is what makes it so satisfying when Giorno delivers what is arguably the most satisfying and cathartic beatdown in this entire arc, and easily one of the best of the series as a whole.

For 45 straight seconds, Gold Experience just tears into this mad doctor, laying on a relentless flurry of punches and angry screams of power, including tons of MUDA’s and an old fashioned WRYYYYYYYY for good measure. I mean, he *is* Dio’s son after all. I could try to pick it apart in further detail, but it’s awesome. This is just plain awesome in a way that only needs to be seen, as words cannot do it justice.

Secco still gets to be the unusual comedic relief in this whole scenario, as his stunted intelligence and speech provide some darkly comedic moments that at times feel akin to Ghiaccio. This rings especially true when he’s trying to remember the word “clever” and is angry when Bucciarati tries to correct him, signaling his somewhat inferior intellect and animalistic behavior. He also gets the strangest moment of the episode (which is saying *a lot* with this series) when he’s listening to Cioccolata’s voicemails and goes full-on “kawaii as fuck”, as the kids would say. It’s outlandish and bizarre even by JoJo standards, but it helps break up the manic intensity just a touch, and with Cioccolata out of the way now, there’s just this strange pet of his to deal with in next week’s episode.

New episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind premiere every Friday and can be streamed exclusively on Crunchyroll.