JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

Episode 6

Leone Abbacchio was a cop once upon a time, but it's difficult to serve the people when the line between right and wrong gets danced around so often. One bribe and a deceased partner later, Abbacchio found himself kicked out of the force and into the arms of Bruno and Passione. For how absolutely bonkers the rest of this episode gets, this little flashback in the cold open detailing Abbacchio's life is extremely effective, playing out like a straightforward drama about compromised ideals. If I felt like I didn't know enough about Abbacchio last week, that problem is thoroughly solved now.

Along with his tragic backstory comes our introduction to Abbacchio's Stand, Moody Jazz Blues, which is immediately my favorite ability of the season thus far. Moody Blues has the power to "recreate" events, simulating people within a certain time frame like the world's fanciest VHS player (complete with the digital clock screen on its forehead). If Abbacchio were still a cop, I'm sure this power would be extremely useful for crime scene investigations, but for now it'll have to settle for solving nonsensical Stand battle puzzles.

Speaking of, despite the heart of this episode focusing on Abbacchio, this still ultimately serves as Bruno's episode, since he's the one in the final Stand-off. You know, sometimes it's a little too easy to just turn your brain off and trust that the characters know what they're talking about as they use their powers in all sorts of obtuse ways, but this episode was one of the hardest to comprehend yet. The enemy Stand can deflate people and objects, and in the midst of trying to understand its trap, we get caught up in some of the most JoJo-ass concepts imaginable: a staring contest with a fly, smack talk over banal trivia about oceanic birds, and one of our heroes leaving behind clues with his own blood.

The solution ends up being something about the Stand deflating an identical looking boat and using it as a cover for the actual boat, allowing the Stand user to hide his hostages between the layers. But what was up with the fly?! It was Narancia's shoe from last episode that Giorno transformed, but here it's being used as a visual placeholder for the villain's disembodied voice. It's honestly stupid and confusing, especially since you're still in the process of figuring out the enemy Stand's ability while the show is throwing all this extra information at you.

But I dunno, man. It's really cool.

This episode may be hard to follow, but it's an uproarious hoot all the same. I feel nothing but excitement when I see Bruno zipper a man's head off, and there isn't much you can ask for beyond that. I think I can say with confidence at this point that Golden Wind has the best production values of all the Jojo's series yet, offering equal parts polish and fervor. Abbacchio's development felt like it was priming us for some movement on his relationship with Giorno, but it's more about his friendship with Bruno, allowing us insight into why a man like that would become loyal to a criminal gang like Passione. This episode is wild, incomprehensible, genuinely sweet and touching, and entertaining as hell.

Rating: A-

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sam Leach records about One Piece for The One Piece Podcast and you can find him on Twitter @LuckyChainsaw