English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure:Golden Wind “His Name Is Diavolo”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

After purposely leaving out several plot-twists to avoid spoilers from past episodes, I feel like we’ve reached a point where I can finally share them now (since the episode’s title itself is a dead giveaway to one of them). But during the course of several episodes, we learn that the mysterious wheelchair-bound ally that Bruno’s Crew are on a quest to meet up with is none other than Jean Pierre Polnareff, a longtime supporting character from the Iconic Jojo storyline Stardust Crusaders. Polnareff even goes as far as to not only contact Bruno & Giorno, but offers them a solution to stop their murderous & ruthless Ex-Mafia Don/Boss who just so happens to be Trish’s father. Polnareff also mentions that their Ex-Boss’s true name is “Diavolo”.  After a string of events where Bruno is heavily injured during a pyrrhic victory against Secco, Doppio out of sheer happenstance was saved by Bruno who understandably knows nothing about the Jekyll & Hyde shit Diavolo/Doppio has going on. But instead of just killing Bruno, Diavolo proceeds to use this to his advantage by having his Doppio side to pass off as a good samaritan and offers his “help” to carry Bruno to his destination to find out who he’s planning to meet exactly.



On the way to the Colosseum, Doppio helps Bruno get to his desired destination but stops when he spots Guido and realizes that Bruno’s team is nearby. Diavolo then contacts Doppio and tells him that Bruno’s is sort-of knocking on death’s door in combination with Bruno’s lack of sight and hearing from Secco’s injuries. Bruno is only able to sense the aura’s inside people, leading Diavolo to use a clever & underhanded method to deceive Bruno during their small trek. After they reach the Colosseum, Doppio and Bruno encounter Polnareff, who Diavolo also recognizes leading to a flashback that takes place within the same timeline as Stardust Crusaders. To me, this flashback is easily one of the best parts of this episode as so many questions are finally answered in terms of continuity.



We even see his first encounter/battle with Polnareff who was investigating various locations for the Stand Arrows with Jotaro in an effort to make sure that they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. However, while Jotaro was sent to search within Asia and the USA, Polnareff was sent to search within Africa and Europe. But we the audience are left to assume that it didn’t end well since Polnareff is now reduced to being in a wheelchair in the present day. When it cuts back into the present in the Colosseum, Diavolo takes control of his and Doppio’s shared body, ditches Bruno, and makes his way towards Polnareff. And the reveal of his look gives off some intimidating and sinister vibes and it’s the second-best part of this episode. Though Polnareff has created a method to track Diavolo’s Stand movements involving the clever use of blood drops, Diavolo still gains the upper hand, punching through Polnareff and recovers the arrow, but just when things seem decidedly bleak, The episode ends on an intense cliffhanger when you learn that Polnareff made an unthinkable decision before the Arrow was taken from him that has some unpredictable results…




Our Take

Holy Fuck! It feels so much better getting off my chest what I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while in regards to the Diavolo & Polnareff stuff from past episodes, but this excelled better than I could imagine. I’ve also been waiting to finally see the Passione bosses full reveal and it didn’t disappoint either. The whole ordeal was just oozing with a decent level of suspense and a sense of dread.

The Polnareff/Diavolo flashbacks while a welcoming addition to the Jojo timeline was surprising in a number of ways. Most notably, classic characters in the flashbacks are updated with a slightly different art style such as Jotaro and Polnareff. Along with answering certain questions such as how Diavolo in his youth got his hands a Stand Arrow, his rise to power within the Italian criminal underworld, and most notably, what happened to Polnareff and how he survived. Even if I was left with a few unanswered questions, I was still left entertained, plus that cliffhanger ending caught me off guard…