We’ve been told that Giorno is the son of Dio, but our golden boy doesn’t display his father’s trademark ruthlessness until he passes Polpo’s test to enter Passione. Polpo’s stand, Black Sabbath, killed an innocent old man in its fight against Giorno and Koichi, but the capo sees it as nothing more than collateral damage. In his eyes, even murder is justifiable to protect his own honor.

Giorno silently transforms a gun inside Polpo’s cell into a banana and leaves without another word. He thinks, “When someone insults you, even murder is forgivable? You insulted that old man’s life, so you should savor your last meal as best you can.” At the same time, we see Polpo open the banana and realize too late that he’s put a loaded gun into his mouth. Black Sabbath frantically tries to save its master, but a blood splatter on the wall is all that’s left of them a mere moment later. Giorno is a stone-cold savage!

Mista gets shot by his own bullets so often that fans have started charting his friendly fire ratio per episode, but at least he manages to look cool doing it. His most badass moment comes at the end of his and Giorno’s battle with Ghiaccio, the hot-tempered hitman with a near-impenetrable suit of ice armor. They’ve got him trapped against a pole with a shard of metal poking into his neck, but the wound isn’t deep enough to deal the finishing blow.

Burning up with resolve, Mista empties clip after clip into Giacchio to push him onto the metal spike, somehow still standing even after the enemy’s stand causes every bullet to ricochet back into him. His determination is so strong that he’s willing to sacrifice his life to carry out the mission. But luckily, after an... intimate... healing session with Giorno, he’s back on his feet for the next battle.

David Productions really seems to love La Squadra Esecuzioni, and we can’t complain when their additions to the team’s introduction scenes are so fantastic. We love how demented Formaggio seems when he takes out a target by slipping a shrunken car into the man’s wine and then returning it to normal size, blowing him to pieces and crushing his girlfriend underneath the tires.

Sorbet’s death also had a few details added that made the scene even more shocking than it was in the manga. Pesci realizes that the chopped up body is Sorbet by recognizing the nail polish that he and Gelato always wore, and the perpetrators of the murder are revealed to be an infamous villain pair from late in the series. These are hardened criminals who stop at nothing to get what they want, but now we almost feel bad for them!

Early in the manga, Bucciarati’s gang defeats the low-level thug Zucchero and tortures him for information. But since they’re the most flamboyant gangsters ever to be given life with an ink pen, their interrogation method is a little... unorthodox. Mista rigs up Zucchero’s head so that his eye is slowly being burned by the sun like an ant under a microscope, and Narancia cranks up some bumpin’ beats so he can dance in the mobster’s face.

The dance only lasts for four panels in the manga, but David Productions spared no expense in making the anime version worth waiting 23 years for. Narancia, Mista, and Fugo bust some fly moves to a song resembling Prince’s “P. Control” while psychedelic imagery blares across the screen to the tune of Zucchero’s suffering. It comes out of nowhere and leaves just as quickly, but this moment is so quintessentially JoJo that we love every second of it.

Our fearless leader Bucciarati has already had his fair share of tense and exciting fights, but his fateful battle with the boss in the historic church of San Giorgio Maggiore is our favorite. This is the moment where we’re first introduced to the time-skipping stand King Crimson (which is thankfully pretty well explained in the anime version) and realize how invincible it truly is.

Bucciarati uses every strategy he can think of to outwit his shadowy opponent, like riding his own zipper like a hookshot and punching past the boss to work around the time skip, but he ultimately ends up with a hole punched straight through his chest and just barely makes it out of the church alive with Trish in tow. King Crimson isn’t as famous a stand as The World or Killer Queen, but its power is just as frightening.