JoJo’s Part 5 Episode 1

Introduction

It’s finally time for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind. This is another series airing this season which I plan to do weekly episode reviews of along with the Slime isekai, Goblin Slayer, Boruto (of course), and perhaps SAO: Alicization.

But before we begin, I’d like to mention that while I have seen the four previous parts of JoJo’s, I am by no means an expert on it. If you’re looking for insight from the manga, I won’t be able to help you out, but if you’re looking for the thoughts of a non-manga-reader on this series, you’ve come to the right place.

Golden Wind

The first character we meet is the protagonist, Giorno Giovanna, who lives in Venice, Italy. While we’ve made the jump from the fictional Japanese town of Morioh back to real-world locations, it seems that Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable is still intertwined with the story of Part 5: Golden Wind.

Giorno is a stand user who doesn’t know what stands are, much like Jotaro Kujo was at the start of Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. Also much like Jotaro, the awakening of his stand is directly linked to DIO, and not the result of being pierced by one of the stand arrows.

Now, here’s where the events of Part 4 come into play. Koichi Hirose has traveled from Morioh to Japan in search of Giorno with only a picture to go by. He was sent there by Jotaro who’s investigating a new stand user thought to be DIO’s son. That’s right, DIO is relevant again.

As for Giorno’s stand, its name is Golden Wind (Golden Experience) and is a reference to the Prince album, The Gold Experience. His stand appears to have a couple of slightly different abilities which make it fairly well-rounded.

The first, and seemingly primary, ability allows Giorno to turn anything he touches into a living object, and then back into an inanimate one again. He first uses this to turn money in a purse into butterflies, which then turn back into money once they fly to him. He also turns Koichi’s suitcase into a frog and back.

It’s unclear exactly how much control he has over these animals or if they simply return to him before converting back into their inanimate state. This ability doesn’t seem to have many offensive or defensive capabilities, but it does look pretty useful if you’re a con artist like Giorno.

The second ability is somewhat related to the first in that Giorno has the ability to simply create life out of thin air without first converting an inanimate object. While he hasn’t been shown to create an animal from nothing, he does create a tree to avoid one of Koichi’s attacks.

This ability could be used both offensively or defensively, but Giorno seems like someone who doesn’t enjoy getting into fights as much as some of the previous JoJo’s, so I don’t think he’s likely to use this as a weapon. More than likely, he’ll use this to avoid attacks as he did against Koichi.

The final ability of his stand is connected to the first two. Any damage his living creations take is reflected back at the attacker. This means that if he were to create a horse and someone were to punch it, they instead would be the ones to feel the blow of the punch.

There are two things we can take away from this final ability. The first is that the living creatures Giorno’s stand makes are visible to even non-stand users considering “Leaky-eye” Luca was able to see the frog. The second is that Giorno’s stand is extremely defensive.

Depending on the speed at which he can create animals or plant-based life forms, he can reflect back the damage from almost any attack. Stand abilities aren’t always so straightforward though, so it’s unclear just how useful this defense will be against other stand users.

So now that we know about Giorno, let’s briefly summarize the events that transpired in this episode leading up to the meeting with the second new stand user of the Part.

After Koichi arrives in Venice, Giorno offers to give him a ride from the airport to his hotel, only to speed off with Koichi’s suitcase before he has the chance to get in the car as well. However, Koichi uses his stand, Reverb Act. 3 to stop the car.

Unfortunately for Koichi, he allows Giorno to run away only to find that his suitcase has been turned into a frog which jumps into the sewers. Later on, Giorno is then confronted by a local mobster named “Leaky-eye” Luca who is demanding he get paid his “protection money” for allowing Giorno to do business by the airport.

Luca uses a shovel to dish out beatings to anyone who disobeys him, and attempts to use it on Giorno, but to no avail. It’s at this point that Giorno’s frog returns, only to be smashed with the shovel by Luca, who ignored Giorno’s warnings about hitting the animal.

Due to Giorno’s stand ability, the damage that should have been done to the frog was instead done to the back of Luca’s head, leaving him either dead or simply unconscious. Later on we learn that his body was dismembered anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if he’s dead or not right now.

After his confrontation with Luca is over, Giorno meets another member of the same gang Luca belonged to, Bruno Buccellati. Bruno is the second new stand user we meet in this episode and his stand allows him to create zippers in anything, including humans.

With this ability, Bruno is able to place Luca’s eye in the clenched fist of Giorno, and even Luca’s fingers in Giorno’s mouth. I’m not entirely sure why, but this stand ability reminds me a lot of Okuyasu’s The Hand from Part 4 even though they don’t really have anything in common.

Bruno also has the ability to tell if other people are lying, especially by the taste of their sweat, but I find this unlikely to be connected to his stand in any way. It seems too far removed from zippers, but then again, Giorno’s life-giving stand should have nothing to do with reflecting damage taken.

After interrogating Giorno and tasting his sweat, Bruno concludes that Giorno was lying to him about not knowing anything about Luca’s death, and so the two of them prepare to fight on a trolley. I’m expecting Giorno to win, or at least make the fight end in a tie, because otherwise the series would probably end right here.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in reading my thoughts on the previous four parts of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, you can do so here. If you’re instead interested in other new anime of the Fall 2018 season, my review of the first episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is available here.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click the like button down below, and while you’re down there, let me know your thoughts on this first episode of JoJo’s Part 5. Have you read the manga or not? Did this episode live up to your expectations or not? I enjoyed it, but maybe I’m just wrong.

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My review of the next episode is available here.