JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Part 5: Ougon no Kaze
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

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Vento Aureo is the most divisive part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, splitting the fanbase down the middle into two camps: those who consider it the worst JoJo part and those who see it as Araki's unsung masterpiece. Clowns to the the left of me, jokers to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Vento Aureo doesn't really belong to either extreme - the truth is somewhere inbetween.

It's not hard to see why it's such a polarizing arc, though - it has some of the highest highs, and the lowest lows. The main issue that people take with Vento Aureo is the ... characters. On the receiving end of most of these complaints are this part's JoJo - or in this case, GioGio - Giorno Giovanna, and the primary antagonist, Diavolo. With these two, I will agree. Giorno is considered a bland character, a plot device that exists primarily to heal people and finish off fights, and the main character in name only (Bruno Bucccelati took the lead far more often). Diavolo, on the other hand, is barely even shown. In the attempt to make Diavolo into a mysterious character to build him up, any efforts to actually characterize him come too little, too late. In the same vein, people complain that Giorno's teammates were equally boring - the only character who escapes this criticism is Bruno Buccelati.

However, every member of Passione - the gang of Bruno Buccelati and Giorno Giovanna - is very good in concept, each with their own unique character quirk and reason for joining Passione. So why are they so maligned? Well, because this is what happens when you take a Monster of the Week story with 17 battles, and try to flesh out a whopping EIGHT MAIN CHARACTERS in it. To put that in perspective, both of the previous Monster of the Week parts featured LESS main characters, and MORE battles. Quite simply, they tried to fit too much into too small a space. Most characters get a measly two battles to star in, if even that - Abbacchio and Fugo got a mere 1 each. This also leads to some characters being removed from the plot, or unceremoniously killed off for no particular reason, which was a particularly bad choice.

What people often ignore, however, is that where the main cast may have failed, Vento Aureo has the best cast of supporting villains in ANY part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The villains can be broken down into three categories - the treasure hunters, La Squadra da Ezecucione, and Diavolo's assassins. While the treasure hunters are forgettable (and relatively minor), La Squadra are the real winners here, featuring the most ruthless enemies in all of JJBA, spurred on by revenge against Diavolo. Diavolo's assassins, on the other hand, whilst not justified in their actions, make up for it by being UNSPEAKABLY DISTURBING.

The key strength they all have in common, though, is that they are utterly merciless and incredibly intimidating, and this is also a strength of Vento Aureo as a whole. Where the previous Diamond is Unbreakable mostly dealt with everyday events combined with stands, leading to many "friendly" opponents, Vento Aureo is the exact opposite. The battles here are utterly brutal - highlights include a stand that can dissolve flesh right off the bone, and a stand that can turn your blood into metal - literally slitting your throat from the inside out. Sweet Jesus, the body horror in Vento Aureo is immense.

Part 5 is responsible for the best stands of any JoJo part (I mean, come on - they turn a ZIPPER into one of the greatest weapons imaginable), so it's not surprising that the battles are just as good. Not only do the battles feature a tangible threat of death, with most enemies being overpowered enough that Passione never feel at an advantage, but they also run INCREDIBLY LONG. There are numerous battles in Vento Aureo - monster of the week battles, that is - that last around the same length as Dio's World, the final battle of Stardust Crusaders. In particular, there are a lot of stand-using teams this time around, which lead to some of the most ambitious battles the series has ever seen. It's easy to say Vento Aureo is far better than its detractors would have you believe based on the battles alone.

It feels weird to say this about a manga that's 17 volumes long, but I think what Vento Aureo really needed was to be longer. If it had been as long as, say, Part 7, then it would have had the time to make us attached to all the characters, give Diavolo proper buildup and characterisation, tie it in more to the overarching story of JJBA (as it is, it is only tangentially connected to the rest of the series), build more on the origin stories of the arrows, and perhaps even give us an ending that was less underwhelming. But as it stands, Vento Aureo simply bit off more than it could chew.

(And no, the novels aren't canon. So Fugo is still pretty terrible.)



Final Words: Too ambitious for its own good, but still pretty impressive.
Story/Plot: 6/10.
Characters: 5/10.
Art: 9/10.

Overall: 7/10.

For fans of: Medaka Box, Yu Yu Hakusho

HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD, DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED THE MANGA

I love Jojo, This series is seriously fucking awesome, but to me, part 5 was a bit of a let down. I think I should start with the characters, every character in part 5 is good... except for the two characters that matter the most, the protagonist and antagonist.

