Well the problem is that the thing is so long and consists of so many seperate storylines that it's impossible to summarize it in one paragraph. The vaguest explenation I can come up with is this.
There's this family called the Joestars and some of the people who descend from it are fated to experience bizarre adventures in their life, that in some way involve the Joestar's old enemy Dio Brando. Also all of the main protagonists's names can be in some way shortened to ''Jojo''.
Okay so let us talk about the first part.
It's not the Japanese Hardy Boys, it's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
I suppose I should give you a summary since I doubt any of you have read it, and probably won't anyway.
It all starts with a scene of an ancient aztec ritual where a young woman is sacrificed by a man in a stone mask, which then stabs him in the head. Then the man claims to have become immortal.
In 1870s England, a theif by the name of Dario Brando spots a carrige that had crashed off of a cliff. He rushed down there to rob the dead, he finds that the husband and the child had survived but the wife had died. The man, Lord Joestar thought that Dario had come to help him. Dario pretends that that was his intention. In this way, Lord Joestar was in debt to Dario.
Years later, Dario Brando is on his deathbed. He then sends a letter to Lord Joestar to take care of his son for him. Dario then dies. His son, Dio Brando had no sympathy for his abusive, drunk father, and the last thing he does before leaving is spit on his grave.
A teenage Dio Brando then lives in the Joestar mansion and becomes the step-brother of Lord Joestar's son, the young Jonathan Joestar. Dio begins to antagonize Jonathan and proves that he is pure evil, even going that far as to make it so that Jonathan's pet dog was burned alive. It ends with Jonathan and Dio having a fist fight. During the fist fight Dio's blood hits an ancient Aztec mask that reacted to the blood by shooting out spikes from the back. This shocks and perplexes Dio and Jonathan, and they never speak of this event again.
In 1889, Dio and Jonathan are in university, and act as friends, But Jonathan states to himself that it doesn't really feel like a true friendship. Jonathan is researching the mask, trying to find out what it does. In the same time, Lord Joestar falls ill. In the library, Jonathan finds Dario's letter to Lord Joestar, which describes the symptoms of the illness. Jonathan then realizes that Dario and Lord Joestar have the same exact illness. He then realizes that Dio had been bringing the medicine to Lord Joestar, so he starts suspecting that Dio is posioning Lord Joestar and that he might have posioned his own father.
Dio finds out that Jonathan is figuring this shit out so he has to find a way how to deal with him. Then Dio stumbles on the research on the mask. Dio then thinks that the mask is a weapon, since the spikes probably kill the wearer when the blood hits it. He then goes out to town to find out if this is true. Jonathan goes to the police to find out if the medicine really is posion, while Dio goes to test the mask. On his way, Jonathan fights Robert O. Speedwagon and his gang of hoodlums, who then, Speedwagon is surprised by Jonathan's bravery and determination, and becomes hif friend. Then at the mean time, Dio trys the mask out on some random drunks in the shady part of town. When Dio activates the mask, the mask doesn't kill the man he put it on, but transform him in to a vampire. Dio barely escapes with his life, as the sunrise kills the vampire. Dio then realizes that he can too become a vampire.
Then Dio comes back to the mansion where the cops wait for him along with lord Joestar and Jonathan. Dio tries to kill Jonathan with a knife while trying to activate the mask, but lord Joestar blocks the knife with himself, sacrificing himself for Jonathan. Dio becomes a vampire. Then Dio kills all the cops. Jonathan then fights the superhuman Dio in the burning mansion. The fight ends with Jonathan crashing Dio on the sword of a statue from a fall from the second floor.
Jonathan thinks that Dio is dead and he then heals up while being nursed by his love interest Erina. Dio has survived the fight, but is in bad shape. He then also begins a slow recovery while at the same time making ghoul slaves out of serial murderers, and takes over a mansion in a remote city called Windknights or something.
Then a weird gentleman named William Antionio Zepelli visits Jonathan, reveals that Dio is alive and offers to teach Jonathan a martial art capable of destroying the vampire for good.
The technique is kind of confusing in the name department. At first Zepelli refers to it as ''Sendo'', but then for the rest of the series it is refered to as ''Hamon'' or ''wave energy'' or ''ripples''. I'm just going to call it ''the ripple technique'''or ''ripple energy''. The ripple technique is based off of proper breathing that controls the lifeforce and turns it in to energy that can be used to do stuff to things. Zepelli displays this by punching a frog on a rock, and he used the energy in a way that did not harm the frog at all but split the rock in half.
