Last week’s episode genuinely feels like a month ago to me. Not because of anything to do with the show, but it’s been so incredibly busy these past two weeks that I’ve felt exhausted for days on end. Now that I have some sleep under my belt and a full week of fall break ahead of me it’s time to sit down, relax and enjoy some strange desert adventures. This is probably my brain activating way too late, but was Robinson a reference to the Simon & Garfunkel song? It has to be a song or band because Araki, but I didn’t make the link until I heard Johnny call him “Mrs Robinson”. Anyway, the point here is that he might have also been after the bounty on Gyro’s head and I hope we learn some more about what that is all about so that we can get this tension out in the open and dealt with. I will say – seeing the opening again – it is slowly growing on me. I doubt I’ll like it nearly as much as some of the classics, but it’s not a bad song by any means. I wonder if we’ll get any alternative versions of it.

It looks like the gambit to go through the desert paid off as Johnny, Gyro, Mountain Tim and this weirdo named Oye are currently a day ahead of the main pack, at a town built to serve as the halfway point for this leg of the race. The episode is called “a terrorist from a faraway country” and I’m curious if that refers to this new guy or if it refers to Gyro. I think my question gets answered pretty quickly. Oye finds a note in Gyro’s belongings talking about a zombie horse that the king has prepared for him. Meanwhile Oye is here to kill Gyro. They’re presumably from the same country which I believe we learned in an earlier episode is Italy? Either way, Mountain Tim gets blown to bits – or escapes – by Oye’s stand ability while Gyro and Johnny are doing some shopping. And I’m sorry, but are you telling me that Johnny has been lugging that wheelchair around all this time? That or the Steel Ball Run office is kind enough to provide one for him, which would be incredibly based of them.

Speaking of being based, Tim literally tore his body apart with his stand ability to survive the blast of the explosion, but it looks like it did some serious damage to the cowboy. This fight looks to be set up wonderfully by Araki. We get Mountain Tim to figure out how the ability works by getting hit by it, then we get Gyro disabled by the power because he now knows not to open his hand, but that also means he can’t do anything which probably means that this will be another chance for Johnny to grow and perhaps discover more about his newfound abilities. Oye’s voice sounds really familiar though, let me look it up. Ah, it’s Noriyaki Sugiyama (Sasuke from Naruto and Ishida from Bleach). Wait, Ishida and Sasuke have the same voice actor? These people are talented, I never realized this. I hear Ishida in his voice here a lot more than Sasuke. Either way, he’s a terrorist who killed up to 5 innocents back in Gyro’s home country.

This bombing ability is weird as hell. It looks like Oye leaves his skin behind on other people to make it explode. When it mixes with sweat it gets slippery and the pins start to come loose and while under the effect of this ability you also start to sweat more. The stand name is “Tic Tac Boom” by the way, or at least in English it is. It’s probably different from the Japanese name because they don’t want to infringe on any copyright laws here in the west. In Japan everything is blatantly named after artists and songs which I think should be allowed, it’s not harming the income or popularity of those songs and people and everyone with even the slightest bit of awareness can separate these characters from the artists they’re named after, but historically they didn’t want to take that risk over here. But enough yapping, we need to chase after Oye who is trying to get the zombie horse after blowing up Gyro’s leg.

I will say, for someone who has only had this stand ability for about four days he knows how to deal with it quite well. Using the water to distribute the pins is a smart move and it probably would have worked on any lesser jockey than these two. They speed through the explosions in a very cool segment. It’s good to see that Johnny is starting to learn how to use his ability and can apply it to things around him. He uses it to take out the wasps that are attacking them but somewhere in the confusion Gyro gets hit. It looks like this guy can even attach the pins to cigarette smoke. Although I doubt this is just a normal cigarette with how much smoke is coming out. It’s looking pretty dire for the boys. But of course they had a plan. Johnny uses his nails to spin some spiderwebs around and in the moment of distraction, Gyro manages to hit Oye with both of his steel balls. Terrorist down and out. I just hope Mountain Tim is already, he seemed like a cool dude.