Giorno and Diavolo are weak as hell. I feel like a big problem with these two is that they have too many character points that don't actually matter. Giorno is DIO's son, but when is that ever important? When is it ever relevant who ... Giorno's father is? It seems that DIO having a son was just an excuse to make Giorno a part of the joestar family, it seems like a really big waste to me, the son of DIO should be a really big deal considering who DIO is, but it's never a big deal, it's very disappointing, Giorno never even finds out who DIO actually is or who the Joestars are. Giorno never really does anything important, Mista and Buccelatti seem to carry most of the weight, and then Giorno just swoops in to steal the win at the end, and then everyone is all like "Hey this Giorno kid is so cool, maybe he should be the one in charge." to me this just seems like poor writing, it never really felt like Giorno earned any of his accomplishments, and his lack of actual character moments makes his character feel practically non existent.

Diavolo. Diavolo spends all of part 5 hiding his identity, but when you do that, you start to place plot relevance and emphasis on what his true identity must be. When you make a mystery, you expect there to be a twist, its like watching an episode of scooby doo, you try to guess his identity because you feel like he must be someone you already know, he must be someone important, or at least someone you didn't expect. But Diavolo is non of those things, he's no one, his identity doesn't actually end up mattering, he could have been anyone, he turns out to be some random guy we've never seen before, and that makes what could have been a really interesting twist end up falling flat, and really disappoints me when I think about what Araki could have done instead. Diavolo's backstory doesn't end up mattering because his personality doesn't matter, his personality and backstory never end up being an interesting or relevant plot point. His motivation is to conceal his identity and keep being the boss, but that's just kira but far more poorly executed. Diavolo is an extremely unremarkable and forgettable antagonist.

Fugo fucking sucks, he only has one fight and then just leaves. Mista and Narancia are pretty cool, but I don't really have anything to analyze on them.

Abbacchio. I actually really like abbacchio, because I related to him a lot, every time he would just shit on Giorno I would be so happy, because I would always agree with him. Giorno sucks.

Buccelatti. Ok this guy is fucking rad, he does everything. I mean while Giorno sits on his hands talking about his dumbass dream hoping it will come true, Bruno is out there accomplishing his dream for him. He has the resolve, he has the skills, he has the vision, and he's the one that worked hard to become the boss, not Giorno. So to see Bruno just get killed and have Giorno become the boss instead was really infuriating and completely disappointing, Bruno succeeded where Giorno failed as a protagonist, but in the end Giorno gets all the glory anyway because he's the fucking main character.

I won't be analyzing them each individually, but La Squadra was amazing, I mean absolutely incredible, some of the most compelling villains to date, they have really cool dynamics with each other and I was moved by their own quest to overthrow the boss to avenge Gelato and Sorbet, their fallen comrades whom the boss killed.

Ok that's all I wanted to say about the characters, lets talk about the plot.

So we have this really cool story set up, where we have a small time crook who wants to make it big as a gangster, finally gets his lucky shot at making it all the way to the top as his team seeks to overthrow the mysterious gang boss, but at the same time, a powerful and much more experienced team of gangsters is racing against them to try and kill the boss first, whose reasons for doing so are arguably better than our protagonists. This would ordinarily make for a very good story, and part 5 might have been the best part of jojo ever if Giorno and Diavolo lived up to their expectations. I am disappointed that Risotto, who was a really hyped up villain, ends up getting killed by Doppio instead of by Bruno's gang, I think it would have been a lot more interesting to see Bruno or Giorno fight him instead of Doppio. I hate how the final battle was resolved with a deus ex machina, that being the requiem arrow, its like shit, what was the point of that whole fight if Giorno just magically wins at the end? All of the battles leading up to that were some of the best in the series, and I would argue that every single one of them is better than the final fight. I cannot express how disappointing it is to see so much hype build up to a fight, and to have something so mediocre delivered to me. When you have really good fights, people naturally expect that the next one will be better, or that at least the final battle, which is the most significant one, will be the best, failing to deliver on this is just shameful on araki's part, I really hate to criticize a normally outstanding mangaka like araki so harshly, but part 5 was just so disappointing and Araki knows better. Also the part at the end with rolling stones was just unnecessary and confusing, why would he put that in there? I mean if you're going to include something like rolling stones then don't put it at the end, it would have been a great mini arc to start off with, to foreshadow what will end up happening, but honestly I just wouldn't have put it in there at all.

