JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

「ボスからの最終指令」 (Boss kara no Saishuu Shirei)
“The Final Mission from the Boss”

The time has come for us to meet the Boss and see exactly why Bruno was tasked to deliver Trish to him. While the episode doesn’t take us entirely to the end of Bruno’s encounter with the Boss, it gives us more insight on why Bruno gravitated towards Giorno’s dream so quickly and why he would go as far as betray the Boss by saving Trish from an untimely end.

What helps to keep Bruno balanced as a character is how, as devoted as he is to the mission, he is also attentive to Trish as she tries to figure out what exactly she got roped into. Because of the thread of fate that links her with a mafia boss, she is taken from a relatively decent upbringing as soon as her mother passed away to be kept under the care of gangsters and hunted down by renegade mafioso who are out for her dad’s power. In the process, she also learns that both Passione and the members of La Squadra out to get her are all fighting each other with the supernatural power of Stands, and has discovered signs of her own Stand ability after Bruno killed Pesci. Not only is it a lot for Trish to make sense of while she’s on the run, but with the perils that she’s faced along the way, it would hard for her to imagine just who exactly her father is, let alone if reuniting with him is the safest option for her. It forces Bruno to take himself out of work-mode to try to empathize with someone who was a complete outsider to the mafia business until just recently when his mission with Passione pushed her into a situation that has claimed the lives of more than six people (La Squadra and some of the innocent bystanders caught in the line-of-fire) so far. Where Bruno has to comfort her knowing that she’s still reeling from the aftershock of her experiences so far with Passione.

As soon as Trish is taken away from Bruno, it gives us a flashback of Bruno’s childhood that reveals a much larger emotional connection he has with Giorno’s dream and why he would go the lengths he did to betray the Boss for misleading him twice about the nature of his work. Bruno’s transformation from an adorable cinnamon roll to a hard-as-nails mafia capo is rife with trauma as his attachment to his father and his fishing business lead him towards unforeseeable tragedy. With his parents’ divorce and his decision to live with his father, he had the misfortune of seeing his dad mortally wounded after he was shot upon witnessing a drug transaction by two men on his boat. Kid Bruno’s decision to kill the two men after they broke into his house in an attempt to murder his dad for good pushed him into a life of crime to help support his injured father and make a living. After his father’s death, he would end up in a tight spot after realizing the uncomfortable truth behind his life in Passione that he’s been enabling the drug trade in his neighborhood by working alongside them as their muscle. His contempt for drugs as the reason why his father was shot would eventually turn out to be the motivating factor behind why he was so directly invested in Giorno’s future in Passione, but it’s also why he was so infuriated by his plan to use Passione to kill Trish himself. To be used to sell drugs and to murder his own daughter to save his skin were two signs of how quickly the Boss was willing to betray Bruno and would give Bruno the exact motivation to refuse to be walked on this time around when he has the power to face the Boss head-on.

This, however, would prove to be another sign of misfortune for Bruno because he’s the first member of Passione on-screen to learn the full extent of the Boss’ powers through his Stand, King Crimson. For those who are just joining us from the Part IV anime and haven’t read through Vento Aureo or the spoilers, this one’s gonna be a doozy. King Crimson is known as one of the most complicated Stand abilities due to his time skip ability. With King Crimson, the Boss can hiccup into the future, allowing him to skip up to 10 seconds into the next turn of events. Because of this, those around him end up finding themselves warped into the future and the Boss is given the leeway to get himself in just the right spot to get the jump on someone. Using the remote control analogy that happens with many time-based Stands, King Crimson is the skip function that allows you to jump to the next scene in a DVR recording or movie. If you’re watching this on a video player, you could jump from 21:17 to 22:29 and replicate the Stand’s abilities. Or you could watch the Futurama episode “Time Keeps On Slippin'” where the Harlem Globetrotters win a basketball match by unknown means during a time skip. Whatever the means may be for you to wrap your head around the infamous nature of King Crimson, the stakes have been brought to their highest yet now that Bruno has been mortally wounded with the same “fist through the chest” trick that DIO mastered in 1989. What it means for Bruno now that it’ll be hard to digest with the size of the hole in his chest will be something to watch out for in the next episode.