JoJo’s Part 5 Episodes 38 and 39

JoJo’s Part 5 Episodes 38 and 39

Gold Experience Requiem

We’re finally here at the end of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind. As the title of this post suggests, this will be a review of both episodes 38 and 39. And let me just say upfront that I think these episodes were a great end to the part.

As I’ll be discussing in more detail throughout this review, we got closure for some plot lines, others were left open — which I’m a fan of, and everything was tied into JoJo’s overall theme of fate. Though, as I’ll touch on at the very end of this review, there was one thing missing.

So since it’s been a few weeks since the last episode review, let’s quickly go over Giorno’s Gold Experience Requiem. Requiem stands grant the specific ability which the user needs at the time the stand arrow pierces their stand. For Giorno, this meant a way to counter Diavolo’s time skip and precognition abilities.

Gold Experience Requiem achieves this in two ways. First, to counter the time skip, it can reset everything to “zero.” For example, if Diavolo skips ahead in time and kills Mista, Gold Experience Requiem can reset time back to the point before Diavolo activated King Crimson’s ability.

Second, to counter the precognition ability granted to Diavolo by Epitaph, Gold Experience Requiem can essentially jump between timelines. If Diavolo has a vision of himself killing Giorno, Gold Experience Requiem will simply transport everyone into a parallel universe in which this outcome doesn’t happen.

Gold Experience Requiem’s abilities also trigger automatically to protect Giorno.

Diavolo’s Fate

However, there’s one more ability which Gold Experience Requiem is revealed to have within this episode. Not only can it reset everything to zero and alter reality, but it can also seemingly remove people from the present and take away their future.

So what does that all mean?

It’s not as though Diavolo was completely erased from the universe; the JoBros still have memories of him. And he wasn’t actually killed, because Trish can still feel his life force “somewhere.” Instead, it appears he was moved into some sort of pocket dimension, kind of like those found within Sticky Fingers’ zippers.

Giorno looking up at Buccellati, Abbacchio, and Narancia from the anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
Giorno looking up at Buccellati, Abbacchio, and Narancia

Within this pocket dimension Diavolo has no future. Or, he does, but it’s more like he has an infinite number of futures and none of them end well for him. In each of these futures, he dies in a way he’s unable to predict, or some other terrible thing happens to him. Then, everything is reset and it happens all over again.

For example, in the first future he’s stabbed by a homeless man and bleeds out in a sewer. In the second future he’s already dead, but can still think and feel pain as an autopsy is performed on his body. The third future involves him getting hit by a car he didn’t predict coming, etc.

This ability of Gold Experience Requiem isn’t explained that well in the anime. It’s unclear whether what happens to Diavolo is actually the ability, or if the ability simply makes the victim’s deepest fears a reality. For Diavolo, being unable to predict what he’ll be killed by is his greatest fear.

Rolling Stones

The second half of episode 38 takes us back in time to before Giorno joined Passione. This story follows Mista, Buccellati, and Fugo to an extent, directly after the death of Leaky Eye Luca in episode 1. And, this is the arc that ties part 5 into the main theme of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure as a whole, fate.

An older man comes to Buccellati hoping that he’ll avenge the death of his daughter. We learn that his daughter began dating an older man who was a sculptor, but that he never introduced himself to her parents. While strange, the father wasn’t too concerned at the time.

However, his daughter was found dead a short time later. She had apparently thrown herself off the roof of the apartment building the sculptor lived in and was clutching a strange stone. The older man swears his daughter would never kill herself and pleads with Buccellati to make the sculptor pay.

I’m skipping ahead a bit here, but in the next episode we learn that the strange stone mentioned is actually the sculptor’s stand, Rolling Stones. So why did the young woman kill herself while holding onto this stand? And what does this have to do with the rest of part 5 and JoJo’s Bizarre adventure at large?

Many people probably agree with me when I say that Rolling Stones may be the best stand of part 5. It’s not a good stand due to its appearance, ability, or user. Instead, it’s what it represents that makes this stand so good.

