English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind: “Meet the Gangster Behind the Wall”

 

(Possible Spoilers Below)

After telling Bruno about his ambitious goal to be “Primo Mafioso” and clean up the streets in his own way, Giorno convinces Bruno to let him join the organization known as “Passione” and before laying down some ground-rules, Bruno leads Giorno to a lieutenant of the gang who is a grotesquely obese man encased in a reinforced glass prison-cell Silence of the Lambs style by the name of “Polpo”, who is currently sitting in prison and having the unusual and disturbing trait of biting his finger-tips to the point of bleeding while eating. After entering the front of his cell, Giorno asks to join the gang and as part of the initiation Giorno is assigned to prove his loyalty & trust which is to guard a lighter’s flame for 24 hours.

Despite how weird and oddly-specific this all sounds, Giorno accepts the challenge and leaves the prison with it in a decently suspenseful scene. After a series of close calls and outside mishap’s, Giorno manages to get into his dorm to wait the rest of his 23 hours which would be a much shorter episode, if not for Koichi showing up to seek out his stolen passport since all his other stuff is pretty much gone except for that.

 

As Giorno again narrowly escapes with the lighter however a minor mishap consequently extinguishes the flame by accident from a short janitor cleaning the area. Distraught, Giorno believes he has blown his chance and is surprised when the janitor reignites the lighter. However, a creepy-looking Stand clad in purple appears and it impales the janitor’s soul with an Arrow, killing him in retaliation. Realizing that he has activated Polpo’s Stand, The episode ends when Giorno braces himself as this fierce & terrifying Stand lunges at him.

Our Take

It’s clear that we now have Jojo part 5’s first Two-Parter as displayed here due to how this episode ended. Polpos design caught me off guard and that’s quite an interesting entrance test. It’s pretty damn odd to joining said gang would require what seems to be such a small and innocuous task at first, though, It’s not explained how the Stand would specifically know if the flame is active or not unless the Stand itself works at a particular distance.

Regardless I did like some of the suspenseful moments and quick-thinking on Giorno’s end I was so drawn into this episode so much I never realized it was over already. Felt too damn short honestly. That Janitor didn’t deserve to be victimized and in a weird comparison to the Anime & Manga versions of his death, the original design for the Janitor in the Manga version was dressed like Mario of Nintendo fame which hilariously caught me off guard when researching this episode.

Overall good episode, but a weird setup that manages to capture the right amount of tension and suspense. Hopefully, we’ll see how Giorno will cleverly get himself out of this one.