JoJo’s Part 5 Episode 8

Sex Pistols Appears, Part 2

Last week I assumed that this new opponent wasn’t actually going to be a stand user, and that instead he would have another accomplice somewhere on the island who was. I assumed this because I thought the driver of the truck was the enemy, but this turns out to not be the case.

Instead, the driver of the truck was merely a diversion, and the true enemy actually is a stand user, with a fairly formidable stand. But, I’ll get to the new stand later on. First we need to take a look into Mista’s past to find out what happened that made him who he is today.

Mista’s Past

It’s said that Guido Mista was a simple man who didn’t care much to think things through. This part of him may be represented in how his stand, Sex Pistols, works. The fact that Mista simply has to fire his gun and his stand does the rest may be referencing this part of his character.

One day, Mista witnessed a sexual assault in progress and leaped into action without thinking. He was unarmed and up against at least three men armed with revolvers. Somehow, all of their shots missed him, and when he wrestled a gun and some bullets from one of the men, he killed them all without missing.

I only saw three assailants, but it says he fired four perfect shots, so there may have been a fourth attacker. Or, perhaps this was referencing something to do with the fact that he hates the number four, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

If the way Sex Pistols works isn’t directly tied into Mista’s character traits, it’s at least tied into this moment in his life. He uses a revolver just as he did on that day, and his stand makes it so his bullets “always” hit their mark, again, just as he did on that day.

I’ve already explained how stands tend to be related to their users in some way, and so this one is no different in that regard.

After he killed the attackers, he decided to join the criminal underworld because he knew he’d just end up going to prison for murder anyway if he didn’t. Unlike Abbacchio, Mista seems to have sought out the Passione gang.

Kraft Work

Sale is the name of the next antagonist, and his stand is called Kraft Work (Arts & Crafts for the English-speaking audience). His stand is a close quarters type just as Mista predicted, but it doesn’t appear to have the raw power of a punching ghost stand like Jotaro’s Star Platinum.

But, what Kraft Work lacks in power it makes up for in dexterity and its special ability. Kraft Work is able to stick anything it touches in place, and then release it again at will with any potential energy the item has gained while stuck.

The first example we see of this ability at work is when he sticks Mista’s hand to the side of the moving truck, and sticks the truck driver’s foot to the gas pedal and hands to the steering wheel. This makes it so Mista can’t escape from the truck, and the driver can’t stop the truck either.

This alone wouldn’t make this a very powerful stand outside of sneak attacks, but the next two parts of the ability make it fairly formidable. Not only can Kraft Work stick objects to each other, but it can also stick them in mid-air. By using this ability, Sale is able to throw rocks into the air and then climb up them like a ladder.

The final part of his ability is allows him to take things he’s frozen in the air and add potential energy to them by hitting them. He freezes some of Mista’s bullets and then taps them repeatedly to add energy to them. Once released, the bullets fly back in the direction he tapped them in.

Altogether, this stand is the perfect counter to Mista’s Sex Pistols, at least on the surface. Sale can stick Mista in place so he can’t run, then stop his bullets mid-air, and finally shoot them back at him. But, if that weren’t enough, Sale doesn’t even need to use Kraft Work to activate these abilities.

Sale’s own body is able to activate these abilities, as we see when some of Mista’s bullets connect with him. As soon as the bullets penetrate his skin slightly, Sale is able to freeze them where they are to stop them from continuing through him.

In the end, Mista is able to defeat Sale and Kraft Work by lodging a bullet in his head, then hitting that bullet with a second one to make it go in deeper. This is the kind of outside the box thinking that’s typical of JoJo’s stand battles, but I can’t help but think Sale didn’t use Kraft Work to its full potential.

A Certain Scientific Kraft Work

Just yesterday I reviewed A Certain Magical Index II, and I can’t help but see parallels between Kraft Work’s ability and the ability of Accelerator. Other than his ability to stick two objects together such as Mista’s hand and the truck, he basically just controls vectors.

With this in mind, he could theoretically use his stand in even more powerful ways than he already does. However, While Accelerator has true vector manipulation, it’s probably more reasonable to refer to Kraft Work’s ability as vector nullification because it takes all acceleration away from an object.

When he fires objects like bullets back at people, Sale isn’t actually using his stand, instead he’s physically adding potential energy into an object by hitting or tapping it. This means that he can’t instantly reflect things in the same way Accelerator can.

But, just because he can only instantaneously remove acceleration doesn’t mean his stand can’t be used in some of the same ways as Accelerator’s ability. Theoretically, he should still be able to hit people with gusts of wind, make himself shoot through the air, or even kill people by touching their wounds.

One thing I did find interesting about Sale’s ability was that although I called it instantaneous, it really isn’t. If it was, then he would take absolutely no damage from Mista’s bullets, but that isn’t the case.

The bullets have to come in contact with his skin for at least enough time for them to do some damage before they’re stopped, which is really the only weakness Sale and Kraft Work seem to have. If he didn’t have this weakness, the second bullet shot at his head would have had no effect.

Interestingly, both Sale and Accelerator are taken down in the same way, although only Sale is killed by it. After being shot in the head, Accelerator was able to deflect the bullet at the last second, receiving only minor brain damage.

Conclusion

What did you think of the fight between Mista and Sale? And what did you think of Sale’s stand compared to the other enemy stands we’ve seen so far in part 5? I think Kraft Work was the most interesting enemy stand so far, although Black Sabbath had a better design.

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My review of the next episode is available here.