The Sleeping Slave

So let’s dig into what Rolling Stones is and what it means. This is an automatic stand, meaning the sculptor who owns it has no control over its actions. We also learn that he didn’t receive his stand by being pierced by a stand arrow. Instead, he manifested his stand randomly as a child.

Random manifestation of stands isn’t unheard of, but it’s not something I think I’ve really discussed before. And actually I think the origins of stands would be a good topic for a separate post at some point — though my schedule is booked through September already — so I’ll just run through the basics for now.

While it seems possible to randomly manifest a stand, the main way to obtain one is direct or indirect contact with a stand arrow. Direct contact would mean being pierced by an arrow. Indirect contact would mean being a descendant of someone who was pierced by an arrow.

Since the sculptor “randomly” manifested Rolling Stones and can’t control it, we can assume that he isn’t connected to any dangerous organization. That’s the first thing Mista needs to determine when investigating the death of the young woman.

As for what the stand does, it carves the fate of a particular person into it’s surface. The sculptor does not get to choose who’s fate is shown and does not get to choose what their fate is, though it typically ends in death.

You Can (Not) Escape

The reason Rolling Stones is such a good stand is because it’s an incarnation of the concept of Fate within the JoJo’s universe. Everything in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure revolves around the idea that your Fate is determined from the start, and all you can do is go along with it for the ride.

Or, at least that’s how it is for most people. There are some circumstances in which fates can be changed, but it’s unclear how many of these cases Araki meant to include in the series and how many are plot holes. For example, the young woman who killed herself was able to change the fate of herself and her father.

She learned from the stone that her father contracted a disease which will slowly kill him if he doesn’t get replacement organs. She then learned that she would develop this same disease in a matter of months. With this knowledge, she chose to kill herself while still healthy so that her organs could be used to save her father.

Since she wasn’t meant to die yet according to Rolling Stones, this is an example of her changing her own fate. But as a character this woman isn’t all that important. I don’t believe she’s ever even given a name. What is important is the fact that Buccellati is the next person to be carved into the stone.

His death at the hand of Diavolo was predicted from this point, which chronologically comes at the start of part 5. However, Mista is able to change this fate by attempting to sacrifice himself. Little does he know that he changed fate to not only take Buccellati, but Abbacchio and Narancia as well.

The New Boss

In the end Diavolo was been defeated, three of the JoBros died, and Giorno became the new boss of Passione. We know that Mista is still a member of the gang and seems to be Giorno’s right-hand man, though it’s unclear exactly how these two plan to change the organization.

Giorno as the new boss of Passione from the anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
Giorno as the new boss of Passione

Sure, we know that Giorno wanted to change the mafia from the inside so that it was less corrupt, but it’s still a gang. We can assume he ended their drug trade operations, but is Passione still in the business of intimidation and racketeering? Even if he wants to protect the weak, he needs to make money somehow.

And this brings me to that one thing I mentioned was missing from these final episodes at the very start of this review. What ever happened to Jotaro and Koichi? We never see them after the beginning of this part, so where did they go? It would have been interesting to see if Giorno allied Passione with the Speedwagon Foundation in the end.

We also don’t know what became of Trish and Fugo. I don’t necessarily need to know what became of these two, because I’m fine with the open ending regarding them, but it’s something to think about. Did Trish officially join Passione? Is Fugo still a member? Will he be reunited with Giorno and Mista? Has he learned about Narancia’s death?

Conclusion

What did you think about these final two episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind? Did you think this was a great ending to the part like I did? Did you think something was missing? Let me know in the comments, along with which part was your favorite now that Golden Wind is done.

If you enjoyed this review remember to click the like button ❤ down below. And, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any upcoming content. I tweet out every time a new post goes live, so it’s the best way to stay up to date.

Finally I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter and the benefits you’ll receive for doing so, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of part 5 as a whole is available here.

