Ever since the part 4 anime was announced, I have been rereading the part before the anime comes out. This way, the media is fresh in my mind and I can more easily find differences between the manga and the anime, such as what the anime cuts out or what they decide to add that the manga chose not to. One of the more prominent examples of this is from part 5, where the manga chose to go more in depth with some of the backstory of the protagonists of Team Buccellati. If you would like to, you can also do this read along with me and a couple friends who are doing this with me. We will be reading ten chapters per week, come together to talk about it and then afterwards I will write up my thoughts combined with some of their thoughts in this blog. Due to this being a read along, I won't be going over everything that happens in the chapters, as I assume you the reader have also read the chapters recently; I will just be going over the important parts, my thoughts on them a...

JoJo's part 5 has concluded. We have mulled over and thought about the ending of this great anime for a few days now. The fans have a lot left to think about. A large focal point in this particular part is fate; fate is something that has a grasp on everyone and it shapes all lives. Diavolo believed in this wholeheartedly and even up until the end believed that he was the one that was destined to wield the powerful stand arrow and unlock the true power of King Crimson. However this was not the case and fate was actually smiling upon the main protagonist: Giorno. Giorno was the one that was able to unlock Gold Experience Requiem and was able to defeat Diavolo by sending him into a never-ending loop of almost dying but then being thrown into a completely different scenario and almost dying again and so on and so forth. Giorno was also rightfully placed and the boss of Passione, successfully completing the dream he and Buccellati shared: to wipe drugs out from the streets of Italy....

With this episode we meet two of the boss's most fearsome stand users: Cioccolata and Secco with the stands Green Day and Oasis respectively. With what we see in this episode, Cioccolata is a psychologicaly messed up individual with a bloody and serial killer-esque past. Secco is rather loyal to Cioccolata, sometimes even acting like a dog. This dynamic between these two draw some similarities between Pesci and Prosciutto. However, it seems that Cioccolata is much more sadistic than Prosciutto and Secco seems to have lower intelligence as opposed to Pesci. However, that does not make them any less dangerous. These two are the two that the boss hand picked to defeat Buccellati's team. We have already seen just how terrifying Cioccolata's stand power can be. He could easily kill the entirety of the protagonists unless they can think on their feet and figure out exactly what to do to defeat this particular stand. A secret individual also brought up to Buccellati's crew...

No one is safe in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Abbacchio was killed by the boss of Passione. We knew from the boss's previous statements that Abbacchio was one of his main targets due to the fact that once Abbacchio uses Moody Blues's replay ability where the boss took a photo, they could discover his real face. The audience knew that he was a target and yet it was still a surprise to everyone who witnessed this moment for the first time. We haven't had a main character die in Golden Wind and the closest thing we had to a main character dying in Diamond is Unbreakable was when Yoshikage Kira blew up Shigechi. Before that we had the deaths of Kakyoin, Iggy and Avdol in Stardust Crusaders, which was a heavy blow to everyone watching JoJo's at the time. So the JoJo fan base has been blessed with no major character deaths for all of part 4 and a majority of part 5. Abbacchio was a character who was hard to hate in my opinion. Sure, he didn't like the main charact...

Araki has been a fan of gore in order to emphasize just how villainous a bad guy is or how bloody and painful an injury is. He uses this method of thinking perfectly in this episode. Nero, the stand user with Metallica, has a terrifying ability that can easily win fights, hence the reason he is the leader of the Hitman Squad, also called La Squadra. He is a skilled assassin and he reminds us of this at every part of this fight. In fact, he even figures out the boss's identity even before our main protagonist. This fight also was not just a fight to give the bad guy a power up or anything like that. Nero gave the boss a run for his money and the boss almost lost to Nero's dangerous stand ability. Luck was on the boss's side however and Nero dies to Narancia's Aerosmith. The end to this fight felt extremely clever and well thought out from Araki. Maybe he made Narancia's stand work like that just to defeat Nero like this? Or perhaps Araki is just really good at thin...

We kick off this new episode with a woman giving birth in an all female prison, which baffles the guards. They ask the pregnant woman who the father is and she responds that he has been dead for two years. Going forward a few years, we learn that the boy was adopted by a priest. The priest starts digging into his own room with a pick axe so he could make room for a garage to house a car for the boy he adopted and he finds a woman under the floorboards. Her mouth is sewn shut and it turns out that she is the mother to the boy the priest adopted. The boy catches the priest in the act and kills him, followed by burning that town they live in to the ground. Returning to the present, that same boy, who is now an adolescent, tries to save a kid from getting hit by a truck and instead, he falls in a puddle and his briefcase is destroyed. A fortune teller talks to the teenager who we learn later is named Doppio. The fortune teller states that Doppio is from Sardinia, he has a dark secret and t...

