Hello, friends, and welcome back! I managed to bring my laptop with me on this trip, so here we are, a comparison live from Vienna! Are you ready to take a good, long, very in-depth look at Vento Aureo #13, “Man in the Mirror and Purple Haze”? Well, for the sake of this post I’ll assume you are, otherwise we’d never get started!

Get something to snack on, friends, because this is going to be a very long one!

• Let’s start this off with two retouched faces, on Abbacchio and Giorno:

• Here, both Illuso and Fugo are noticeably darker, Illuso’s face has been retouched, Fugo is significantly blurrier and the shot is more distorted around the edges:

• Here, a couple of shadows on Fugo are looking a little better…:

• And here, at the end of the same sequence, Fugo’s ear no longer has the same colour as his hair and his tie doesn’t disappear anymore:

• Here, Illuso’s jacket latch has been flipped horizontally (ya know, because it’s a reflection), his mouth has been moved to the right by quite a significant amount and the shading near his left eye is looking a little better:

• During this bit the bottom of the frame is not as dark, the light effects are a little brighter and there are more “splashes” of light accompanying said effects:

• Here Abbacchio actually has a mouth, and he’s shaded in a slightly different manner:

• Said mouth is also ANIMATED!! HE SPEAKS!!!!! (it might be too tiny to spot on some screens, my bad):

• Here, Abbacchio’s eyes have been recoloured, his eyelashes retouched and his forehead shaded a little better and retouched as well:

• And, in addition to that, Man in the Mirror’s fingerprints on his arm have been recoloured correctly as well:

• For some bizarre reason, the BDs introduced an error here. In some frames, the space between Man in the Mirror’s middle and ring finger has been incorrectly recoloured gray:

• And here, a bunch of details on Man in the Mirror’s helmet have been recoloured, and Abbacchio’s face has been retouched as well:

• This animation starts out already zoomed out:

• Here Illuso has been completely recoloured and his mouth area has been retouched as well:

• And this beatdown is now brighter and sharper:

• A bunch of details have been retouched/reshaded/recoloured here. Lookin’ good, Illuso:

• Here, Illuso’s face has been retouched and is also bloodier (it’s not easy to spot, but it’s there):

• And here, he stands up more:

• This close shot at Illuso’s face has been retouched significantly:

• Here, Abbacchio’s face has been retouched and Moody Blues is taller:

• Illuso is much blurrier in the foreground:

• This brief kick is also brighter and sharper:

• And this… well… There’s no need to comment it, is there:

• It’s “list the differences” time! So: Abbacchio’s eye has been recoloured and he now has a neck, Man in the Mirror’s shoulder cape-thing has been correctly recoloured, Moody Blues’ neck and eye areas have been re-shaded a little bit:

• Abbacchio’s eye has been redrawn here:

• And when he closes it, there are a couple more lines underneath his eyebrow:

• Both faces have been retouched here…:

• Illuso’s foot is no longer Moody Blues-coloured…:

• And Moody Blues’ telephone-holes in his shoulder and eye have been correctly drawn in:

• And here, in this scene taken straight from a fan-fiction, Abbacchio’s eye colour has been smoothed properly, he no longer has that one line on his bald cap…:

• … and the shading near his nose and left shoulder is looking better. Kinky:

• Aaand here, Abbacchio’s left eye has been retouched and Illuso now has BIG ABS:

• Same here, plus some massively improved shading and a retouched bald cap on Abbacchio:

• And let’s conclude this brief bit with some more redrawn abs, the same redrawn eye on Abbacchio, a sliiightly retouched shadow on Illuso’s left pec and an equally slightly retouched blood rivulet rolling down Illuso’s left cheek:

• Just… a lot of things have been retouched here. It’s faster if you look for yourself:

• Abbacchio’s weird gummy hair has been coloured correctly here:

• Illuso’s face has received a pretty big makeover here, and Abbacchio’s eye has been shaded darker:

• Here EVERYTHING LOOKS BETTER! Stunning work, Dpro:

• And Abbacchio’s blood no longer looks like wine being splashed out of a faucet onto a spinning disc:

• A small bit of Illuso’s forehead has been shaded darker, so that he no longer looks like his cranium is shaped like a pretzel:

• Abbacchio’s eye has been retouched once more here:

• This mysteriously dark sequence of Illuso running is also much brighter and sharper:

