JoJo's Bizzare Adventure - Vento Aureo: anime review

The #1 thing I love the most about JJBA is its unpredictability.

JJBA is unique in a way that the author gets rid of the MC and replace him with another MC, and the whole series is still fine.

No other series dares to replace the MC midway.

Also in another Part of JJBA, the MC is completely killed off before their fight with the main villain is finished. JJBA lets a side-character continue the fight with the villain in place of the MC.

No other series dares to do that.

This Part lives up to the expectations. Rarely in anime do I see the main cast being... a mafia gang. But JJBA explains it perfectly from their backgrounds: they are society's outcasts that have to rely on the mafia's protection to live.


The Title:
I wish David Pro Studio had kept the original title "Vento Aureo" which sounds way cooler than "Ougon no Kaze / Golden Wind".


David Production Studio:
The anime adaption by David Productions is, simply put, amazing! And I'd argue that it's better than its source material. Love how some anime-exclusive scenes helped flesh out the dynamics among the core cast. Love how David Pro delivered the scenes with their own touch to make them even better than in the manga.
The color palettes are beautiful.
The anime adaptation makes everything even better than the manga! Some scenes are made much more emotional than in the manga, eg, the elevator scene in which Trish holds Bucciarati's hand - the anime put a lot of emphasis in this scene because this is where Bucciarati would die.
This Season has some of the best fights in anime ever! I like the fact that this Part's fights use more brains than muscles.
I love how the anime changed the atmosphere from morning to sunset - it suits really well with the mood!
The animation isn't smooth in this Season, and I'm not a fan of the new artwork. At the beginning, the art looks really good, but I can tell that it changed at least 3x throughout the Season. Mainly, I don't like how the characters' eyelines look too thick and their faces have extra lines that make them look emaciated or 20 years older.


Authentic character interactions:
All the interactions feel real and genuine. For instances:
- Giorno meeting the gang: despite being the MC, he wasn't welcomed with open arms and was instead served piss tea which put him in a terrible position but he got out of it by quick thinking!  Here it also shows how the gang is not your typical nice guys.
- Bucciarati's team departing:  Here, a typical shounen protagonist would make a long speech about saving the world and everyone would follow him after listening to his speech. But JJBA is no typical shounen. It took me by surprise to see each member decide by himself whether to follow Bucciarati, and it was more surprising when one of them decided not to at the end.
- Bucciarati and Trish in the elevator scene:  I don't need to describe how brilliant this scene is and - in under 2 minutes - David Pro made both Bucciarati's and Trish's characters shine.


Giorno Joestar:
Giorno is the most savaged JoJo so far - he's really Dio's son. But that's why he's my fav JoJo - he's very transparent in how he treats people.
Anime generally want the MC to be very black-and-white in morals to avoid controversy, to the point that the MC refuses to kill the enemy no matter what they did. Thus it's such a fresh change to see the 2 protagonists of JoJo's Part 5 having no trouble or qualm in punishing those that needlessly hurt other people, while having a good heart and wanting to help anybody who has demonstrated kindness. Giorno is kind to nice people and is ruthless to assholes. That's why I like him.  He's also the most daring JoJo up to date: I don't think any other JoJo would be able to kill Polpo and set things in motion for the Bucci's gang like Giorno did. He switched from a passive and polite demeanor to a self-assured persona when the gang tried to bully him, and impressed the whole team.
Some people say that Giorno - the MC - is lacking in actions in this Part. But this is actually one of JJBA's strengths. I hate anime in which most characters are pushed aside to give the spotlights to the MC. JJBA doesn't. Every character has an equal part and the MC doesn't look too dominant compared to the rest.
I feel like you don't even have to be a Giorno fan to love this Part. The JoBros and the villains are so damn good. I like Bucciarati more than Giorno. And the final boss is fantastic beyond my expectation. Diavolo-Doppio is much more interesting than Dio.
Too often I see plenty of anime that try too hard to create tropes to pander to the fandom to the point that those tropes become too boring. But JJBA is different: want a compelling protagonist? Give him the ability to empathize with the unfortunate. Araki knows how to work to the hearts of the people.


Libeccio
The restaurant became a safe haven for the lost souls. Bucciarati took them in, protected them from the cruelties of this world.
They are very unfortunate outcasts of society who found a belonging place with Bucciarati. Giorno has been a great inspiration for them all, and he tried super hard to earn their trust. Very daring and smart in actions, he's my favorite Giorno. But it was Bucciarati who gave them a real sense of family.