Then Jonathan, Zepelli and Speedwagon set out to Windknights to fight Dio. First Jonathan goes one on one against Jack The Ripper in some sort of catacomb inside a tunnel. Jonathan is tasked to defeat the ghoul Jack the Ripper without spilling a single drop of wine from a glass, or Zepelli will abandon him since then he wouldn't be able to meet his standards. Jonathan wins (duh)
Then they encounter two ghouls of knights who were long dead, I forgot their names. Butkus and Hugebigmchuge or something. So first Jonathan fights Butkus or Bruticus or whatever, who has the ability to control his hair. The fight ends with Jonathan hitting Butkus with the ripple which restores him to human form for a few brief moments before he dies, but not before entrusting his sword in the hands of Jonathan.
Then Jonathan is locked in a cage match against the insanely huge guy. Jonathan was on the losing end until Zepelli sacrifices himself and takes a fatal blow. Zepelli gives the last of his strenght to Jonathan to power him up. Jonathan defeats the insanely huge ghoul and goes to fight Dio.
Then Jonathan and Speedwagon are joined by Zepelli's master Tompetti and his two subordinates, Dire and Straights. Right abou now you will start noticing what the motif for the names of the characters is in the entire series.
So then they quickly dispatch a bunch of ghouls named, I shit you not, Paige, Jones, Bonham and Plant.
Then they finally fight Dio. Dio quickly kills Dire who used his stupid gimmicky special move on Dio but Dio was like fuck this, froze his blood and ripped him in half.
So then Dio and Jonathan have this short and not very interesting battle which ends with Dio being hit with the ripple anf falling off of a balcony. Dio cuts his own head off before the ripple reaches his head and escapes with his life again, unknown to Jonathan.
So then it seems like the nightmare is over, but is it really? Jonathan and his wife Erina then decide to travel to America and start a new life there, but so it happens that Dio is there on the boat as a head in a jar and has a few more ghouls. Then Dio hits Jonathan in the neck with his new special move, which is concentrating and ejecting liquid from his eyes with amazing pressure. Dio then says that he will now use his vampire power to take over Jonathan's body. Jonathan grabs Dio's head in a death hug as the ship's engine explodes and they both seemingly die.
Erina escapes, along with an orphaned child, from the wreckage.
Okay so the reason why I love this manga is since it's very original in terms of characters, designs and abilities, but not a lot of this is present in Part 1.
First of all, the action and abilities is kind of ehhhh. The most interesting abilities were those of Dio. Dio could evaporate the oxygen from your blood and freeze your blood, he could also pressurize liquid in his eyes and shoot it at you. The ripple in this part is always the same, they just punch something and it burns away with the power of the ripple. Part 2 makes the ripple way more interesting. There's also this one scene which really asks you to suspend your disbeleif when Jonathan and Zepelli use the ripple to make sort of like a hang glider from leaves.
The beginning of Phantom Blood is kind of like some sort of Dickens-ish drama and the rest is kind of generic.
Another thing would be the characters.
Jonathan is in my opinion the worst Jojo. Jonathan has like this childish view on heroism that makes it seem like he doesn't really understand the gravity of what exactly is happening and what the long term effects would be. In one scene he grabs a knife pretty hard with his fingers and Speedwagon yells ''DON''T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FINGERS!?'' and Jonathan is like ''not really''. It didn't seem like Jonathan was brave, it seemed more like he doesn't understand the full consequences. He might be a bit too pure, you could say.
Dio is in my opinion the greatest villain ever conceived, but that doesn't really show in part 1, since he's just like ''oh what a joy it is to be evil''.
Zepelli is probably the best character in the part, since he was the only one who understood what is happening fully.
Another thing is that the designs don't really stand out that much in Part 1, but maybe that's just since everything in supposed to look like 1800s clothing.
The art isn't as good as it is in later parts, and the first volume looks like it was drawn on toilet paper.
Overall, if you want to read Jojo (and you should), then you shouldn't give up on it just because of part one since everything gets way better after that.
There was also an animated movie based off of Phantom Blood which never saw a DVD release, so there is no way for me to see it. I would love to see it, but I can't. feels bad, man.