• Abbacchio’s eye has once again been recoloured here, and a bunch of shadows all over the place are looking mighty better:

• That mysterious black dot near Abbacchio’s left foot has been removed in the BD:

• And here, Moody Blues has been coloured a little differently:

• I WILL NOW PROCEED TO KILL YOU WITH THIS MUCH BIGGER SHARD OF GLASS:

• Here Giorno is no longer cross-eyed, and his face has been retouched and re-shaded overall, looking much better as a result:

• And here, his two boob ladybugs (ladyboobs?) have been retouched, and his eye area is also looking better:

• Later on in the same sequence, Man in the Mirror joins the retouched gang:

• Here, Illuso has a jawline:

• Here, the colouring/shading on Giorno is looking a little different:

• Let’s take a look at the eyecatch! Here you go:

• Here, the BD added numbers on Moody Blues’ forehead, Abbacchio’s eye has been slightly retouched, and the background is less blurry at the top of the frame:

• This flashback scene is a little brighter:

• Fugo has been shaded better here:

• And here, Illuso’s face has been retouched too! Check out the poor bastard:

• And once again here, plus a few added lines on the hand:

• Illuso’s looking much better in this footage of him hacking his own DNA:

• For some reason this animation started out with a couple of black frames in the TV version; this is not the case in the BDs:

• In this incredibly cool shot of Giorno, the small shade under his right eye has been filled in, and the highlight in his right iris is a liiiiiiiiittle rounder:

• And here we have another one of those differences where it’s better you take a look for yourselves:

• Both boys have been shaded differently here:

• Fugo’s left iris has been moved down a little bit, here:

• And here, the shading over his left eyebrow and on one of his hairlocks is a little different…:

• And, at the end of the same sequence, his nose lines no longer overlap his hair:

• Here, both Giorno and Fugo’s faces have been retouched, Giorno’s collar wing has been drawn better and Fugo’s suit no longer has a massive hole on the shoulder:

• Here, basically, a bunch of stuff has been shaded better, and Illuso’s hair no longer disappears at the back of his head:

• Purple Haze’s hand and Illuso’s face are looking much better here:

• And Illuso’s eye area has received a much-needed makeover:

• Here, one brighter line on Illuso’s nose has been removed and his mouth is no longer a flesh-coloured void of despair:

• Here, Illuso’s face and hand stump are looking a little better, and Purple Haze’s left hand has also been retouched a tad…:

• … and Man in the Mirror has been scaled up significantly:

• Here, the glass shard in the bottom right corner has been recoloured:

• And here, the colours on almost everything have been tweaked:

• Here, poor Illuso has been retouched, and the virus-eaten parts are no longer neon blue:

• The corrosion has been recoloured here as well…:

• While this Evangelion-looking Purple Haze beatdown is brighter…:

• … and some frames of it are retouched too (the second one is particularly egregious!):

• Let’s go back to non-beatdown mode! Here, Fugo’s face and shoulder have been retouched:

• In this blessed Giorno frame, the top-left corner is a little brighter:

• Here, Fugo’s face has received a slightly better shading, and most lines are a little thinner:

• Let’s have one last brighter and sharper animation, shall we:

• Here, Golden Experience’s left arm and head have been retouched by a lot, Giorno’s eyes have been shaded over and his taint ladybug has been retouched as well:

• And here, Giorno’s shadow is darker and it no longer glitches when he rolls around:

• Giorno’s boob window frame is no longer segmented here, and the golden bit just above it has been recoloured into a sliver of shading:

• Here, both Fugo and Giorno have been retouched and re-shaded in a few places, and Fugo’s also looking a little darker:

• Giorno is now casting a shadow here:

• And here, Abbacchio’s face and boob strings have all been retouched. This warrants an almost frame-per-frame analysis, so buckle up, buckaroos:

• Let’s move to the credits! Here, 鬼窪浩久 (Onikubo Hirohisa)’s name has been moved a little bit to the left:

• And here, obviously, the next time episode title has been changed, since there are no recaps in the BDs:

Whew! Now that was a long comparison! I hope you had fun taking a look at Abbacchio and Illuso’s wonky faces, and you and I will see each other next week or so for the next comparison, Vento Aureo #14: “The Firenze-Bound Super Express”!

Arrivederci, friends!