REVIEW: 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo' Episode 9: "The First Mission from the Boss"
by Katherine Simon
This week’s episode of Vento Aureo was focused on accomplishing two things: introducing Trish Una as the newest member of Team Bucciarati and setting up Narancia’s first Stand battle. Yeah, Trish! You know, that pink-haired girl that’s very prominently featured in both the OP and ED despite being strangely absent from the anime’s promotional material? Well, spoilers, she’s actually the last member of the main cast despite the series excluding her from promo art featuring her contemporaries. Though to be fair, it’s possible they didn’t want to spoil Trish’s prominence to the story by flaunting her with the rest of the gang, though the OP and ED already kind of do that (notice how she’s the only character in the ED without a Stand). Anyway, enough about that, time to talk about the actual episode.
Image from Crunchyroll
After Mista took down Sale in the last episode, both him and Mario are left unconscious in the boat, and Team Bucciarati meets up in a public restroom. There, they meet with one of Passione’s capos, Pericolo, and retrieve Polpo’s fortune, which was hidden inside one of the urinals, using Bruno’s Sticky Fingers. After the treasure is retrieved, Pericolo tasks the group with protecting the boss’s daughter, Trish Una. Although Trish is the boss’s daughter, the “Una” name comes from her mother, Donatella, who was the boss’s lover back when he operated under the alias “Solido Naso.” Prior to her death, Donatella began investigating the boss’s identity, which caught the attention of many Passione members, most notably a group of rogues attempting to overthrow the boss. With this knowledge, the group is currently pursuing Trish in hopes of getting information about the boss out of her. To keep her safe, Pericolo asks Bruno to keep her hidden until the rogues are taken care of since they are suspected Stand users.
As briefly touched upon earlier, Trish is somewhat of an anomaly among the main cast. She’s been absent from all the part’s promo material and merchandising leading up to the anime, and she’s the only member of Team Bucciarati that didn’t get her own trailer. Up until the part’s opening, nobody even knew what her anime appearance looked like, but when “Fighting Gold” made its debut as Vento Aureo’s first opening, it featured Trish very prominently. Granted she was isolated from the rest of the cast in that OP, but they made it very clear that she’s going to be a key player in Part 5’s narrative, being the boss’s daughter and all.
Aside from the context of the anime’s advertising, Trish is a very fascinating character in that she acts as almost a parallel to Giorno. Both of their fathers are major antagonists in the series, and both have had close ties to the gangster lifestyle since childhood. However, that’s about where the similarities end, since the two cannot be more different in terms of personality. While Giorno is charismatic, selfless, and chose to join Passione to fulfill his ambition of becoming a “Gang-Star,” Trish is very introverted, self-centered, and seems like she wants nothing to do with the organization. While there’s a lot that’s still unknown about Trish’s character, the contrast between her and the protagonist makes for an interesting dynamic between the two. It’ll be interesting to see how or if they expand upon that dynamic further as Trish gets more screen time.
Later on, the group relocates to a house in the countryside and Narancia is asked by Bruno to buy groceries for the gang and beauty products for Trish, despite Fugo’s reservations about his ability to avoid being followed back. Even with that concern, it’s explained that Narancia’s stand is able to target anyone who tries following him back, making him the ideal person for the task. After Narancia is finished shopping, he finds that one of the rogues, Formaggio, managed to get inside the car while he was gone. He attempts to question Narancia about what he’s doing shopping in an attempt to make him disclose Trish’s location, but he insists he’s not doing anything suspicious. Frustrated at his inability to get an answer from Narancia, Formaggio uses his Stand, Little Feet, to scratch his face.
Image from Crunchyroll
In retaliation, Narancia summons his own Stand, Aerosmith, to gun the enemy down. To evade the attack, Formaggio uses Little Feet to shrink himself down and hide in Narancia’s pocket. From there, he notices a set of women’s products inside the car, which leads him to the conclusion that Trish is with Team Bucciarati. Knowing that Narancia is aware of her location, Formaggio slowly shrinks him down so to put him at a disadvantage, ending the episode on a cliffhanger.
This is another one of those “set up for the next big fight” episodes that seems to be a trend with every odd numbered episode in Vento Aureo. While this format might not make the individual episodes all that interesting to talk about on their own, it works with getting the viewers acquainted with the new characters before they have their first major fight. This is the first time viewers are seeing Team Bucciarati in action, so it makes sense that the show would take some time to introduce their abilities first before throwing them into a fight. On the subject of abilities, the two stands introduced in the episode are pretty neat. The concept of Aerosmith being a miniature fighter plane is very unique from the mostly humanoid Stands seen thus far, and Tiny Feet’s shrinking ability can lead to some very creative fight scenarios, as seen with Formaggio’s utilization of it earlier. With these two unique Stand abilities pitted against each other, the next episode is going to be a very interesting one, to say the least.