Bucciarati's gang
Blood doesn't make a family.
Araki tells stories of friendship and bonding really well, with Joseph and Caesar in Part 2, the Crusaders in Part 3, the Josuke gang in Part 4, the gangstars in Part 5, etc.  The relationships are believable and it's nice to see emotional closeness among characters in a shonen anime.
It's clear as day that they see one another as an equal and whenever Bucciarati scolds them, they give him the "ahhh mom's nagging again" attitude.
While the boys in the gang more or less see Bucciarati as a father figure, Giorno is different: since beginning, he is on the same ground with Bucciarati; neither one recruited the other or saw the other as a protective figure.

This anime has really made me appreciate Giorno-Bruno friendship/brotherhood.  Although Giorno is a newbie, he has more chemistry and understanding of Bruno than any other guy in the gang. The endless trust and silent teamwork. Remember in episode 2, he just straight out read Bruno's mind and knew that they shared the same goal. Despite spending longer time with him, no other gang member has figured out Bruno's plan to betray the Boss, much less his motive. A lot of times they can just silently communicate with each other. While Bucci is like a father figure to the other guys, he is like a friend/brother to Giorno.


Fate
"You can't change your circumstances until you've changed yourself" kind of preaching bullshit. Vento Aureo shows us with very realistic examples of "bad things can happen to good people" through no fault of their own. In those cases, they don't have a choice.


Bruno Bucciarati
Bucciarati is the type of person to empathize with others sorrows. He is the most selfless man in this Season.
IRL too often people who are paid by a certain organization rarely go against their source of income. But Bucciarati goes against the Boss despite being saved by him when he was young, and I respect that.
The moment he really gained my respect was when he scolded Narancia and didn't allow him to join a gang, even if it's his own gang. If he had done the opposite, I'd have thought that "this guy is just looking out for his own interest".
Bucciarati's past made it clear how much hatred he has for drugs: they were the cause of his father's death and how his life turned out: being a gangster who depended on the Organization for their protection. And it isn't clear if a mafia can ever leave the gang without being retaliated.
Since Bucciarati found out that the Organization that had helped him turned out to be a drug ring, he has been scheming to betray the Boss by first recruiting his own team and waiting for his chance. He just wasn't as daring as Giorno - a newbie who, right off the bat and effortlessly, assassinated a Capo (Polpo) without leaving a trace - and he didn't know exactly how to do it due to fear and caution  [ In episode 5, he told Giorno that he knew plenty of guys who were discovered immediately for trying to investigate the Boss ]. Unlike Bucciarati, Giorno isn't dependent on them to survive: As we see in episode 1, he uses his street smarts to live day-to-day life, and didn't have anyone who wanted to kill him.
In episode 2, Giorno correctly deduced that (1) Bucciarati would join him and (2) they would fight the Boss together. Bucciarati was amazed that Giorno knew exactly what's on his mind. That's why he was so willing to cooperate with Giorno in fighting the Boss.
Elevator scene:  Proper, realistic character interaction and development there. Bucciarati, some random gangster tasked with protecting her, showed more compassion and concern for her safety than her father did. Bucciarati could have easily have left Trish to die and increase his standing with Passione, but his conscience would never let him do that.
His mother hoped that "the kindness to overly sympathize with others' sorrows would not become of source of misfortune to him". Ironically, Bucciarati's ability to empathize leads to his downfall. Since a young age, he has always been the person to help others.

Bucciarati to Giorno: "Giorno, you brought me back to life. When I met you in my hometown Napoli, when we betrayed the Organization... my heart had been dying a slow death... but it came back to life... thanks to you..."
Bucciarati had been scheming to betray the Boss for a long time, but without Giorno putting things in motion for him, he would probably have waited forever for a chance to rise. Bucciarati saved the gang, and in turn was saved by Giorno. This moment is beautiful!


The villains:
Prosciutto and Pesci, Tiziano and Squalo, Cioccolata and Secco, Doppio and Diavolo. These villain pairings give them so much more depth and makes them very interesting.