Trish understands that if she moves towards Giorno's brooch on the ground, Notorious B.I.G will attack her. She contemplates running to the closet and hiding, but Trish notices the fact that the chairs on the plane all have a button to automatically recline them. She click it and Notorious B.I.G attacks the chair. Trish realizes that she must move slower than the speed at which the reclining chair is moving, else the enemy stand will strike. She slowly makes her way towards the brooch while reclining more chairs along the way. Suddenly, Notorious B.I.G attacks her boot. There is dripping liquid falling from her boot from a broken bottle, which is what attracted Notorious B.I.G's attention. Trish's boot slips right off of her foot, almost like her boot split in two to allow her foot out. Trish hears a voice, which turns out to be her new stand Spice Girl (subbed to Spicy Lady). Spice Girl tells Trish that she was the one that slipped her boot off; she also instructs Trish to...

The team leave Venice via a boat and head to an airport, where they believe they will be safer in the air. They will take an airplane to Sardinia, where they can find more info on the backstory of the mysterious boss of Passione. Moody Blues is used to start the plane and eventually fly it as well. Narancia notices someone coming to the plane they are boarding due to his Aerosmith's detection. Mista warns him to step back, but he keeps moving forward and reveals his stand, so Mista shoots him dead. Giorno checks to be sure that he is truly dead, which he is, and wonders why that fight was so easy. They get into the air after Giorno confirms that there are no other living creatures on the plane besides them. Trish reveals that she remembers her mom talking about Cala di Volpe - The fox's tail - when she talked about her dad, which is a resort in Sardinia. Giorno hears noises coming from a freezer on the plane and asks Mista to be ready to shoot. They open it and find fingers in ...

Talking Head is still within Narancia's mouth and Clash has chomped down into Giorno's neck as we kick off this episode. Clash is pulling Giorno underwater with it and teleports to dodge the incoming attacks from Aerosmith. Squalo is attempting to finish off Giorno so Narancia's Aerosmith cannot track them, but Clash has to keep teleporting so it doesn't get shot by Narnacia's stand. Narancia attemps to shoot at Clash, but mises and hits Giorno. Clash escapes into the sewers to finish off Giorno, but Tiziano notices that Narancia said "They got away" and Talking Head's ability would not allow Narancia to say that if that was true, so he tells Squalo that Narancia knows where Clash took Giorno. The gas emitting from the bullet holes on Giorno allowed Narancia to track them. Aerosmith lands hits on Clash, wounding Squalo. Clash teleports to a pot boiling on a stove and Narancia shoots that pot, wounding Clash even further. However, that was part of Squal...

Giorno starts to notice strange things happen as the team waits on the boat for Buccellati. Time starts to skip for them and Giorno notices this. He finds out later that this is due to King Crimson's ability. Giorno decides to head to the church where Buccellati was supposed to meet the boss. Buccellati has been punched right through his stomach by King Crimson, but Buccellati counterattacks by turning the hole into a closed zipper and trapping King Crimson's fist in there. Buccellati lands a successful blow, but King Crimson walks through time, dodging a barrage of blows from Sticky Fingers. King Crimson chops right into Buccellati's shoulder, causing massive damage. The boss goes to finish off Trish, but the ladybug pendent that Buccellati got from Giorno and planted on the boss sucks him into it. The ladybug was actually Coco Jumbo and this bought Buccellati precious time. He opens a zipper in the floor and tosses the turtle into the pipes. Buccellati attempts to drag hi...

Following the rigorous fight between Prosciutto and Pusci and Buccellati's team, we see a new member from the Hitman Team named Melone start to pursue the protagonists. A woman on the train is complaining about delays and Melone appears in her room and begins to harass her. He pulls out a laptop and starts to input information about the woman into the laptop, such as her blood type, health and other things. The laptop then grows a small head and legs, to which Melone announces that this is his stand Babyface (subbed to Babyhead). His stand "impregnates" her and the thing that has been inserted into her begins to develop at a rapid pace. Snapping back to Buccellati's crew, they are riding in a truck whilst inside Coco Jumbo's stand ability Mr. President. Giorno beings to question if Trish has a stand. The truck crashes due to Sex Pistol's shenanigans, so the protagonists must find another mode of transportation. The woman that Melone visited awakens and the thi...

Prosciutto and Buccellati are being flung out of the speeding train they were on due to Buccellati creating a hole in the train and forcing both of them outside the train, but Pesci uses his Beach Boy to snag Prosciutto's hand to keep him from falling to his death. Buccellati has grabbed onto Prosciutto's legs so he does not fall as well. Buccellati uses Sticky Fingers to attack the fishing line attached to Prosciutto's hand, creating a zipper on Prosciutto's hand and forcing the fishing hook out of his body and reattaches it to Buccellati's own hand. Pesci notices the aging process has stopped on the passengers of the train, so he now knows that he does not have Prosciutto on his Beach Boy's hook anymore. Suddenly, the aging commences again and Buccellati notices that Prosciutto is still alive hanging on to life by laying on a railing on the bottom of the train. Pesci, with newfound resolve and inspiration due to Prosciutto still living and still using his stan...

