JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• 1. Introduction

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  JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a manga by Hirohiko Araki that fills 139 collected volumes as of March 2026. By August 2023, more than 120 million copies were in circulation, which places it among the best-selling manga ever printed. Yet the story never stays with one hero. Every part hands the spotlight to a new protagonist who carries the nickname JoJo and faces a fresh set of enemies. Why would an author retire his lead and start over again and again? What kind of power could take the place of martial arts in the middle of a hit series? And how did a comic that began in a magazine for young male readers in the 1980s keep going into the 2020s? The answers begin with a feud between two brothers by adoption.

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• 2. The Joestar Line

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  A star-shaped birthmark above the left shoulder blade marks the mainline descendants of the Joestar family. Every protagonist belongs to that family, and the first six parts form one continuous story. It opens in late 19th-century England, where a wealthy landowner's son, Jonathan Joestar, gains an adopted brother named Dio Brando. Dio loathes him and wants to take his place as heir. When those schemes fail, Dio uses an ancient Stone Mask to turn himself into a vampire and destroys the Joestar estate. Jonathan sets out to stop him, gathering allies on the way.

  Part 2 jumps to 1938, when German researchers discover three lifeforms called Pillar Men. These powerful humanoids created the Stone Mask. They awaken and search for the Red Stone of Aja, which would make them invincible. Joseph Joestar, Jonathan's grandson, teams up with new allies to face them and their leader, Kars.

  In 1989, a salvaged coffin brings Dio back, and he now goes simply by DIO. Because he had taken over Jonathan's body, powers stir in Jonathan's descendants. These include Joseph, his daughter Holly Kujo, and his grandson Jotaro Kujo. Holly cannot control hers, and it slowly kills her. Jotaro and Joseph race to defeat Dio before it does.

  The fourth part arrives in 1999 in the fictional Japanese town of Morioh. The family learns that Joseph has an illegitimate son, Josuke Higashikata. Together with Jotaro, he becomes the target of the serial killer Yoshikage Kira.

  Part 5 moves to Naples in 2001. Giorno Giovanna was conceived while Dio possessed Jonathan's body, and he wants to become a mafia boss to wipe out drug dealers who sell to children. With his ally Bruno Bucciarati, he rebels against the mafia's boss. That boss plans to kill his own daughter, Trish Una, to hide his identity.

  Part 6 takes place in 2011, near Port St. Lucie, Florida. Jolyne Cujoh, Jotaro's daughter, is framed for murder and sent to prison. The culprit is the prison chaplain Enrico Pucci, a loyalist of Dio who dreams of a new universe shaped to the dead vampire's will.

  The last three parts begin again in a second continuity, where the family tree has been heavily altered. Part 7 is set in 1890, when President Funny Valentine stages a cross-country horse race with a $50 million prize. He secretly plans to use it to collect the scattered parts of a holy corpse. Racers Gyro Zeppeli and Johnny Joestar uncover the plot.

  Part 8 returns to Morioh in 2011, just after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastate the town. A college student, Yasuho Hirose, finds an amnesiac young man in the rubble and nicknames him Josuke. A crime syndicate of inhuman beings called Rock Humans, led by Toru, wants the mysterious Locacaca fruit.

  The ninth part, The JoJoLands, is set in Hawaii in the early 2020s. Brothers Jodio and Dragona commit crimes to support their mother, and their crew discovers a Lava Rock that attracts anything of value its user touches. They decide to use it to acquire $50 billion in assets from the Howler Company.

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• 3. Stands and Hamon

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  Controlled breathing powers the first two parts of the series. Hamon is a martial arts technique in which a fighter focuses bodily energy into sunlight. Jonathan masters it to stop Dio, and Joseph masters it to defeat the Pillar Men.

  With Part 3, Hamon gives way to Stands. A Stand is a psycho-spiritual manifestation of a person's fighting spirit, and each has its own supernatural ability. Araki says the idea came from wanting to draw the heart and soul. He sees this part as the moment the series moved from physical power to mental and spiritual power. When he designed the characters' skills, he drew on role-playing games.

  The reviewer Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network first found the swap understandable but a little disappointing. She missed the wild physical contortions that Hamon had produced. In later reviews she described Stand battles as exciting and creative.

  Araki took the spiritual side seriously. He wanted to draw real spirits, so he visited the Kappa River in Tōno, Iwate, to understand the concept better. He has also named mystery as the central theme of the manga, because it fascinated him as a child.