Diavolo / Dippio:
I didn't expect the main villain to be so powerful and yet so scared and broken.
Dippio is too kind and naive for this world. As we see in his first appearance, he was overwhelmed by the insane fortuneteller and conned by the taxi driver.
King Crimson is a great villain! Typically in anime, the final bosses only appear near the end and fight the final battle. But only in JJBA can I see the boss struggle in a fight against a non-protagonist and narrowly crawl his way out - despite his power advantage.
Characters like Diavolo are Dio are monsters, but in a really insane, fantastic way that's a joy to watch.
When you think about it, Dippio's background contains a shred of tragedy, too: Dippio isn't aware of Diavolo being a part of him, thus the murder of his adopted father and the burning of his village - in Dippio's eyes - was the work of a stranger.
Diavolo is evil, but I think eternal deaths is too harsh a punishment. Diavolo kills out of a sense of self-preservation while Cioccolata kills indiscriminately for fun. He has disgust for evils such as Cioccolata and Secco. Unlike Dio, he seemed to treat his loyal subordinates well (eg, the Bucciarati's gang). It's interesting how Diavolo values henchmen like Bucciarati and detests monsters like Cioccolata. It's intriguing how Diavolo's Passione gang tends to recruit the fallen outcasts of society, which makes me wonder if there's any altruistic motive on Diavolo's part.
The most recent 3 villains in JJAB so far have the ability to manipulate time. It's only fitting for the boss: What is more powerful than time?!
Without Diavolo, he's a good guy who wouldn't hurt a fly. Actually, without Diavolo, he wouldn't have lived a somewhat peaceful because, as we see, he kept running into assholes and was saved by snapping into his Diavolo self. Doppio likely had a traumatic event that made him join the gang like the Bruno gang did. It was implied that his split personality is a result of childhood trauma.
I also don't think that he knows exactly what he does, as in most of the times where he gets violent, its Diavolo taking over. His loyalty for Diavolo isn't normal. It's either like Diavolo manipulated him into that or that he looks up to Diavolo cuz Diavolo is the strong split personality which made him cope with his past.

Fugo:
His decision not to go with the gang doesn't fuck up his character for me. It highlights Fugo as a rational person. The way I see it, Bucciarati was basically asking, "Are you willing to die for me/ for whatever cause I'm fighting?" which was a lot to ask for. Even if you're extremely loyal to someone, your life should come first - was what Fugo thought. As he said, "There are things in this world you can't do anything about, even if you are right". Really though, Bucciarati and Giorno didn't tell them that the #1 reason they betrayed the Boss is drugs, so from everybody else's POV, risking their life for a girl they barely knew was just too much. Fugo also saw it as a lost cause because the Organization/the Boss is too powerful. Even when he didn't follow the gang, it doesn't make him a coward.


My favorite scenes:
Episode 20:  The elevator scene.
Episode 30:  The scene where Bruno is visibly barely holding on to his corporeal existence, and the finale with the split-screen close ups of endless trust and silent teamwork.


Stand Abilities:
Gold Experience apparently has crazy powers seen in his fights with Koichi and Bucciarati at the beginning of the Season, and the power to clone a Stand User along with their Stand by just using some cells. In the fight with Koichi, it was shown to have the ability to reflect an opponent's attack on himself. In the fight with Bucci, I was thinking that its effect is like King Crimson: showing someone a future vision of himself, which could be the same time-altering ability as King Crimson's... But all it does is flood an opponent's body with life energy, causing his mind to accelerate past what his body was doing. This ability is never used again - which is a waste.


Tropes
Even though there're some tropes in this Season, the author gave a twist to each trope to make it funny and different from how other anime do it.


Italian mannerism:
Since the beginning, I've found it weird that the characters bow deeply when they introduce themselves and when they apologize, which looks more like Japanese mannerism than Italian. This is not the norm in Italian culture. Italians usually shake hands or kiss cheeks. This Season takes place in Italy with an Italian cast. It's a bit disappointing when they got all of Italy's landscapes correct but the characters' mannerism.


Music
The OST sound very Italian.
"Traitor's Requiem" is my favorite opening song of this season. I usually don't like English dub of anime songs but this one is so good! I like both the lyric and the music. The singer's English is quite good, too! I wonder if this English lyric will be censored in the West because of its anti-god theme... :/ I hope not.
My favorite OSTs in this Season are: Legame, Death, Wonder, Incursion.


Araki's use of Science:
The "plane parachute" scene: Araki underestimated the size of a parachute here. It takes a parachute 10x the size of that one to carry 3 people to safety.  It would be more believable to have the characters use normal parachutes to jump from the crashing plane. Oh well, but this is JJBA so gotta be creative.
Risotto's Stand Metallica making razors from a person's blood's iron:  While I was thrilled to see Araki's correct knowledge of iron and its capacity to form hemoglobin that carries oxygen in the body, IRL, a person's iron is only enough to make a nail or two. But this is JJABA. LOL

My ranking so far:   3 > 5 > 6 > 2 > 1 > 4

Polls:
https://www.strawpoll.me/18074964
https://www.strawpoll.me/17976641