4 Replies to “JoJo’s Part 5 Episodes 38 and 39”

  1. I think you got some things wrong with Rolling Stones. Taking the girl into example, she IS meant to die by Rolling Stones. Anyone the stone approaches is meant to die. It’s just that your choices become “die as the Stone wanted and get a good death/benefit someone else in a way” or “die a more horrible/tragic death later in life”. I could be wrong though, but either way once Rolling Stones marks someone for death, it becomes inevitable.

    As for Jotaro and Koichi, I hope Polnareff regales Giorno of the Stardust Crusaders.

    There’s a couple of post-Vento Aureo light novels. Purple Haze Feedback is about Fugo doing an assignment for Passione with a new team to prove his loyalty. There’s a translated PDF available online and all of the stands introduced in the work are named after Jimi Hendrix songs. It is popular among fans and hope that it gets an adaptation (like Rohan’s bizarre adventures).

    There’s also Golden Heart, Golden Ring but it hasn’t been translated yet (as far as I know).

    Both of the novels have Araki’s illustrations but are written by different authors.

    1. I would agree with your take on Rolling Stones’ ability except that we see Mista was “marked” by the stand at the beginning of the arc, yet survives things that should have killed him later on, such as the fall off the building onto Fugo’s car. You’d think he would have died there if merely coming into contact with the stone marks a person for death. As far as I can tell, you’re only truly marked for death if the stone has your image carved into it. The girl was carved into it at one point, however, so that’s probably why she was still able to die in a way of her choosing.

      As for the post-Golden Winds novels, I’ve heard about them before, but since they weren’t written by Araki I wasn’t sure whether they actually count as canon material or not.

  2. I’m pretty sure that what it meant about dying via touching the stone is that, if you are the one marked for death on the stone, then the stone will go after you in order to give you a painless death that will benefit someone. If you “escape” the stone, instead of dying then and helping someone in the process, you die the horrible death pictured on the stone before you broke it.

    The reason Mista never died from any of the rather deadly events is because it didn’t actually mark him, because it never took on the shape of his death. Unless it takes on your shape, it isn’t a threat to you.

    Also, I’m pretty sure the whole idea with Gold Experience Requiem’s ability is that it’s a superpowered version of an ability it had all along. The normal Gold Experience has an ability where a direct punch will overload the target with life energy, causing the person’s senses to go wack, and see themselves doing something, before they realize it didn’t actually happen and they turn around to see they never moved. My guess is that the Requiem version can activate this ability using anything filled with Requiem’s power, such as the stone that went through Diavolo’s hand. It obviously started by making him think he used his ability when he didn’t, like the normal ability, but then the new effect comes in. My guess is that there was so much “life energy” flowing in Diavolo after getting hit that, while he was able to get way, it then trapped him in an endless state where his senses were out of control, causing him to see himself die in the way he most feared over and over again. The endless part comes from the fact that Gold Experience Requiem was able to give Diavolo so much life energy that he wouldn’t die, while still overloading his senses.

    I apologize if this was incredibly confusing to read, as I wrote it at 2 am right after I finished watching JoJo part 5 on Crunchyroll (and found this site while looking for a summary of episode 34 because captions didn’t work). This is also just my personal opinion, but one that I feel makes sense, rather than giving him the power of Deus Ex Machina.

    1. I’d say your interpretation of GER is good, except that I believe it’s confirmed that it’s ability doesn’t merely affect the senses of its target. Its true ability is to reset everything “back to zero” as if it never happened. So if Diavolo punched Giorno, GER would reset everything to a state before that actually happened. What I believe happened to Diavolo is that because of this resetting ability by GER, time for him was reset every time he used King Crimson to save himself, thus leaving him to die. But at the same time, every time he died, time would also reset causing him to die again. Eventually this breaks his mind and he no longer even tries to use King Crimson to save himself, which then causes him to be stuck in a cycle of death.

Leave a Comment