Now the art, which I mean.... fellas, the art is good. And I really mean that, the art is so damn good, easily the best thing about part 5 is araki's art, even though the plot is flimsy at times, araki still knows how to put together a bomb ass manga. The way he constructs panels is simply incredible, there is so much detail in every single one, and the panels always end up being more than the sum of their parts, their packed to the brim with sound effects and spine cracking poses, there's so much depth to each scene, and he portrays breathtaking settings, especially in this part. I can tell that this is araki's love letter to italy, and he deliver's in the art category, when araki went to italy before he ever made jojo he saw the apollo and daphne sculpture and he wanted to portray that in a manga. He succeeded, his poses are so iconic, honestly I cannot praise his art enough.

I'm giving this a 6/10 overall, that sounds bad, but even at its worst Jojo is still better than average, a decent read honestly.

Taken from my website and some spoilers. Read at your own risk.

To summarize my experience with Vento Aureo in one word it would be “disappointing”. Forcing myself to say more than that proves difficult for me because of how consistent that word was floating around in my head through my reading of it. Vento Aureo’s world is an appealing idea on paper, we have the Mafia, Jojo, and Italy. What can go wrong!?

Almost everything as I found out, instead of taking the fantastic approach that Diamond is Unbreakable established by taking this seemingly ordinary place and slowly building on it, by either establishing the geography, ... talking about the culture and all that good stuff; Vento Aureo follows the approach of Stardust Crusaders by making it a road trip fun time for the whole family.

This would be fine, but Vento Aureo doesn’t have variety because you know, unlike the aforementioned Stardust Crusaders, we don’t go around the world and see constant and interesting changes in scenery. We just have Italy and more Italy. Just normal Italy mind you, not some crazy Italy where Sharks have super powers. At most, the most compelling places end up being places your Mom wants to visit before she dies; “Hey It’s Venice! We are in Venice! Do you see Venice? We in Venice”.

The characters and story are fairly uninteresting. Here’s the gist of it, our main character Giorno “GioGio” Giovanna is an overwhelmingly serious, kept to himself and ambitious character that hates when bad people do bad things because he’s a good person or something. So he dives into organized crime so he can be the big, bad and make the world a better place. Giorno is a solid concept, but ends up being an incredibly one-dimensional character When he is pushed to moments where the character should evolve, he remains an overly idealistic and kind-hearted character from start to finish that’s two miles away from screaming “Believe it!”. Which is not helped by the way Giorno is used in the story.

Oh, are two characters about to die horribly? Not a problem, GioGio is here to save the day! Is there no hope left and the enemy is about to win? Well, not if Giorno can stop it. This is what pushes me over the edge makes me dislike the character because his main use is to be a trump card whenever another character is at the peak of defeat. The villain Diavolo is even a more one-dimensional character. The manga builds him up as this extremely strong and mysterious character that we should be horrified of and it never stops doing it. And why is he evil? Oh, because he’s evil, don’t worry about it. He’s the bad guy and the others are the good guys.

Diavolo suffers from what I think is dissociative identity disorder which is a grand idea for a villain, but it comes out quite dull and incredibly plot convenient. The lack of character development isn’t a problem reserved to two of the characters, but the majority of the cast. With the exception of two characters, (Those being Bruno Buccellati and Guido Mista) most are one-dimensional. They definitely can be fun at times regardless of this, but some end up being grating; Cough Trish Una Cough.

As always, stands are incredibly creative, but lot’s of them are either laughably overpowered or convoluted beyond understanding. But regardless of that King Crimson is seemingly my favorite stand out of Vento Aureo with a close second to Sticky Fingers. But the utmost disappointing part comes rushing at the end of the battle with the big, bad happens and it ends almost instantaneously thanks to GioGio obtaining an utterly ludicrous Deus Ex Machina .

Vento Aureo is not either terminal cancer or the second coming of Christ as the community says. It thrives with lots of marvelous ideas, but it doesn’t surpass mediocrity. With a cast of mostly one-dimensional characters, an intriguing, but badly built upon setting and a constant barrage of plot-convenient scenarios sadly make it the worst Jojo part by a long shot. It is worth a read to keep up with the lore and see some cool stands, but do not expect anything as good as the previous four parts.