Also I ordered a bunch of figmas, now I'm descending down the spiral of pathetic hikikomori shit
It all starts with a scene of an ancient aztec ritual where a young woman is sacrificed by a man in a stone mask, which then stabs him in the head. Then the man claims to have become immortal.
In 1870s England, a theif by the name of Dario Brando spots a carrige that had crashed off of a cliff. He rushed down there to rob the dead, he finds that the husband and the child had survived but the wife had died. The man, Lord Joestar thought that Dario had come to help him. Dario pretends that that was his intention. In this way, Lord Joestar was in debt to Dario.
Years later, Dario Brando is on his deathbed. He then sends a letter to Lord Joestar to take care of his son for him. Dario then dies. His son, Dio Brando had no sympathy for his abusive, drunk father, and the last thing he does before leaving is spit on his grave.
A teenage Dio Brando then lives in the Joestar mansion and becomes the step-brother of Lord Joestar's son, the young Jonathan Joestar. Dio begins to antagonize Jonathan and proves that he is pure evil, even going that far as to make it so that Jonathan's pet dog was burned alive. It ends with Jonathan and Dio having a fist fight. During the fist fight Dio's blood hits an ancient Aztec mask that reacted to the blood by shooting out spikes from the back. This shocks and perplexes Dio and Jonathan, and they never speak of this event again.
In 1889, Dio and Jonathan are in university, and act as friends, But Jonathan states to himself that it doesn't really feel like a true friendship. Jonathan is researching the mask, trying to find out what it does. In the same time, Lord Joestar falls ill. In the library, Jonathan finds Dario's letter to Lord Joestar, which describes the symptoms of the illness. Jonathan then realizes that Dario and Lord Joestar have the same exact illness. He then realizes that Dio had been bringing the medicine to Lord Joestar, so he starts suspecting that Dio is posioning Lord Joestar and that he might have posioned his own father.
Dio finds out that Jonathan is figuring this shit out so he has to find a way how to deal with him. Then Dio stumbles on the research on the mask. Dio then thinks that the mask is a weapon, since the spikes probably kill the wearer when the blood hits it. He then goes out to town to find out if this is true. Jonathan goes to the police to find out if the medicine really is posion, while Dio goes to test the mask. On his way, Jonathan fights Robert O. Speedwagon and his gang of hoodlums, who then, Speedwagon is surprised by Jonathan's bravery and determination, and becomes hif friend. Then at the mean time, Dio trys the mask out on some random drunks in the shady part of town. When Dio activates the mask, the mask doesn't kill the man he put it on, but transform him in to a vampire. Dio barely escapes with his life, as the sunrise kills the vampire. Dio then realizes that he can too become a vampire.
Then Dio comes back to the mansion where the cops wait for him along with lord Joestar and Jonathan. Dio tries to kill Jonathan with a knife while trying to activate the mask, but lord Joestar blocks the knife with himself, sacrificing himself for Jonathan. Dio becomes a vampire. Then Dio kills all the cops. Jonathan then fights the superhuman Dio in the burning mansion. The fight ends with Jonathan crashing Dio on the sword of a statue from a fall from the second floor.
Jonathan thinks that Dio is dead and he then heals up while being nursed by his love interest Erina. Dio has survived the fight, but is in bad shape. He then also begins a slow recovery while at the same time making ghoul slaves out of serial murderers, and takes over a mansion in a remote city called Windknights or something.
Then a weird gentleman named William Antionio Zepelli visits Jonathan, reveals that Dio is alive and offers to teach Jonathan a martial art capable of destroying the vampire for good.
The technique is kind of confusing in the name department. At first Zepelli refers to it as ''Sendo'', but then for the rest of the series it is refered to as ''Hamon'' or ''wave energy'' or ''ripples''. I'm just going to call it ''the ripple technique'''or ''ripple energy''. The ripple technique is based off of proper breathing that controls the lifeforce and turns it in to energy that can be used to do stuff to things. Zepelli displays this by punching a frog on a rock, and he used the energy in a way that did not harm the frog at all but split the rock in half.
