Ranked #624

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo (Manga)

This must be the zenith of the JoJo saga, because everything is almost pitch-perfect.

In the sun-dappled land of Italy, a supporting character from Part 4, Koichi, is seeking a person that Jotaro has a keen interest in. A stand user. Carrying the Joestar bloodline, a handsome Georgiano Giovanni. Our next JoJo!

A new arc begins in one of manga's longest-running sagas, one that utilises the locale to its full potential, a rise-to-power mafia tale, one of comrades on the run from assassins, one of hidden family secrets coming to the surface and changing lives forever. One of hilarious pop music puns.

Most of the stands this time round are named after famous bands or artists, like Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, Aerosmith, etc. These are hilarious in context, and there are some I won’t reveal as they simply get funnier as the story progresses. Hirohiko Araki's humour is still flowing strong through his nimble fingers as he draws a landscape populated by more great (a)typical shonen characters and the powerful abilities they possess.

Eschewing the humorous slant on character abilities in part 4, Golden Wind's stands are all devastating in a wipe-the-smile-off-your-face kind of way. All of the antagonists have amazingly strong powers that make you balk and wonder how the good guys can possibly beat them. But they do. Then the next bad guy rolls along with another impossibly strong power and you're again wondering how it’s going to be overcome.

But it is. This is Araki's skill. He can churn out these battles time and time again, making it look easy. So many battles with extremely interesting mixes of abilities clashing together, and each time the outcome is unexpected yet logical, always entertaining. Golden Wind contains the most intense and violent battles yet, so gore-hounds will like some of the mutilations and removal of limbs involved.

There are plenty of exciting action scenes in Golden Wind also, mostly involving moving vehicles and lots of blood-letting. Trains, planes and automobiles, all are trashed to hell along with whoever was foolhardy enough to go against someone of the Joestar lineage, and with Dio's good looks, well damn you have to be a fool to even try.

Araki is a genius author. He manipulates environments logically according to the wacky powers, whether it’s turning an inanimate object into something living or a zipper (yes, a zipper), and the payoffs to his battles can be so ingenious, so deliciously clever, so satisfying, there are times you'll want to punch your fist into the air like an idiot.

Golden Wind further elaborates on the history of the mystical arrow which was introduced in a clumsy retcon manner in the previous part, Diamond Is Unbreakable. Araki learns from his mistakes and continually gets better and better at developing the many potentials of the JoJo saga. It’s not perfect however, so for the sake of being objective there’s a character that appears to be in a main supporting role that is unceremoniously dumped from the story and never heard from again, which was a bit weird.

Though the big villain of Golden Wind is on par with the sociopathic loon of the previous volume, I personally feel the last battle of the previous Diamond Is Unbreakable was much better than the one in Golden Wind, but it’s still got plenty of twists and thrills to entertain you.

From one brilliant set-piece to another Golden Wind barrels along to a high-stakes climax that includes, almost as a side dish, one of the most epic beatdowns to a supporting villain in shonen manga history. You’ll know it when you see it. Despite the final battle with the actual main villain lacking a bit of the coherence and intricately planned brilliance of the previous part’s climax, the journey to get there in Golden Wind is ridiculously addictive reading. read more

Vento Aureo. I believe this is one of the parts the fans praise the most, and I do understand why, there are very good moments and epic fights, but it's not the best thing Araki has ever done.

[A little observations: This is my first review, and I'm not really good at writing this kind of texts. Also, English is not my first language, so if you see some stupid mistakes, I'm sorry.]

Story- 7

The story is about the 15-years old Giorno Giovanna, a teenager who seeks to become a gang-star. The interesting here is that Giorno is the son of Dio, but since he was in Jonathan's body, Giorno can be considered an official Joestar. Well, the story is like most of Jojo parts, there is a basis and they put a lot of epic fights over these basis. In here, we have Giorno entering a mafia gang named Passione. Giorno meet a guy named Bruno, who doesn't agree with the boss actions, and they both start to try to approach the boss to uncover his identity.
This is one of the Jojo parts (Along with 2,3 and 4 ) where the plot is not that important, it's a character-driven story. All you wanna see is cool stand users, epic fights who take your breath away and how Giorno and his friends will be able to defeat their enemies.
The story can me divided in two big parts: the fights against La Squadra di Esecuzione, a group of stand users that betrayed the boss, and the fights against the underlings of the boss. The first one is really good, all the fights are interesting and you get to see all the characters acting together. The second one is not some of the best, for some reasons I'll mention later...

Art- 8

Araki's art is not at it's best here. I mean, it's still good, but if you compare the art from parts 5 and 3, you will see what I'm talking about. He still draw scenarios really well, and his characters as also well designed, but his realistic art from part 3, and his pitch-perfect art from later part 7 were his peak as a manga artist.

Character- 7

The main characters receive quite a good development, Giorno and Bruno, at least. Also, the boss daughter, Trish, is one of the characters who get the most well-development of all series.
However, the villains are bad developed, and the main villain of this part is one of the worse from the series. The whole final arc was not as good as it was supposed to be all thanks to the failure that he was.
Araki waste some really good characters with really good stands, and at the end, you see that there were no memorable villains apart from the main one.

Enjoyment- 9

The reading is so thrilling and exciting that you will read two or three volumes like it was nothing. Araki can do that. Also, Araki put all his creativity in here, so all the stands have some really cool powers, like Bruno's stand, who can create zippers, or Giorno's stand, who can create life, all of them are very interesting.
But where it really shines is on the exciting moments Araki can do without fights. There's a key moment between the two big arcs, where Buccellati reveals something to his group and makes a little speech over there. I think this is one of the greatest moments I've ever seen in anything.

Overall- 8

Overall, Vento Aureo was a good reading. It was exciting, had some really good fights and some very good moments. Even with the bad villain and the little flaws on the story, it's superior to a lot of stuff out there.

The truth is, if it's Jojo, it can't really be bad. read more