Phantom Blood

Phantom Blood (ファントムブラッド) is the first part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, published in Weekly Shonen Jump between 1986 and 1987.

The story follows Jonathan Joestar as he matures with and eventually combats his adoptive brother, the cunning, merciless Dio Brando.

Plot Summary
"Put simply, the theme of this work is 'living'. Through the two main characters, I want to examine two ways of living. It's all about singing the hymn of the battle between 'human' and 'non-human' ..."

– Hirohiko Araki, author's note, Vol. 1 The story begins in England, 1880 with young Jonathan Joestar, known to his friends as JoJo, living at his father George's wealthy estate. Another young man, Dio Brando, is adopted by them for having recently lost his father, Dario Brando. George believed that he and his infant son were rescued by Dario during a stagecoach accident, in which his wife lost her life, when in fact Dario was trying to loot their corpses.

Jonathan attempts to befriend Dio, unaware of his plan to drive him into discredit and earn George's trust so that he can become the sole heir to the Joestar fortune. As part of his scheme to torment Jonathan, Dio violently beats him in a boxing match, turns his friends against him, steals his girlfriend Erina's first kiss, and even burns his dog Danny to death in an incinerator, while presenting himself before Jonathan's father as a better gentleman and student than his adoptive brother.

Seven years later, George falls ill. Jonathan becomes suspicious of Dio's excessive care for him and is certain that he has ulterior motives, especially after discovering an old letter written by Dario Brando on his deathbed requesting Lord Joestar to care for Dio. In his letter, Dario described his symptoms, which were identical to Lord Joestar's mysterious ailment. Jonathan believes that Dio must have poisoned his own father and plans to do the same with his father. Jonathan confronts him about his suspicions, and Dio decides to dispose of Jonathan before he is exposed.

During one of their initial scuffles soon after Dio's arrival at Joestar Estate, a few droplets of blood splattered onto an ancient mesoamerican stone mask Lord Joestar had acquired and left hanging from a wall in his vast mansion. When touched by blood, the mask extruded several bony hooks which, had anyone been wearing it on the face, would have pierced his skull at several points. Only Dio and Jonathan witnessed the fact and while the former maintained it to be nothing more than an instrument of torture and death, the young Joestar began pursuing research in the fields of Archaeology and Ethnology to find the history behind the artifact. Dio reasoned that if he made Jonathan wear the mask and then activated it in the manner previously described, his ensuing death could have been written off as a research accident due to his known interest towards the artifact.

However, to be assured of the lethal effect of the mask, Dio experiments with it on a drunken beggar he finds in the dilapidated London boroughs he frequents to replenish his stash of poison. To his horror, the exposure to the mask's bony hooks not only does not kill his test subject, but instead rejuvenates and transforms him into a vampire. Dio is saved from the monster's attack when it is bathed in sunlight and dies.

Returning home, still shaken from the recent events, Dio is surrounded by police constables summoned by Jonathan, who, in a daring raid to Ogre Street, managed to befriend the honorable criminal Robert E. O. Speedwagon and obtained from him the address of Chinese merchant Wang Chang, who provided Dio with the poison. A fight ensues and Dio, cornered, uses the mask on himself, becoming an unstoppable vampire and killing George. After a long duel, Jonathan is able to burn down the mansion, with Dio apparently inside. However, Dio survives, and takes off to plot his revenge. At this time, Jonathan meets Will A. Zeppeli, an Italian baron and with a strange power called Hamon (波紋, lit. "the ripple"), subsequently revealed to be a martial arts technique that allows the user to focus bodily energy into other kinds of energy via proper breathing (primarily the energy of sunlight, which is effective against vampires). After teaching Jonathan how to use the Hamon, they set out to seek and defeat Dio, accompanied by Speedwagon.

Their chase takes them to the village of Wind Knights Lot, where most of the villagers have been turned into zombies by Dio. Joining a young boy named Poco, whose sister was kidnapped by Dio, they fight their way to his castle while encountering Blueford and Tarukus, a pair of legendary knights resurrected by Dio. Zeppeli sacrifices himself in order to save Jonathan along the way, transferring his remaining Hamon into Jonathan before dying. Zeppeli's Hamon master, Tonpetty, and his two disciples Dire and Straizo then show up to help Jonathan and Speedwagon go on. Eventually, a fight between Dio's vampiric abilities and Jonathan's Hamon ends with a loss for Dio, but not before Dire is killed.

However, Dio tears off his own head before the Hamon power could reach it. Jonathan and company destroy the stone mask the next morning, having protected the town. Shortly after the events in Wind Knight's Lot, Jonathan marries Erina and while on board a ship to America, notices Wang Chan and follows him straight into a trap by Dio (now nothing more than a severed head), who had snuck on board the ship within a special coffin. Dio reveals to Jonathan that he plans to kill him and attach his own head to Jonathan's body before arriving in America. Although Dio manages to mortally wound Jonathan in front of Erina, Jonathan uses the last of his Hamon to attack Wang Chan, using him to jam the ship's engine to trigger an explosion.

As he urges for Erina to flee, Jonathan is further wounded in the ensuing explosions by shrapnel from the engine. In a final attack, Dio ensnares Jonathan with tendrils from his neck and attempts to decapitate him, only for Jonathan to stab him with the shrapnel and thwart his assault. Jonathan holds Dio's head in his arms, reflecting on their fate as the ship begins to sink. Dio demands to be let free, only to find that Jonathan has already died from his wounds. The ship explodes with both men inside as Erina escapes in Dio's coffin, pregnant with Jonathan's child and protecting a surviving infant whose parents were killed in the attack on the ship, thus setting in motion the events of the entire series..

Chapters
Phantom Blood consists of 44 chapters, compiled into Vols. 1 to 5 of the Jump Comics collected editions. The first chapter column uses the titles from the original serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump. The volumes use the Weekly Shonen Jump titles. The second column uses the titles from the bunkoban edition of Part I released in 2002.

Animation

 * An animated movie adaptation by Studio A.P.P.P. was released on February 17 2007 in Japanese theaters.


 * A TV anime by David Production aired in Japan in 9 episodes between October 5 and November 30, 2012.

Video Games

 * An action-adventure video game adaptation was released in Japan by Bandai for the PS2 on October 26 2006.


 * Included as playable in fighting game All Star Battle (PS3) are Jonathan, Zeppeli and Dio; with Dio's Mansion representing the Part I stage.

Trivia

 * This arc was originally titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1 Jonathan Joestar: His Youth (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 第一部 ジョナサン·ジョースター ―その青春―).
 * Author Hirohiko Araki has stated that his inspirations for Phantom Blood were the manga Fist of the North Star and the novel Bram Stoker's Dracula
 * The number 4 in Japanese sounds similar to the word "die", Phantom Blood is forty-four chapters long, and in the last one, Jonathan dies.