I spent way too long this morning figuring out if I had somehow missed an episode or where I was going wrong only to realize after several minutes that I had simply gave last week’s episode the wrong name. I named it episode 4, but it was in fact episode 5. I have of course changed it since then but it is a sign that even though I’ve been sleeping a ton the past few days, I might still need more sleep. Luckily the time change is this weekend and we get an extra hour between Saturday and Sunday. I’m not a big fan of the time change in general, but most of my dislike is aimed at the change in spring where we lose an hour. Anyway, you’re here for more JoJo.

Last week we dealt with a creepy assassin named Oye who tried to kill Gyro and take the large bounty on his head. Despite having a very dangerous stand ability, he didn’t quite make the cut. Now our duo are on the road to find this zombie horse that a letter to Gyro was talking about. I’m curious if this will end up being a horse with a stand or something else. Spoiler, it was something else. Apparently it’s just some thread that is turned into a mural and when you stitch it into your wound it should help with the healing. A gift from the king. I’m not quite certain if they’re alluding to this king also being related to Gyro as family or not, but we learn at least as much that his father was a doctor. Gyro also doesn’t believe either the string or the steel balls have anything to do with stands.

I get my answers quickly – as usual – and we see that a young Gyro opens the door for a visitor, who summons Gyro’s father to the castle. This takes place in the kingdom of Naples, and although there is no link between part 5 and part 7 from what I know, it is curious they’re going back to Italy. And here we learn a little bit about the power of spin. Gyro is a Zeppeli after all and if you remember in part 1, it was Zeppeli who taught us about Hamon. These people have been special in each part of Jojo they appeared in. So Gyro’s father teaches Gyro how to use the power of spin so he’s ready by the age of 13. It does seem incredibly cruel to have a 13 year old join his father for the day as the king’s executioner. And of course this is all done for effect, but at least prepare the boy for it beforehand.

Let’s actually take a step back and look at the real world for a second. We’ve probably all heard about the botched execution taking place in the United States recently. A woman who murdered someone quite brutally has been awaiting her execution for decades only for the person administering the injection to not quite get the vein right. What they bring up in this anime is the fact that an executioner needs to be very familiar with how the human body works, which makes sense. But in the modern world, doctors swear an oath to never harm someone on purpose. This does tend to leave the type of people who do end up administering lethal doses to prisoners to be the less scrupulous people. If this is you, I’m sorry, but I don’t have a high opinion of you. When Araki talks about this being a reality and someone having to do it, I can understand the concept in an older society, but it’s 2026 here, most modern countries have long since outlawed capital punishment and for good reason. Not only is it apparently very expensive because it takes a lot of prep and expensive drugs, but it’s also botched more often than you would think. And finally, sometimes they get the wrong person. That last one is the big reason why I’m fully opposed to the death penalty. I don’t want to go into too long of a tangent about the prison system in general, but I’m of the opinion that most sentencing should be focused on rehabilitation. I’m not naive enough to believe that there aren’t people who cannot rehabilitate, and I also do not believe I’m smart enough to know what we should be doing with those people, but I don’t think killing them – when the chance is there that we got the wrong person – is the way to go. But enough of that, let’s go back to our fictional ball-wielding gentlemen.

It looks like I’m not the only one who has second thoughts about this whole thing. A young urchin named Marco is sentenced to death for treason, which is probably just a way to get rid of a nuisance. Gyro is a kind soul. The spin is not meant for hurt but for peace. He will not put an innocent boy to death just because the king tells him so. We see the difference between someone who chooses to follow orders and someone who chooses to think for themselves. I can empathize with Gyro’s father’s way of thinking. You have a job to do and doing it well causes the least suffering. But you can’t change the system that way.

I knew this was going to make me like Gyro, but I’m glad I wasn’t wrong. We get his motivation here. I thought when this backstory started that he would just save the kid and run, but instead he is running to save the kid. If he can get the king to give out a royal pardon after he wins the Steel Ball Run, then the boy can be saved. He will still have to go back to Naples afterwards to become an executioner, but we’ll see how that pans out as the story continues. For now we have to deal with legally distinct Stroheim from JoJo part 2. Fortunately this doesn’t take long and we go back to finding out more about Gyro. He doesn’t tell Johnny a lot about himself, but at least he shares a little bit about himself here.

Before we leave and go to the next episode we get a pretty creepy visual of what is undoubtedly someone’s stand ability in which Johnny’s hand gets opened up like a zipper (shoutout to Buciaratti from part 5) and his meat and muscles fall out. That’s some pretty creepy stuff to end an episode on.