Fugo is driving Giorno and Abbacchio to the dog mosaic in Pompeii in order to retrieve the key that Passione's boss put there. After a fit of anger from Fugo, they arrive and are met by an enemy stand user. Fugo sees a mysterious man in a mirror and warns the others that he is behind them. Looking behind them, no one is there. Realizing that he is not behind them, Fugo deduces that their enemy is within the mirror they are looking at. Fugo thinks quickly on his feet and shoves Giorno and Abbacchio away from the mirror. After doing so, Fugo is all alone and the enemy stand user appears in front of him. The enemy has detailed information on everyone in Buccellati's gang except for Giorno, who is new to the gang. Fugo realizes that they are within the mirror. This is the ability of the enemy stand Man in the Mirror (which is changed to Mirror Man in the subtitles). Abbacchio and Giorno are looking for Fugo, who just disappeared in front of them. The enemy facing Fugo asks him wher...

We pick up where we left off from the previous episode where Formaggio survived the Aerosmith attack by returning to his original size. Narancia has also become so small, his stand does little damage to larger threats. Narancia chooses to hide in a bottle until he can think of a way to beat Formaggio, but Formaggio corners him and traps him under his foot. Formaggio decides to torture Narancia until he tells him where Trish is. We briefly flash back to Narancia's past, where we learn that his mother died when Narancia was at a young age and his dad was cold-hearted and distant. Narancia joined a group of kids where he idolized the leader, which he called "Bro". He even dyed his hair the same color as Bro's (which is blonde) when Bro told him that he would look good with blonde hair. The next day, Narancia was arrested for breaking into an elderly woman's house. He was not the perpetrator, but the crime was pinned on him. Bro actually did the crime and set up the w...

Narancia has noticed that he is shrinking at an alarming rate due to Little Feet's ability. Back at the house where Buccellati's team is hiding Trish, they are staring to get worried, especially Fugo. Giorno points out that Narancia is taking a long time to get back. Trish is also getting impatient, wanting the shopping items she asked for. Narancia realizes that he needs to call Buccellati and tell them about this stand user and his ability to shrink people. The automatic door to a shop will not open due to how small Narancia has become. Shattering the door with Aerosmith, he tries to call Buccallati. Formaggio cuts the phone lines, making sure Narancia cannot call Buccellati. He knows that if the team knows that he has attacked Narancia, they will move Trish. Narancia's stand finds Formaggio hiding in his back pocket. Formaggio escapes by using the force of unshrinking a pen, but Aerosmith finds him quickly and shoots at him, wounding his leg. Formaggio hides in a sewage ...

Buccellati's gang are at a bathroom stitching up Mista's stomach wound, which Fugo does with a stapler. Buccellati states that they are close to the treasure, but Narancia notices people outside. Investigating, he is met by two janitors. Narancia pulls a knife on one, but she twists his arm and turns the scuffle. It is then revealed that the other janitor is actually a capo of Passione, Mr. Pericolo. He is there to collect the treasure Buccellati hid. Buccellati uses Sticky Fingers to hit a urinal, revealing the treasure hidden within. After checking the treasure, Mr. Pericolo gives Buccellati the title of capo, officially taking Polpo's place. Pericolo reveals that there was a job left unfinished that Polpo was assigned. The job is guarding the daughter of the mysterious boss of Passione. The other janitor is that daughter; her name is Trish. Her mother had died a couple of months ago and she asked a man named Solido Naso to be found. That name is one of many aliases that ...

Episode 8 kicks off with some back story to the main Buccellati member of this episode: Mista. We learn that Mista was laid back and lived a happy life. He would pick fights with people when he saw fit. One day, he saw a man assaulting a woman in a car and chose to intervene. More men pour out of the car and shot bullets at him, with none of these bullets hitting him. He picks up a gun and shoots all of them dead. This was the first time Mista has ever killed someone. Flashing forward to present day, we see Sale (the stand user Mista is up against) survived a bullet to the head that Mista shot at him previously. While on top of the moving truck, Sale reveals his stand Kraft Work (or Arts and Crafts). Mista pulls back to reload, but his hand is stuck to the truck. The driver reveals his hands are stuck to the steering wheel and his feet are stuck on the gas pedal as well. Mista notices the bullets Kraft Work deflected are now floating around Sale. Mista has the realization that his stan...