JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind anime series cover art
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

Overview

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind (JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Part 5: Ougon no Kaze / ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 黄金の風) is, as the title suggests, the fifth part of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series. And yes, there are still stands. There will always be stands from this point on.

Part 5, like all parts of JoJo’s, is very much its own story. This time around we find ourselves in Italy for a mafia movie-like plot revolving around both revenge and fate. Our main cast are all members of a gang known as Passione, and their overall goal is to bring down the boss and claim the leadership for themselves.

Originally I planned to save revealing this until later on in the review, but this is probably my favorite JoJo part that’s been animated so far. The members of Passione who we follow are all extremely unique characters with their own personal goals and reasons for joining the gang to begin with.

Giorno using Gold Experience to fight Buccellati from the anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
Giorno using Gold Experience to fight Buccellati

Compare that to part 3’s Stardust Crusaders. The goal for each of them was essentially the same: defeat DIO and save the world. And why did they all join up together? Because they had some bone to pick with DIO, often resulting from him coming after each of them originally.

Unfortunately, while I really liked the characters and found the overall plot to be great, not all of the mini arcs were. I believe this format for JoJo’s parts began with part 3, but each part is broken up into mini arcs, typically revolving around a single enemy stand. This gives the series an almost episodic feel which I’m not really a fan of.

Golden Wind JoBros

For this section on the characters I’ll try not to get into any spoilers for the series — you can find plenty of those in my episode reviews. However, I will be mentioning the defining traits, goals, and stand abilities for each of them. If that’s too much of a spoiler for you, skip down to the next section.

Starting with the JoJo of the part, we have Giorno Giovanna. Giorno dreams of being a gang-star, not a gangster, and using his influence to clean up crime around the city he grew up in. His stand is Gold Experience which has multiple abilities revolving around “life energy.”

Moving clockwise around the table from Giorno we have Leone Abbacchio, a former police officer who joined Passione after becoming disillusioned with the criminal justice system. His stand is Moody Blues and can play back recordings of past events.

Guido Mista is the third member, which is good because four is his unlucky number. His stand, Sex Pistols, has the ability to control and deflect the trajectory of the bullets he fires from his revolver. Each of the six “pistols” has a unique personality.

Fourth is Pannacotta Fugo, the JoBro with the worst temper of the group. He joined Passione because he believed Buccellati would be able to keep his temper in check. Fugo’s stand, Purple Haze, has a poisonous area of effect ability that doesn’t differentiate between friend and foe.

Pannacotta Fugo and Purple Haze from the anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
Pannacotta Fugo and Purple Haze

Next we have Narancia Ghirga, one of the more volatile members of the group along with Fugo. However, Narancia’s outbursts are related to his lack of education while Fugo’s are related to his mental instability. Narancia’s stand is Aerosmith and it takes the form of a small propeller plane.

Finally we have Bruno Buccellati, the squad leader in charge of these other Passione members. Buccellati became disenchanted with the gang after learning it was selling drugs to children. Sticky Fingers is his stand and it has the ability to zip through objects and into pocket dimensions.

Ranking the JoJo Parts

If I were to rank the animated JoJo’s parts from best to worst — and that’s exactly what I am going to do — my list would look exactly like this:

  • Golden Wind (part 5)
  • Battle Tendency (part 2)
  • Phantom Blood (part 1)
  • Stardust Crusaders (part 3)
  • Diamond is Unbreakable (part 4)

I know, putting Diamond is Unbreakable last is probably enough to make many of you disregard my opinion immediately, but I still think it was the worst one. The second half of part 3 was better, I like the setting of part 1 more, part 2 was better all around, and part 5 has the best characters.

I mean, I like most of the other aspects of part 5 too, such as the setting, but it really was the characters that put it in the #1 position for me. A lot of people say how with each new part you can see how Araki’s art improves, but for me, I can see how he gets better at writing compelling characters.

The thing I like most about JoJo’s isn’t the crazy abilities in the fights, it’s seeing how each character thinks through those fights with their abilities in mind. For example, Buccellati and Fugo don’t only have very different stands, but they’re also extremely different in how they act and think through problems.

Conclusion

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind is a fairly solid 7/10 for me. I don’t see myself ever rewatching it, but I still thought it was good. And, if I had to choose a best aspect of the entire part, it would probably be the OPs/EDs.

Fighting Gold isn’t quite as good of an opening as JoJo Sono Chino Sadame, but the song is what the kids would call a “banger.” And OP 2, Traitor’s Requiem is great too. The EDs aren’t as good as the OPs, but I still enjoyed them for what they were.

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