Then Jonathan, Zepelli and Speedwagon set out to Windknights to fight Dio. First Jonathan goes one on one against Jack The Ripper in some sort of catacomb inside a tunnel. Jonathan is tasked to defeat the ghoul Jack the Ripper without spilling a single drop of wine from a glass, or Zepelli will abandon him since then he wouldn't be able to meet his standards. Jonathan wins (duh)
Then they encounter two ghouls of knights who were long dead, I forgot their names. Butkus and Hugebigmchuge or something. So first Jonathan fights Butkus or Bruticus or whatever, who has the ability to control his hair. The fight ends with Jonathan hitting Butkus with the ripple which restores him to human form for a few brief moments before he dies, but not before entrusting his sword in the hands of Jonathan.
Then Jonathan is locked in a cage match against the insanely huge guy. Jonathan was on the losing end until Zepelli sacrifices himself and takes a fatal blow. Zepelli gives the last of his strenght to Jonathan to power him up. Jonathan defeats the insanely huge ghoul and goes to fight Dio.
Then Jonathan and Speedwagon are joined by Zepelli's master Tompetti and his two subordinates, Dire and Straights. Right abou now you will start noticing what the motif for the names of the characters is in the entire series.
So then they quickly dispatch a bunch of ghouls named, I shit you not, Paige, Jones, Bonham and Plant.
Then they finally fight Dio. Dio quickly kills Dire who used his stupid gimmicky special move on Dio but Dio was like fuck this, froze his blood and ripped him in half.
So then Dio and Jonathan have this short and not very interesting battle which ends with Dio being hit with the ripple anf falling off of a balcony. Dio cuts his own head off before the ripple reaches his head and escapes with his life again, unknown to Jonathan.
So then it seems like the nightmare is over, but is it really? Jonathan and his wife Erina then decide to travel to America and start a new life there, but so it happens that Dio is there on the boat as a head in a jar and has a few more ghouls. Then Dio hits Jonathan in the neck with his new special move, which is concentrating and ejecting liquid from his eyes with amazing pressure. Dio then says that he will now use his vampire power to take over Jonathan's body. Jonathan grabs Dio's head in a death hug as the ship's engine explodes and they both seemingly die.
Erina escapes, along with an orphaned child, from the wreckage.
Okay so the reason why I love this manga is since it's very original in terms of characters, designs and abilities, but not a lot of this is present in Part 1.
First of all, the action and abilities is kind of ehhhh. The most interesting abilities were those of Dio. Dio could evaporate the oxygen from your blood and freeze your blood, he could also pressurize liquid in his eyes and shoot it at you. The ripple in this part is always the same, they just punch something and it burns away with the power of the ripple. Part 2 makes the ripple way more interesting. There's also this one scene which really asks you to suspend your disbeleif when Jonathan and Zepelli use the ripple to make sort of like a hang glider from leaves.
The beginning of Phantom Blood is kind of like some sort of Dickens-ish drama and the rest is kind of generic.
Another thing would be the characters.
Jonathan is in my opinion the worst Jojo. Jonathan has like this childish view on heroism that makes it seem like he doesn't really understand the gravity of what exactly is happening and what the long term effects would be. In one scene he grabs a knife pretty hard with his fingers and Speedwagon yells ''DON''T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FINGERS!?'' and Jonathan is like ''not really''. It didn't seem like Jonathan was brave, it seemed more like he doesn't understand the full consequences. He might be a bit too pure, you could say.
Dio is in my opinion the greatest villain ever conceived, but that doesn't really show in part 1, since he's just like ''oh what a joy it is to be evil''.
Zepelli is probably the best character in the part, since he was the only one who understood what is happening fully.
Another thing is that the designs don't really stand out that much in Part 1, but maybe that's just since everything in supposed to look like 1800s clothing.
The art isn't as good as it is in later parts, and the first volume looks like it was drawn on toilet paper.
Overall, if you want to read Jojo (and you should), then you shouldn't give up on it just because of part one since everything gets way better after that.
There was also an animated movie based off of Phantom Blood which never saw a DVD release, so there is no way for me to see it. I would love to see it, but I can't. feels bad, man.
Also I ordered a bunch of figmas, now I'm descending down the spiral of pathetic hikikomori shit
Dio might not have a solid reason for being the dick he is in Part 1, aside from having all that pent up anger towards his father and having a shitty parent like him raise him as much as he did, but he's a great villain nevertheless because he's genuinely hateable. He drives his role as the bad guy well.
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