Will talks about: jojo's bizarre adventure part 5: vento aureo

Something tells me this is going to be a thing where i'm going to update this clinging on life support of a blog site of mine out of some necessity that isn't just "oh i was bored" once a year. Well that's what i thought at first, but i have talked about it before where i'd like to try out making reviews on here instead, and hopefully try doing it often this time. So how about it, let's talk about the 5th part of jojo's bizarre adventure: vento aureo.

Vento aureo has been something i wanted to talk about for some time after i was done reading all 17 volumes and 155 chapters of it and i'll just come right out and say it: part 5 of jojo is very flawed, but at it's best it's just okay.

Before i go on with the review, i wanna go into the manga's history and significance within the JJBA community just so we're all up to speed with everything and also i just like to make myself feel smart for once in my life.

Up until now, vento aureo has divided the jojo fanbase for a long time now, not because of the manga itself, but most likely because of one thing: the manga scanlations. Jojo is notoriously known for many things one can't count on a single hand alone, one of them is it's awful, yet laughably bad and sometimes meme worthy manga fan translations, just ask diamond is unbreakable.

As for vento aureo, it's not nearly as amateurish as DiU (or "DUWANG" as the fans would say), but the quality is still really poor. Much like DiU, however, vento aureo was translated into english from a chinese translation which was also was a translation of the original japanese release. Yeah, it's inspection levels of sloppy-ness. What makes vento's case worse however is that, while DiU bad scans make for an entertaining read because of how bad it is, vento's scans were not just the only scans of it available at the time, but it also hindered the part's overall storytelling quality. Characters are rendered as dull and uninteresting and the stands themselves were made to be overly more complicated than they needed to be (especially one in particular that i'll touch upon later). Thankfully those days are over and done with and the jojo manga now has seen far better days.

Anyways as usual, i've rambled on for a bit, so let's dive right into part 5 vento aureo.

Part 5 takes place in italy in the year 2001 and follows 15 year old giorno giovanna and his quest to join and later become the boss of the well known and influential mafia group passione. Eventually giorno joins a small group that's part of passione led by the ruthless, yet kind hearted bruno buccialati who shares the same ideals as giorno in wanting to make their town a safer place by getting rid of any and all corruption, even going as far as to take down passione's powerful, yet extremely secretive boss diavolo.

                         

So vento aureo takes on a more different formula, once again, in jojo, where's as the series would focus on adventurers or high schoolers taking larger than life supernatural forces, this time it's all about the mafia. It's gangsters fighting other gangsters, but with stands this time and i have to say, part 5 has some incredible stands. Giorno's gold experience brings life to inanimate objects, buccialati's sticky fingers can make zippers on anything including himself. There's others like metallica, beach boy, little feet, white album, moody blues, and the stand that just works, king crimson. Hirohiko araki never ceases to create some incredible stands which, in term, make for some interesting fights. Speaking of which, vento aureo is known for being very action heavy, there's hardly a moment where there's breathing room and the main gang are constantly thrown into dangerous and damn near hectic fight scenes. As fun and engaging as the fight scenes are, it actually leads to my first problem with part 5. Because of the constant fights, we usually don't have enough time for the characters to fully develop and be fleshed out in my personal opinion. Especially someone like pannacotta fugo who find just doesn't seem to stand out that much to me compared to everyone else in buccialati's group. Narancia's a lovable foul mouthed dork, mista's laid back personality and his fear over the number 4 makes him an enjoyable character, plus he's good with a gun. Abbacchio i don't care much for as a person, but i'll give him some slack for having a sympathetic backstory and also having moody blues for a stand. Finally buccialati is just a great guy, despite his kind heart takes his role as a gangster seriously and is willing to commit brutal acts of violence even if it means doing what he thinks is right.

I left giorno for last because i want to take the time to talk about how i feel about him overall. Giorno is often

regarded as being the weakest, sometimes even the worst, main jojo and after reading part 5 i can see why people would think that. My biggest problem  with giorno is that he's way too static for a main protagonist, there are times throughout the whole manga where he just doesn't seem interesting as a character and feels even bland at times. He doesn't even develope as a character either, he's no different from when he started out in the beginning to how he is at the end except he became a lot stronger than before. So is it true that he's the worst jojo? Maybe, but to me, wouldn't write him off as being unlikeable because he definitely isn't. He has a strong resolve, is really smart and has shown to make quick decisions despite the situations he's in, plus the guy's fashionable as hell.

