Jojo Part 5: Golden Wind Review

Jojo Part 5 really wasn't the revival of hope for the series that I wanted it to be. I found Part 3 and 4 to be dull and I thought Part 5 with it's whole Italian Mafia angle to be interesting and possibly reignite interest in the series. I love movies like Godfather and Goodfellas so a fighting shonen anime where it's inspired by those stories sounds super interesting on paper and would at least put it on the realm of average if the execution wasn't that great but I was wrong, the show isn't really much like those before mentioned mob movies, in fact, I argue the Italian Mob angle is mostly just window dressing, what this series really is an amalgamation of Part 3 and 4 that just so happen to feature the Italian Mob.

The start of the show seems kind of promising since it's about Girono trying to get into the mafia and work his way and then destroy it from the inside and the early episodes seems like it's heading in that direction even with it's pointless cameos(yes cameos at best), appreances of Koichi and Jotaro. Then Trish gets introduced and what the story ultimately turns into is Part 3 but with an escort quest twist, I thought the story was going to about Girono getting into introduced into the family and he wins over their trust as he comes up with an epic plan to destory the mafia from the inside out, but that is all a lie, what it really is nothing more than a bunch of jobber fights much like Part 3 and a villain who is a mob boss who has a similar goal as Yoshikage Kira of not wanting to be found. So much of this series is basically just Girono and the gang fighting jobber after jobber after jobber, and I was mistakened for thinking I was watching Jojo Part 3 instead of a story about trust and betrayal. What I dislike about Jojo's Part 5 and by extension Part 3's jobber fights is that it's just padding and getting inbetween the main destination, it's hard to get attached to villains who die in the very same fight they get introduced in, most of the villains in Part 3 and 5 are like this, and it gets old real fast, they fight, they struggle against jobber and then win, there isn't enough interesting shakeups or change in pace to distract that most of Part 3 and 5 are just fighting jobbers. On top of that, Part 3 at least had more of an attachment of seeing it through to the end with the whole return of Dio Brando, but in Part 5, all they do is go after a mafia boss who isn't even named for the longest time. What makes me dislike the escort quest more than I already do is that the Mafia Boss wants to kill Trish after episodes of Girono's group protecting her from the hitmen squad, so if the hitmen killed Trish by accident, the series would've been over way faster, and I doubt the hitmen would've gotten anywhere since she knows nothing of Divavolo, if the hitmen killed her through interrogation, it would save the Diavolo a lot of trouble, so either way, the escort quest was ultimately pointless in the grand scheme of things. Speaking of pointless, Polarneff pops up later in the show with hardly any foreshadowing beforehand and he never once asked Jotaro and the gang over at Morioh for help to defeat Diavolo, considering Jotaro was investigating Girono earlier on in the show, why didn't he show up at the end of Part 5? It's a red herring in the worst kind of way, I thought superhero comics handled this an awkward way, but this puts those to shame. Another red herring is that the story barely does anything with Girono being the son of Dio Brando, it felt like a super pointless connection to an established character, not enough is done with it to make this plot point feel substantial, you could make Girono a powerful stand user and cut the Koichi and Jotaro stuff out and nothing would change.

Then you got an overly dragged out final few fights one with another boring jobber and his lackey and I got so bored that I decided to play video games and watch this series at the same time, and then you have a really dragged out final fight which is undermined by a pointless flashback with Buciarati's gang about fate and how they are going to defy it but I already know this since they already did it. Speaking of Buciariti, he's a decent enough character that kind of helped me get through this show and in fact he feels like more of a main character than Girono does since he always keeps the team in check and his reasons for taking down Diavolo was more interesting than Girono since Diavolo was a liar and a hypocrite and wanted to free the organization of that.

Then you get to the ending and I am really supposed to believe that the mob would accept a teenager they hardly know as head of the family and there would be no civil war sparked over this. Honestly, as much I am not big on revenge stories as a whole, 91 Days was a far better Italian Mafia anime than this was and I would rather watch that instead and I would also rather watch other fighting shonen like DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto and Saint Seiya for fights and villains I actually care about and want to see get beaten. As a drama I don't find Jojo Part 5 very good and as a fighting story I don't find it very good.