Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 5: Golden Wind vol. 3

We left off last time dealing with the story of the incredible shrinking mafioso.  Narancia was the shortest member of Bruno’s gang and he started to get a lot shorter after being hit with the Stand known as Tiny Feet.  His troubles only increase in this volume as he winds up having to deal with an opponent who has returned to regular size and has a convenient spider at his disposal (arachnophobes beware!).  Once that’s taken care of, the trio of Giorno, Abbachio, and Fugo are sent to the ruins of Pompeii to pick up a key that will allow them to transport the boss’ daughter in safety.  If you guessed that they wind up running into another Stand user and become embroiled in a conflict that will finally show us Fugo’s Stand in action, then you guessed right.  But did you also guess that this fight will involve a highly contagious virus as well?  After sorting through all of this, you’d think that the crew would be entitled to some R&R.  This is exactly what they get, while being tracked by two more Stand Users who are able to turn growing old and fishing into a special kind of horror story.

Described like that, vol. 3 sounds like a lot of “Guys go here, fight a Stand User.”  It certainly is, but that’s basically every “Jojo” story in a nutshell.  If there’s any problem with the fights here, it’s that they’re in the service of some relatively simple plot advancements – going from point A to point B, a fetch quest, etc.  These fights, however, are still impressively weird by this series’ increasingly high standards.  While Narancia’s battle finishes off explosively, the volume’s main attraction is the battle between Giorno, Abbachio, and Fugo against a Stand User who has a mirror gimmick that may seem familiar, but is strikingly different compared to the kind that we’ve seen before.  The battle is a satisfyingly twisty clash of wits and tactics that ends on a head-slappingly dumb bit of medical science.  It’s not quite as aggravating as the fact that the Boss’s Daughter has yet to receive a proper name or more than a handful of lines total.  Still, the positives outweigh the negatives in this volume and this arc picks up a little more steam overall.