JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind – 07

「セックス・ピストルズ登場 その①」 (Sex Pistols Toujou: Sono 1)
“Sex Pistols Appears, Part 1”

The wait is over. This episode of Golden Wind pulls off the double whammy of bringing two hotly anticipated moments of the part to life with our grand debut of the torture dance and Guido Mista’s Stand, Sex Pistols. The direction behind both do more than enough justice to not only expand on this point in the manga, but also contribute to the violent and outlandish tone of Giorno’s adventure as the party makes their way to the tourist destination of Capri, where Polpo stashed away his fortune.

So far, there have been three scenes from the earlier chapters that fans have been waiting for the Golden Wind anime to adapt: Bruno licking the side of Giorno’s face, Giorno turning his teeth into jellyfish to drink a cup of Abbacchio’s urine, and the torture dance. Much of the fascination behind the dance scene is the lack of rhyme or reason it has behind existing. In the manga, it’s a short page-long blip where Narancia is excited by the method of Zucchero’s torture to the point of turning up the music and dancing. Gradually, Mista and Fugo join them until the scene ends as abruptly as it starts. In the anime, however, they knew this would be a scene that would be hyped up to a large degree, so they did the most to extend the dance out even further. What was once a few brief shimmies and flexes was transformed into a full-on music video with the trio pulling off choreographed dance moves to the tune of a royalty-free version of Prince’s “P Control” as Zucchero starts to hallucinate and freak out. They could’ve done the bare minimum to animate the dance, but they took full advantage of the surreal nature of the random dance interlude and pulled off something far more impressive and transformative than merely going with just what was on the page.

This episode also marks another point that I’m excited for with Mista’s first fight. While Moody Blues could only be introduced in a specific scenario that Zucchero had to create, the coolest aspect of Sex Pistols is how the Stand behaves outside of combat situations. It’s one of my favorite Stands because the “Stand” comes in the form of six sentient beings that can steer the bullets that Mista shoots from his revolver. When they’re not used for combat, however, they are each given personalities, attitudes, and impulses that Mista has to rein in so that they can build a cooperative dynamic. At points, Mista has to serve as his Stand’s dad, feeding the six mini-Stands and instructing them not to cry or bully each other. They are also tailored towards Mista’s own mentality as their numbering skips four due to his tetraphobia, making their individual names 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. In the process of introducing Sex Pistols, it also lends itself to showing Mista’s more methodical and ruthless mindset when carrying out missions for Passione. Being the one to torture Zucchero and having a Stand rely on having a revolver to assassinate are two clues into the measures he’d take to get the job done, but he works well with Giorno on the island because of how much of a straight-shooter he is. Mista can understand the methodology behind the outcome Giorno wants when they are both willing and able to get rid of their adversaries while Giorno understands that he needs Mista’s street knowledge to help him solve the logistics behind the plan he has in mind to reach a means to an end. His pursuit of Zucchero’s partner has only begun, but it’ll be interesting to see how the anime wraps up Mista’s debut fight.