JoJo’s Part 5 Episode 21

The Mystery of King Crimson

This week we’re back with even more analysis of the boss’ King Crimson stand, so let’s get right into it. King Crimson’s ability has been further explained in today’s episode by giving us a few more important details regarding how exactly it works.

The first thing I’d like to say about it is that it’s actually not all that different from DIO’s The World, and at this point I’d still say The World is a stronger stand than King Crimson. While The World stops time for everyone except its user, King Crimson merely fast forwards time for everyone except its user.

I say “merely,” but in fact there’s more to it than that. While time skips forward for everyone else, the boss is able to see the future time that’s being skipped for everyone else in slow motion and seemingly on repeat. This means that overall I’d say his ability is better than DIO’s, but The World is still stronger.

But, how can a stand ability be better and yet weaker than another? The simple answer is that King Crimson is a better stand for hiding and surviving while The World is better for defeating opponents. Basically, surviving is a better ability, but defeating your opponents is a stronger ability.

So, let’s take a look at exactly how this works. First of all, DIO’s The World has such a broken ability that the only reason it was defeated was because another stand, Star Platinum, randomly acquired the same ability. Unless you have the power to stop time, you cannot defeat someone else who does because they’ll just kill you while time is stopped.

As for King Crimson’s ability, it doesn’t seem like he can really interact with people while he’s skipping forward in time. This means that he can’t fast forward time, and punch someone in the face during that time skip to injure them like DIO could. Instead, he can just see what they’re going to do, and put himself in a position to act accordingly.

I should also mention that King Crimson has a relatively small area of effect. While he can see the future movements of anyone within that radius, everyone outside of it simply skips ahead without their movements being read.

Buccellati’s Escape

After attacking and being counterattacked by the boss, Buccellati is able to escape for a brief moment thanks to Giorno. The brooch which Giorno had given to Buccellati turned into a stand-using turtle (just like the one the group had previously hidden inside) and the boss was sucked into it.

Buccellati then grabs the turtle, opens up the floor with a zipper, and throws the turtle down into a sewer below to be washed away. However, as mentioned, this escape was brief, as the boss suddenly reappears on the stairs above Buccellati.

It’s still not completely clear to me how the boss managed this since we didn’t see time skip forward during this time, but maybe it’ll be explained as a separate power in a future episode. Buccellati then must come up with a new strategy for escaping with Trish, and this is when we learn one of the weaknesses of King Crimson

According to Buccellati’s calculations, King Crimson can only see about 5-10 seconds into the future, and we can also assume that there’s a slight cooldown on the use of this ability as well. This means that as long as whatever you plan to do happens after 10 seconds from when King Crimson uses its ability, your plan is still a secret.

The example we see of this happening in the episode is Buccellati using a sneak attack on King Crimson to bait him into using his ability. When Buccellati’s fist hits King Crimson, the ability is activated so it can be dodged. However, Buccellati makes sure that the next 5-10 seconds looks like the sneak attack missed.

Once King Crimson is satisfied that Buccellati’s attack has missed and just hit a pillar in the distance, he resumes the future time and is surprised when Buccellati is able to escape by zipping up the pillar his fist hit. Since King Crimson couldn’t see that far into the future, he figured the plan ended upon Buccellati hitting the pillar.

Now that we know this weakness, the boss and King Crimson aren’t really all that big of a deal. If someone can bait the boss into using his ability, then Mista can simply shoot him as soon as time resumes normally and his ability is on a cooldown.

Buccellati’s Death?

But, although we learned a decent amount about how King Crimson functions in this episode, I think the most interesting thing to happen was Buccellati’s death. After escaping to the first floor of the church, Buccellati is found bleeding to death by Giorno, who then proceeds to heal him.

However, even though Giorno fixed everything that was wrong with Buccellati, stopped his bleeding, and even replenished his blood supply, Buccellati still succumbs to his injuries. He then appears as a ghost behind Giorno and tells him to escape with the rest of the team while they still can.

And, if Buccellati’s ghost appearing wasn’t bizarre enough, it quickly disappears and he reawakens. At first glance it might seem that this means Giorno’s healing finally took effect, but I don’t think that’s quite what happened considering Buccellati was definitely dead, and Giorno can’t revive the dead as far as we know.

Later on in the episode Buccellati also complains of lightheadedness due to blood loss from his injuries, but as Giorno knows, his blood should have been replenished when he was healed.

Further, Buccellati stabs a hole right through his hand and doesn’t seem to notice. Not only does he not feel any pain from this injury, but Giorno also notices no blood is flowing out of it. So, what’s going on with Buccellati?

My best guess is that this is the work of another enemy stand which has somehow turned Buccellati into a zombie. I doubt this is an effect of King Crimson, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that Giorno’s Gold Experience doesn’t actually heal wounds, it merely replaces what was broken.

The Truth Revealed

Once back outside the church and in relative safety, Buccellati explains to Abbachhio, Fugo, Narancia, and Mista that he’s just betrayed the boss by not handing Trish over to him. It’s easy to forget that up until this point these members of his team had no idea Buccellati was actually working against the boss.

And, although it’s never explicitly said, it’s implied to the rest of the team that Giorno is Buccellati’s accomplice in this betrayal. However, because this was never explicitly stated, we don’t really know to what extent the other team members think Giorno was involved.

It’s also interesting that Buccellati doesn’t mention that he and Giorno have been plotting the defeat of the boss from the very beginning. Perhaps he thought that his team would be more accepting of his explanation that he betrayed the boss to save Trish.

But, this opens up a new problem for Buccellati’s team. Now that Buccellati and Giorno are branded as traitors and marked for death by the boss, what will the other members of the team do? Technically speaking, they’re all still innocent and can theoretically return to Passione without being killed.

At first, all four decide to stick with the gang rather than Buccellati, but one by one they change their minds. First Abbacchio joins Buccellati because he enjoys following him. Then Mista joins as well because he trusts Buccellati wouldn’t have started a fight with the boss unless he was sure he could win.

Narancia and Fugo are a different story, however. They both originally stay behind as the now four traitors drive away in the speedboat, but Narancia has a change of heart and jumps into the water after Buccellati. In the end, only Fugo decides not to join the rest of the group because he’s too afraid of the boss.

Conclusion

So, what did you think of this week’s episode of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind? I actually thought it was one of the best episodes so far along with last week’s episode. Unfortunately, since it was so good it also flew past and felt like it was only a few minutes long.

Unfortunately, it seems that next week’s episode is going to be a recap or some other kind of non-important special, so we may have to wait two weeks for the next real episode.

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My review of the next episode is available here.