Phantom Blood

In 19th-century England, a youth born into poverty named Dio Brando is adopted by the wealthy George Joestar to repay a family debt to Dio's father Dario, who died in 1880.[2] Jonathan Joestar, who aspires to become a gentleman, is shunned by his family and friends, whom Dio manipulates as part of his plot to take the Joestar fortune for himself.[4] After Jonathan overpowers Dio in a battle, Dio gets revenge by murdering Jonathan's pet dog Danny, before biding his time.[5] Jonathan and Dio develop an interest in a mysterious stone mask that reacted to Dio's blood being spilt in the battle,[6][7] which was used by the Aztecs to bring the wearer immortality.[2]

In 1888, after becoming old enough to inherit the Joestar fortune,[6] Dio deliberately poisons George.[8] Jonathan's search for an antidote takes him to Ogre Street, a dangerous street in London,[7] where he befriends a thug named Robert E. O. Speedwagon. At the same time, Dio intends to arrange a freak accident to kill Jonathan with the stone mask and tests the mask on a drunkard.[9] The mask instead turns the drunkard into a powerful vampire who nearly kills Dio before being destroyed by sunlight.[10] Jonathan and Speedwagon return to the mansion with an antidote and expose Dio's scheme.[11] Dio attempts to kill Jonathan with a knife but George sacrifices his life to save Jonathan.[11][12] Dio uses the blood spilt by George and the mask to become a vampire.[13] Jonathan sets the Joestar family's mansion on fire and impales Dio on a statue in the burning mansion,[14][15] but Dio survives.[16]

Will A. Zeppeli, a man who intends to destroy the stone mask after it caused his father's death, teaches Jonathan how to use a supernatural energy produced by controlled breathing called Hamon.[lower-alpha 5][17][18] Then, on November 30, 1888, Jonathan, Speedwagon, and Zeppeli travel to Wind Knights Lot, where Dio is creating an army of zombies.[19] Zeppeli is mortally wounded by one of these zombies, Tarkus,[lower-alpha 6] and passes the last of his Hamon energy on to Jonathan before dying.[20][21] Joined by Zeppeli's fellow Hamon users,[22] on December 1, 1888,[23] Jonathan destroys Dio's body by sending Hamon directly through him.[23][24] Dio decapitates his head to survive the Hamon attack. Speedwagon destroys the stone mask. On February 2, 1889, Jonathan marries his childhood love Erina Pendleton. The next day, they leave on a ship to America on their honeymoon.[23] Dio sneaks aboard the ship, intending to transplant himself onto Jonathan's body.[25]

On February 7, 1889,[3] Dio mortally wounds Jonathan.[25] Jonathan uses the last of his Hamon to manipulate the body of Dio's servant Wang Chan into obstructing the ship's paddle wheel, setting it to explode.[26] Jonathan dies with Dio's head in his arms while Erina escapes in the coffin that Dio hid in with a dead passenger's baby girl. Rescued near the Canary Islands two days later, Erina vows to pass on the truth of Jonathan's life to her unborn child and the generations to follow.[3]

The character posing was influenced by Bernini's sculpture Apollo and Daphne.

Phantom Blood was written and drawn by Hirohiko Araki.[27] Prior to working on the series, he created a manga that resembled the works of Hisashi Eguchi, an artist known for his art of female characters; Araki's editor, Ryōsuke Kabashima, angrily told Araki to never draw something as derivative again, which led him to take another direction with his art, and the creation of Phantom Blood.[28] Due to the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone at the time, Araki designed characters with muscular body types.[29] The character posing, which Araki considers is distinctive about his art, was influenced by a trip to Italy just before the serialization of Phantom Blood, where he went to the Galleria Borghese in Rome and saw Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture Apollo and Daphne. Seeing it in person from different angles had a large influence on him; he described it as overwhelmingly beautiful and intense, and unlike sculptures in Japanese museums and the figure posing of most manga artists.[30]

Creation of characters

Salvador Dalí influenced the design of Zeppeli.

As part of the creation of each character, Araki wrote down a fictional history for the character, to prevent inconsistencies; while not all information he writes in these is used directly in the manga, it helps him determine how the character should act and react in different situations.[38] Jonathan and Dio, the protagonist and antagonist, were created with the duality of light and shadow in mind, with the intention to have them contrast against each other: Dio was depicted as an embodiment of evil, and Jonathan as "fundamentally virtuous" and just. Araki also made use of black and white in his art to further contrast the two.[39] Jonathan was designed to be a symbol for the story and setting, something Araki would continue doing with later protagonists in the series.[29] Because Araki wanted the series to move on with new characters in the Joestar family, Jonathan was specifically written as "the first Joestar" that would function as a symbol of purity and dignity, and not as a unique character. This limited what Jonathan could do; in retrospect, Araki considered him passive and "a bit boring".[37]

