English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind: “Golden Wind“

Jojo Part 5 Begins!

(Possible Spoilers Below)

In 2001, two years after the events of Diamond Is Unbreakable, We meet a 15-year-old pickpocket with strange powers and sporting one of the most colorful outfits passable enough to be part of the Jojo Universe. As this is going on, a supporting character from the previous Jojo series Koichi Hirose travels to Naples, Italy, at the behest of Stardust Crusaders Protagonist and all-around badass, Jotaro Kujo to search for a young individual named Haruno Shiobana. Upon arriving at the airport, Koichi is scammed out of his luggage by his target who calls himself Giorno Giovanna.

As Giorno escapes with Koichi’s luggage by transforming it into a frog, Giorno is later confronted by a weird street thug by the name of “Leaky Eye Luca” for operating on his turf. As Luca attempts to kill Giorno with his shovel he strangely carries as a weapon for some reason, but as he attempts to the wack the frog with it, goes about as well as you’d expect… Later, Koichi catches up to Giorno and uses his Stand “Reverb” to keep him from running, but Giorno escapes by using his Golden Wind Stand powers, which display the unusual ability to transform inanimate objects into living organisms.

After Koichi is assured by Jotaro to be properly compensated due to his unfortunate theft, Koichi reports his findings to Jotaro and learns that Giorno is not only the alias of Shiobana but also Dio Brando’s son. And for longtime fans of this franchise, that name alone envoke’s a strong sense of unease and terror as Dio Brando is one of the most memorable, vile & unrepentant motherfuckers in Anime & Manga history, and was also a thorn in the Joestar family’s side for generations who was eventually killed by Jotaro near the end of Stardust Crusaders. As Giorno boards a cable car he encounters a “Mafioso” named Bruno Bucciarati who suspects Giorno of harming Luca, whom according to Bruno, Luca was later killed by his boss for refusing to accept failure for losing to Giorno. But the episode ends when Bucciarati catches Giorno lying through unusual means and reveals his stand powers while using them on Giorno, for interrogation.

Our Take

As somebody who’s followed the Jojo franchise for years and out of all the Part’s I’ve heard about but never read in Manga form, I’m curious about Golden Wind the most and it’s appeal within various Jojo fandoms. A lot of this is going to feel very new to me, and going into this blind, I’m not sure how to feel about Giorno as a protagonist yet. So far, he only leaves a smaller first impression compared to his encounter with Bruno. All I get about him is that he likes to use his Stand Powers to steal shit, and developed natural blonde hair like his long-dead supervillain vampire father Dio. Supposedly there’s more to his backstory that gives further explanation to Giorno’s hinted ancestral connection to the Joestar bloodline, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there…

The episode also manages to find a proper balance with introducing new characters, while also rewarding longtime fans with returning characters and past references that can easily be spotted by those who followed and watched the previous Jojo seasons before this one, so these small touches were nice. Hopefully, we can see what will become of Giorno as the plot further progresses as Bruno seems to hold his own in battle so far.