Through the sacrifices of many in Part 5—Golden Wind, Giorno Giovanna and his team have defeated the boss of the crime syndicate Passione. However, for one member who split off from the team halfway, Pannacotta Fugo, his story is far from over. Giorno, who now leads Passione, wishes to clean up the negative legacy left by the former boss by eliminating the organization's drug branch. He assigns the job to Fugo, who can either accept the shot at redemption or face the consequences.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Purple Smoke Distortion has a story by Kohei Kadono and illustrations by Hirohiko Araki. English translation is done by David Evelyn. Published by Viz Media (April 28, 2026).

Lucas DeRuyter
Rating:

Before I get too far into this review, can we take a minute to talk about how wild it is that we're finally getting an official localization of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Purple Smoke Distortion in 2026!?? There was a time not that long ago when the official English release of the mainline JJBA manga was about two decades behind what was currently being released in Japan! Hell, less than a decade ago, JoJo's was more known for being a wellspring of internet memes in the United States than an arguably foundational piece of work within the medium of manga. When I was getting into JoJo's Bizarre Adventure about a decade ago, I NEVER thought we'd get an ancillary piece of media like Purple Smoke Distortion officially released in the US, and I love how much one of my favorite media franchises has come up since then!

That being said, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Purple Smoke Distortion is…fine. It's no Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, but it's miles better than Crazy Diamond's Demonic Heartbreak. I think I like Purple Smoke Distortion about as much as Fujiko's Bizarre Worldly Wisdom -Whitesnake's Miscalculation-, but I have a soft spot for that particular spin-off, and I like them at about the same level for vastly different reasons. While Fujiko's Bizarre Worldly Wisdom uses the structure of a JJBA storyline for mangaka Shō Aimoto to express her own fixation with Shunga, or traditional erotic art, than Purple Smoke Distortion uses that same structure to essentially do a victory lap over how engaging and thematically dense the writing was in Part 5—Golden Wind.

Focusing on Pannacotta Fugo, the guy who didn't decide to rebel against Diavolo and the gang Passione with the other part five JoBros and whose outfit looks like it's made out of Kraft Singles Swiss Cheese slices, Purple Smoke Distortion follows his redemption story as he's tasked with destroying the narcotics team responsible for Passione's former drug trade. Two new JoBros join him in this battle against a new batch of dastardly villains, but none of them are really memorable enough to be worth mentioning in this review.

In fact, Purple Smoke Distortion spends what feels like most of its 260-some pages relitigating the events of Golden Wind, but with Fugo making the subtextual themes of the story more obvious to motivate his own personal growth. Like, I understood that Narancia swimming to the boat to defend Trish in Golden Wind was an acknowledgement of how this group's shared disenfranchisement is what made them a found family, I don't need that to be hit over the head with those themes in this work too. Though I imagine my issues with Purple Smoke Distortion would be resolved with Fugo being a more interesting lead character. I always thought that JJBA's mangaka, Hirohiko Araki, wrote him out of Golden Wind to both demonstrate how the stakes were rising and because his powerset is difficult to create scenarios for, and never really missed Fugo in the back half of that story. I like that Fugo gets a redemption arc, but there's a reason it's a side-story and not in the main text; and that reason is that he's boring.

That being said, Purple Smoke Distortion writer, Kouhei Kadono, does a better job keeping his penchant for references in check here than in Crazy Diamond's Demonic Heartbreak. A certain part one and part two specific artifact makes a surprise appearance that had me DiCaprio pointing, and even just a few new scenes with characters like Mista and Giorno make up for the rest of the work feeling a bit underbaked. With all of that being said, if you're a JoJo's diehard, you'll probably get as much out of this work as I did, but if you're a more casual fan or less, you probably shouldn't put any time into it.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Can one of the longest-running complex fandoms in all of anime and manga grab the attention of a newbie mid-stream? Yes, at least in part.

Purple Smoke Distortion was originally published in 2011 as part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 25th anniversary. Set as a sequel to the events in Part 5—Golden Wind, this seems like a really steep learning curve for someone whose primary experience with Jojo's is Steel Ball Run when I was getting Ultra Jump monthly for the years when Hayate X Blade was running in it.

As a result of being set at the end of a story, the beginning of this book has some of the most ridiculous expository dialogue I've ever read. Two people who were involved in the events of Golden Wind are clearly discussing things for me, specifically—i.e., a reader who doesn't know the people or events. “As you remember...,” someone says, and “Yes, of course, and as you recall…” is the reply in a way that no human ever speaks. Once that is over with and we are force-fed all the people and the politics of the organization, and the reasons why Fugo and his team are after the Drug Team, and a lot of other information, the battles begin.

And then, the book is pretty good, honestly. How people's Stands work, who they can affect, and why, are fairly standard magic-like stuff. The gritty emotions behind everyone's actions are where the novel began to grow on me. Well, towards the end, I still wasn't sure if I should care who lived or died, since two sides of the same criminal organization are all mostly the same from my perspective, but the book ended deep in the realm of the emotional connections between people, and several of the sociopaths we are following have good moments. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fans will undoubtedly love this book. As I read, finished, and continued thinking about it, I've come to think it is worth reading.