From the start of the planning of the manga, Araki intended to depict Dio as a "cool" character who descends into villainy. Thinking that it could be difficult to create an evil antagonist that readers would empathize with, Araki wrote Dio as coming from a poor family with a father "with no redeeming qualities whatsoever", giving Dio motivation to acquire power and get revenge on the world even if it led him to do immoral and illegal things. Araki also noted that a character who acts without regard for morals and laws can give readers a feeling of catharsis due to exhibiting the same "ugly feelings" people hold but cannot show, making Dio more easily relatable than a character who only does good.[40] Dio's name was taken directly from the Italian word for "god", and was chosen to sound good together with the name "JoJo".[41]

The main supporting character of Phantom Blood, Zeppeli, was created as a "silly teacher" in the style of the martial art masters from Jackie Chan's films and The Karate Kid, with a charm in the contrast between how they appear and who they are inside. Araki designed him with a mustache, drawing inspiration from the appearances of the painter Salvador Dalí and the Osomatsu-kun character Iyami; this was considered a gamble, as mustachioed characters in shōnen magazines were considered to appear old and untrustworthy, potentially turning readers off. His name comes from the rock band Led Zeppelin, and was chosen to balance out the large amount of names in the series beginning with "J"; the character Speedwagon was given his name for the same reason.[42]

Phantom Blood was originally serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump under the title JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1 Jonathan Joestar: His Youth. It ran from January 1 to October 26, 1987 for a total of 44 chapters, and was later collected in five tankōbon volumes.[43][44][45] It was also collected in a three-volume bunkoban collection on February 15, 2002,[46][47][48] and a single volume sōshūhen edition in 2012.[49] Another three-volume collection with new cover art by Araki was released from December 4, 2013 to January 4, 2014 as part of the JoJonium line, along with the second and third part of the series, Battle Tendency and Stardust Crusaders.[50][51][52] This version was released in North America by Viz Media, beginning digitally in 2014 and in print in 2015.[53] A digitally colored version of the complete manga was released digitally for smartphones and tablet computers in Japan on July 13, 2012.[54]

To celebrate the series' anniversary, a video game adaptation was released in 2006 by Bandai for the PlayStation 2, and a Phantom Blood anime film adaptation, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, was produced by A.P.P.P. and released in Japanese theaters in 2007.[55][56] The film has never been released on home video.[57] The owarai duo Speedwagon (Jun Itoda and Kazuhiro Ozawa), who took their name from the Phantom Blood character, make cameo appearances in the film as Dario Brando and Wang Chen.[58] Phantom Blood was again adapted into anime in 2012, as part of the first season of David Production's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure TV anime series.[59]

Phantom Blood was met with reviews ranging from critical to positive.[73] According to Araki, he was often told during the original serialization of the manga that it was the one series that did not fit in with the "best of the best" that were serialized at the same time, such as Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, Captain Tsubasa, Kinnikuman and Saint Seiya.[74] Weekly Shōnen Jump readers were critical of the first few chapters, finding Jonathan unlikable as he kept losing against Dio at that point.[31] The series was included in Anime News Network's list of the best and most memorable manga of 2015, as the winner in the "WTF Did I Just Read?!" category.[75]

Joseph Luster at Otaku USA called Phantom Blood "a treat" for both new and old readers of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, but thought that it feels slow-paced compared to Stardust Crusaders.[76] Ziah Grace and Clair Napier of ComicsAlliance were very critical of the series, calling it "meaningless junk" that should not have been republished in 2015, and recommended readers to read a plot summary of Phantom Blood and start with Battle Tendency instead. They criticized the series' depiction of animal cruelty, and the "bad or non-existent" female roles in the story.[77] Anime News Network's Rebecca Silverman appreciated the realism in how Dio appears perfectly mannered to George while also being sadistically cruel, and how the series uses a mix between Aztec mythology and vampire lore, but thought that the story could be too cruel for some readers, citing the animal cruelty as an example.[27] She liked how the story escalates in intensity and weirdness,[78] but criticized it for telling more often than showing, and using exclamation marks too much.[27]

Several reviewers criticized the artwork in Phantom Blood for the characters' anatomy and posing;[27][77][76] Silverman described it as featuring impossible poses and characters appearing to have disproportionally small heads atop large, muscled bodies.[27] She additionally criticized the art for being crowded and hard to read.[78] ComicsAlliance disliked how the art felt derivative of Fist of the North Star.[77] Takato at Manga-News thought that the anatomy and posing, while fitting the tone of the story, were unlikely and badly drawn.[79] Luster thought that the art was not nearly as good as Araki's later works, but that it was charming and worked despite the "twisted proportions" due to its high intensity and stylization.[76] Kory Cerjak at The Fandom Post enjoyed the artwork, however, calling it "straight out of the 80s", giving the series a similar feeling to watching a good action film from that time period.[80]

The box set for the three-volume JoJonium release of the series was the 47th best selling comic in Japan during its debut week according to Oricon, selling an estimated 19,374 copies.[81] The three English volumes all charted on The New York Times Manga Best Seller list for three weeks in a row;[82][83][84] volume 1 premiered in first place,[85] and both volume 2 and 3 debuted in second place, after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Naruto volume 71, respectively.[86][87]