              Next is what i consider the worst, most disappointing part of vento aureo, it's main antagonist and passione's boss diavolo. This guy is honestly, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst main villain in all of jojo's bizarre adventure, but first let's get the two good things about him out of the way real quick. This guy has one of the series most powerful stands, king crimson. It has the power to erase up to 10 seconds of time and predict upcoming events within those 10 seconds. Going back to the scans for a moment, king crimson's complex power was made 10x more convoluted and confusing in the aforementioned scans which led to people throwing their arms up in the air and proclaiming that it just works. Again, those days are long gone and king crimson's powers are a bit more easier to understand now. The last thing that's diavolo's most interesting aspect about him is his split personality, doppio vinegar. A meek and lanky looking teenager who's diavolo's under boss. So incase you didn't realized it yet, diavolo's split personality disorder is so severe and fucked up he also changes his physical appearance as well. As insane as that is, that leads into the biggest issue with diavolo: nothing about him is explained.
See, despite having a backstory, so much of diavolo, from his actions to his past are shrouded in mystery and riddled with nonsense. As mentioned earlier, diavolo is a secretive individual, making for damn sure no one knows who he is, even going as far as to kill his daughter and sever his only bloodline to make it seem like he never existed. He'd also would take about the past and how "In order to grow, we must defeat the mistakes of our past". Yet it's never made clear why he does most of all the thing he's done. What i love about the main jojo villains is that, no matter how despicable they are, they have an understandable reason for why they do the things they do. Dio, for as cartoonishly evil as he can be, strives for power, but his beginnings in part 1 make this more clearer, kira is a methodical serial killer and fetishist who can't help that he has these urges of his, enrico pucci and funny valentine both think they're doing the right thing despite the terrible things they do. Diavolo has none of this, he has as much reasoning as a shitty minor villain from anywhere in jojo, that's not a good thing at all for a main villain to be. The whole thing is never explained either, because of how bad his disorder is, it would mean that diavolo suffered some sort of abuse or trauma growing up, but unsurprisingly, that too never gets explained. The most that we got was that diavolo was born in a female prison and was sent to live with a priest on his mom's home island. The priest that he lived with seemed like a nice guy so how and why diavolo is so bonkers, well, the world may never know.

What makes all this worse is that by the time we learn about diavolo, part 5's almost over! The whole manga makes him out to be this mysterious and haunting individual, but he isn't fully revealed until close to the end, which is why i find diavolo's presence just incredibly underwhelming. Then there's his death, which is the most unnecessary fate i've ever seen a character like diavolo to receive. After getting his ass handed to him by giorno and his newly upgraded gold experience requiem, diavolo is forced to live an endless cycle of death; being brought back to life and to die again, over and over again. Let me explain why he doesn't deserve this fate all.

Earlier in his life, he tortured and possibly mutilated his own mom and burned down the village he was living when he was 19. Then around the time he formed passione, they pretended they were fighting against the drug trade, but were actually aiding it behind the scenes. While we can't be sure about what he has directly and indirectly caused during and before the start of part 5, it's easy to say that he's a bad person, but he doesn't deserve something this extreme simply because it's so unnecessary and total overkill too.

I'm sorry for going off on diavolo, i just feel really strongly about this character that i had to say what i need to and yes, i know i said that this was a review, but i always ramble on when going on a specific topic. Plus, i never said this was going to be a traditional style review anyways.

So bottom line, would i recommend jojo part 5 vento aureo? Yes i would. Here's the thing, despite my complaints, i don't consider part 5 to be the worst part, i don't believe there's such a thing as a bad part in all of jojo's bizarre adventure. Yes there are many problems that plague the story, but at least it's never too boring and still retains a good fun factor from the insane fights. Also as a bonus, part 5 gives a more indepth look at how the arrows came to be which is one of the more intriguing moments in the whole manga. Anyways, i'm done, go read some jojo, especially this one, just make sure the scans you find aren't duwang quality.