JoJo’s Part 5 Episode 2

JoJo’s Part 5 Episode 2

Introduction

It’s only been two weeks and Golden Wind is already my favorite animated part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. My previous favorite part was Phantom Blood, which I believe to be extremely underrated as far as JoJo parts go, but trust me when I say that part 5 is the new best so far.

When I watched the first episode, I wasn’t sold on the voice actor chosen for Giorno Giovanna, but I’ve already warmed up to him by this point. His voice was drastically different from the other JoJo’s so far, but then again, Giorno is drastically different from the other JoJo’s too.

Yes, he’s still a paragon of justice like the rest of them (although Jonathan was the only one who seemed to be this way at first glance), but he’s not a “man’s man” who’s looking to get into a fist fight at every turn. This is actually something I find interesting about him as a character, and ties into what we learn about him in this episode.

Buccellati is Coming

The first portion of the episode gives us Giorno’s backstory, which doesn’t make sense even to the narrator who’s explaining it to us. Somehow, Giorno and his mother weren’t killed by DIO, which is typically what he did once he was done with women, because, you know, he’s an evil vampire and all.

However, not being killed by DIO was probably the only thing Giorno could really have been happy about as a child, and it’s unlikely that he ever actually knew who his father was. His mother remarried, and she and Giorno moved from Japan to Italy to live with Giorno’s new step-father.

By watching his step-father, who appeared to be a low-level gangster, Giorno learned how to observe people. One day, he observed a bleeding man hiding in an ally. When some thugs came looking for him, Giorno pointed them in the other direction, thus saving the man’s life.

This was the start of Giorno’s new life as the “son” of a true gangster.

For the rest of his childhood, the gangster who Giorno saved watched over him and made sure he had everything he could ever ask for. The other neighborhood kids started being nice to him, his step-father stopped abusing him, and even the street vendors gave him extra ice cream on the house.

Not only did this gangster teach Giorno how nice it is to have everything go your way, but he also taught him right from wrong, which is strange to think about. Yes, he was a mob boss, but everything he did, he did for his community, and Giorno seems to have taken this to heart.

We then fast-forward back to the present time where 15-year-old Giorno is being interrogated on the tram by Bruno Buccellati, a stand-wielding gangster. Bruno’s stand is named Sticky Fingers (Zipper Man in the English version) and has the ability to put zippers on anything it touches.

Bruno Buccellati and his stand, Sticky Fingers from the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind
Bruno Buccellati and Sticky Fingers

Giorno doesn’t seem to be the type of person who wants to get into fights, but at the same time, he’s not afraid to dispatch his opponent if the need arises. When Bruno attacks him, Giorno decides that although he doesn’t know what his stand will do if it hits a human, he needs to take the risk if he’s to survive.

In my review of the first episode I mentioned three different, but related, powers that Giorno’s stand possesses. In this fight, we learn of a fourth power which could be argued is connected to the rest, but it seems pretty unique to me.

When Giorno uses Gold Experience to punch a human, it sends a rush of chemicals to their brain which results in them having an out-of-body experience. During this time, his opponent is unable to dodge any of his followup attacks, and when they do come back to their senses, they receive the pain from all of Giorno’s blows as if it was in slow-motion.

Despite this being a painful, and potentially fight-ending stand ability, we learn from Bruno after he was hit by it that although it seems dangerous, the blows aren’t actually all that physically strong. This is likely tied into the fact that Giorno doesn’t really want to kill anyone.

After a brief altercation, Bruno uses Sticky Fingers to create an escape zipper in the side of the tram to get away from Giorno and call for backup. Giorno, realizing that fighting a group of stand-users would be bad for him, decides he needs to stop Bruno before he has the chance to call his gang.

A chase ensues, and ends with Bruno bumping into a crowd of civilians and zipping himself inside of one of them. Unfortunately for him, Giorno has just the stand ability to figure out where Bruno is hiding.

Earlier, during their fight on the tram, Gold Experience had knocked out one of Bruno’s teeth. Giorno then uses one of his other stand abilities to turn that tooth into a fly and have it return to its original body, thus “sniffing out” where Bruno is hiding.

A third one of Giorno’s stand abilities then comes into play when Bruno smacks the fly, and the damage is returned back to him, knocking him out of the civilian he had been zippered into. I won’t go over the play by plays of this next part of the fight, but here are some of the highlights:

  1. We learn that Bruno can exchange body parts by zipping them on/off.
  2. Giorno uses Bruno’s zippers against him by tearing off his own zippered arm to give himself extra reach.
  3. Bruno hesitates before killing Giorno, hinting that he’s a “good person” on the inside, despite being a gangster.

It’s this third part that has the biggest impact going forward. When Giorno hits Bruno with Gold Experience again, and has the perfect opportunity to finish him off, he instead simply walks past Bruno and tells him he doesn’t want to fight him anymore.

Giorno then explains that he’s going to join Bruno’s gang and work his way to the top so that he can change the gang from the inside. While Bruno being a good person is why Giorno didn’t finish him off, it’s actually drugs that made Giorno decide to join the gang.

When he was a child, Giorno’s abusive step-father was a drug dealer, so naturally he came to have a distaste for drugs due to that. Further, the gangster he looked up to as a child also disliked drugs, or at least the selling of drugs to women and children. Finally, the boy whose body Bruno hid inside was a 13-year-old drug user who got his drugs from Bruno’s gang.

Because of all these things, Giorno decides that he needs to change the gang from the inside so they’ll stop selling drugs to children. He also believes that Bruno doesn’t want to be involved in selling drugs to children, so it would be a win-win for the two of them.

Conclusion

I feel like there’s a lot more I could say about this episode, but it’s already 10pm and I really want to get this post out before it gets much later, so I think I’ll just end it there. If you enjoyed this post, leave a like down below, and while you’re down there, let me know your thoughts on episode 2 of JoJo’s part 5.

As always, follow me on Twitter if you’d like to receive notifications every time a new post goes live. Following me on Twitter is great for days like today where I’m busy and can’t put out content until late at night. It’s also where I announce if there won’t be any content on a particular day.

My review of the next episode is available here.

Leave a Comment