by Katherine SimonAs anyone keeping up with these reviews would know, the pacing of Vento Aureo’s fights has recently become somewhat problematic. It felt like the team behind the anime couldn’t quite figure out how much time they should spend on the past two fights, which lead to Grateful Dead being way too bloated and Babyface feeling incredibly rushed and insignificant in the grand scheme. Fortunately, the team managed to rebound from their recent missteps and delivered one of the anime’s most enjoyable fights in a while.
Image from CrunchyrollContinuing from where the previous episode left off, Giorno has been almost completely frozen over by White Album’s ice and it’s up to Mista to take on Ghiaccio. After managing to break from the ice, Giorno uses Gold Experience to form a makeshift snowboard out of grass for Mista, which he uses to sled on White Album’s ice in one of the episode’s most absurdly awesome scenes. Ghiaccio promptly melts the ice and leaves Mista in the water, where he has a higher chance of being frozen. Giorno urges Mista to escape while Ghiaccio is unconscious, but after noticing a breathing hole on White Album, Mista decides that he should kill him sooner by aiming for it. However, this proves unsuccessful as Ghiaccio reveals his stand’s secret ability, Gently Weeps, which allows him to freeze the air solid and deflect the bullet back at Mista. Fun fact about White Album, its ability “Gently Weeps” is a reference to the Beatles song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps," which appeared on, you guessed it, The White Album. Despite White Album being renamed to White Ice in the Crunchyroll subs, “Gently Weeps” remains unchanged despite being just as blatant of a Beatles reference. The English localizations have always been weird and wishy-washy with what names get changed (keeping explicit references to REO Speedwagon and “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” but changing stand names that are as nonspecific as Echoes or Kiss, for example) so I’m not too surprised, but it’s still weird that they changed the name to avoid getting in legal trouble with The Beatles yet they kept a reference to one of their songs.Out of all the fights in Vento Aureo thus far, White Album is by far the most entertaining. There are so many creative setpieces that make the fight incredibly entertaining, the snowboarding scene, in particular, is a huge highlight. Compared to the Grateful Dead and Babyface arcs, the progression of this fight is near perfection. There’s a lot going on in the fight to keep viewers entertained, but none of it feels too padded or rushed. It also helps that Ghiaccio himself is one of the part’s most memorable antagonists thanks to his eccentric personality and entertaining rants.
Image from CrunchyrollThe episode is also visually impressive. The Jojo anime has always been infamous for switching color palettes for dramatic effect, and this episode uses that motif to its full effect. To match with White Album’s freezing abilities, certain scenes shift to a cooler color scheme with blue as the predominant color. When Giorno steps in to finish Ghiaccio off, the color scheme shifts again to a warmer color scheme as the sun rises, which is one of the most clever uses of shifting color schemes in the series. The animation is also really solid, with movement feeling especially fluid during certain action scenes. The art direction in this episode is absolutely phenomenal and showcases why David Productions is the best equipped to adapt this story.Aside from the spectacular fight scene, this episode also shows the rest of Mista’s backstory, like when Bucciarati bailed him out of jail and he first joined Passione. It elaborates on the aftermath of the backstory shown during the Kraftwerk fight and shows how he has come to view Team Bucciarati as family. After the fight is over, the episode ends with Giorno attempting to heal Mista’s multiple — and by multiple, I mean more than any normal human would be able to withstand — gunshot wounds by turning the bullets into flesh. While searching for the two, Narancia gets a glance at Giorno healing Mista, gets the wrong idea about what’s going on due to missing context, and pretends to be oblivious. Needless to say, this is possibly the first time “Freek’n You” has been 100% fitting as the ED for the series. After the credits, we get our first glimpse of the boss as he prepares the final mission for Team Bucciarati. Up to this point, the boss’s identity has been one of the biggest mysteries of the part thus far and now that we’re finally getting a glimpse of him, it’s a sign that the part is beginning to reach its climax. Right now the series is more or less at its halfway point, so it makes sense that the stakes are going to be ramped up in the latter half as the gang gets closer to confronting the boss, which is what Vento Aureo has been building up to for most of its runtime. Regardless, it’s going to be interesting to see how the series is going to play out moving forward as we get closer and closer to the climax.
