JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind – 31

「グリーン・ディとオアシス その 2」 (Green Day to Oasis: Sono 2)
“Green Day and Oasis: Part 2″

And so, Episode 31 is where we finally reach the moment that everyone’s been waiting for. At long last, the Part V anime answers the question many fans have been asking: How will they pull off the “Seven Page Muda”? For those who are unfamiliar with the manga version of Part V, this scene is infamous in having Giorno mercilessly punch Cioccolata for seven pages, marking the first instance a shounen manga has had a seven-page beatdown and grants Cioccolata the designation of receiving the lengthiest beating in a JoJo fight.

The length of the section was impressive when I first read it, but the most exciting aspect about it for me was how it portrayed Giorno. As a tactical fighter, Giorno wasn’t one to use Gold Experience as a punch-ghost like with Star Platinum. As such, he didn’t often break out a “Muda” or “Muda Muda Muda” often to remind us that he is a descendant of Dio Brando. This moment takes this to hyperdrive by not only having Giorno’s barrage of punches distinguishable by using a “Muda” for every punch he delivers but has him break out his father’s vampiric “WRRRRRYYYYYYY”. It was hard to gauge how well the “WRRRRYYY” would be given that each of the Dio’s have given us an iconic one, whether it be Chiba Isshin’s arcade voice that gave the internet so many glorious stick figure memes in 2009 or the recent anime Dio that gave us Koyasu Takehito’s iconic iteration. I’m unsure of Romi Park gave us a “WRRRYYY” and Namikawa Daisuke’s version was brief since it was part of a fighting game move. With Ono Kensho, it was actually a really impressive shout as he had a raw, messy scream that fits well with how Giorno is unleashing all of his pent-up fury on every punch he was giving Cioccolata. At first, I wasn’t sure how a “UUUWRYYAAAAAAAAA” would fit within the pantheon of “WRRRRYY”‘s, but I greatly appreciated it within the context of Giorno being infuriated enough that his voice created a “WRRRYY” sound by chance in the midst of an enraged battle-cry.

The mercilessness Giorno showed quickly reminds us that he is still the son of Dio, but this reminder comes to us as a way to express just how much the story wants to punish Cioccolata. Throughout the past two episodes, Cioccolata’s unrepentant heinousness is always brought to the forefront. The narrative wants us to focus on aspects of him that are truly abominable such as his desire to film moments where people die, his flippant decision to mass murder anyone that comes into contact with Green Day in Rome, the cheap tricks he would resort to in order to get the upper hand on Team Buccialati, and his entire backstory. Kars’ soul might’ve been described as a “pumpkin left to rot in the field that even files would visit,” but Cioccolata would likely be that if you replaced the pumpkin with the sphincter of a roadkill skunk. Only a character like Cioccolata would be deserving of having to face the wrath of Giorno’s punches. With his healing ability and his Life Shot ability, Gold Experience can both cause the victim of its punches to feel the pain of every single punch as slowly as possible and heal them so that they can continue re-experiencing the torment of repeatedly feeling the agony of every punch for as long as Giorno wants to drag on the attack. And for 30 seconds or seven pages, Giorno really wanted Cioccolata to suffer and have him feel every single one of those punches that he was delivering to him. As icing on the cake, once the punches end, Cioccolata is given the poetic ending of being launched into a garbage truck, being compressed along with the rest of the garbage, and zooming in on the sign that emphasizes that he’s going to be sorted out with all of the burnable trash. JoJo is a huge fan of giving its villains some karmic justice, but with the liberty that Part V has with being dark and ultraviolent, you can tell Araki had been waiting for the opportunity to create a character as horrible as Cioccolata to not only bolster Giorno’s unforgiving and malevolent side but also murder a villain as brutally as possible without making the viewer/reader feel any sense of guilt about how thoroughly destroyed he was.

In spite of the overkill Cioccolata received, his demise is followed by a moment from Secco that shows us that his one and only saving grace was the kindness he gave in his creepy pet/master relationship with his former patient. Even if he was impatient when his partner slipped up, Cioccolata was very excited about indulging in Secco’s impulses, excitingly telling him that he would be more than happy to give him several sugar cubes to reward him if he did well in his fight against Team Buccialati. Secco’s amorous feelings towards the rewards Cioccolata gives him is also all the more depressing when his last voicemail to him was saying that his opponents are far tougher than anything they’ve faced up to that point and that he loved him. Although they were some of the worst people to exist in Part V and Cioccolata’s death was treated like Giorno taking out the trash, it actually does a little to humanize the two by giving them such banter to make it clear that they were able to level with each other and make each other happy in times outside of being murderous sociopaths. The newer revelations about how Oasis can function to wear down the flesh of whoever it hits such as Bruno was interesting, but it’ll be more advantageous to dive into Oasis’ abilities the next time around when the fight concludes. What will be the most exciting thing from this episode to discuss in the future, however, is the reveal at the end of the episode that everything is currently being watched from afar by a mysterious man with a high-top hairstyle that you may be familiar with.