  He liked another feature of the new powers. Because the fights rest on supernatural ability, women and children can stand against physically strong men on even terms.

  The idea of an ultimate being runs through the earlier parts, in the vampires and in the Pillar Men. Araki had used it before in Baoh: The Visitor, which he describes as the spiritual predecessor of JoJo. In Part 4, a mystical Bow and Arrow gives Stands to anyone it strikes.

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• 4. Heroes Who Change

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  Killing off a main character was unheard of in Weekly Shōnen Jump during the 1980s. Araki did it anyway. He admired stories that stayed popular after changing protagonists, so he let Jonathan Joestar die and passed the family's spirit down to his descendants.

  Two books shaped that choice. Roots: The Saga of an American Family gave him a story centered on a family. East of Eden gave him the idea of two families tied together by destiny and rivalry. Araki also thought a great deal about the death of his grandfather and the legacy people leave to those who follow.

  He set out to try a different kind of lead in every part. Jonathan is serious and honest, while his grandson Joseph is a trickster. The two still look alike, so readers feel some continuity across the change.

  Only one hero was modeled on a real person. Jotaro Kujo was based on the actor Clint Eastwood.

  Araki first planned the series as a trilogy that would end in present-day Japan. He then refused to make Part 3 a tournament story, a format that was popular in Weekly Shōnen Jump at the time. Instead he built a road movie inspired by Around the World in Eighty Days. By Part 4, muscle-bound heroes had fallen out of favor with readers, and he moved away from them.

  Women and disability reshaped the cast as well. Araki called Part 2's Lisa Lisa a fresh figure, unheard of in manga and in society at that time. He enjoyed challenging expectations with a female warrior. Part 6 gave the series its first female protagonist, which he found complicated but interesting for the humanity she could show.

  The writer Gen Urobuchi has pointed to Caesar Zeppeli, a character from Part 2, as someone made immortal by dying.

  Part 7's Johnny Joestar is paraplegic, though Araki did not set out to write a disabled character. He wanted someone who could grow in body and mind during a race. In that race Johnny would have to rely on other people, and on horses.

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• 5. Araki's Visual Style

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  Realistic drawing filled with surreal colors is the mark of Araki's pages. He wanted to start from a classical method and then add modern elements. His coloring follows calculation rather than consistency, and he cites the painter Paul Gauguin as an inspiration. He also names 1980s art, Western shading techniques and classical paintings as sources.

  Clothing gets the same attention. When Araki designs outfits, he considers everyday fashion alongside cartoonish, bizarre clothes that would be impractical in real life.

  The sound effects and the poses come from different loves. Araki credits heavy metal and horror films for his unusual onomatopoeia and his poses.

  Critics have split over the results. IGN called the first volume a "must read" and said its artwork met a standard almost unseen in manga then being produced. Silverman praised Dio as a villain readers love to hate. She also complained about anatomy, saying that bodies are often twisted into impossible positions. By Part 2 she felt his art had grown even more improbable, which made body parts hard to tell apart.

  The famous poses have their own origin story. They became iconic on his covers and panels, and they grew out of a trip to Italy in his 20s and his study of Michelangelo's sculptures.

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• 6. Serial and Translation

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  The 1st of January 1987 was the publication date of the combined first and second issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, where the manga began. Phantom Blood ran there until October 1987 and filled five volumes. Battle Tendency followed from November 1987 to March 1989 and filled seven.

  Stardust Crusaders ran from March 1989 to April 1992, and Diamond Is Unbreakable from April 1992 to November 1995. Golden Wind then ran until April 1999. After volume 63, the end of Golden Wind, the volume numbers restart from one for each new part.

  Stone Ocean ran from December 1999 to April 2003. The first 23 chapters of Steel Ball Run appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump during 2004. In March 2005 the series moved to the monthly magazine Ultra Jump, which aims at older readers. JoJolion followed in May 2011 and ended in August 2021. In the September 2021 issue of Ultra Jump, Araki announced that The JoJoLands would begin on the 19th of February 2023.

  The manga has also come back in new formats. Shueisha issued the first six parts in bunkoban format between 2002 and 2009. Since 2012, the company has distributed digitally colored editions for phones and tablets under the name JOJO-D. A premium hardcover series called JoJonium arrived between 2013 and 2015.

  Translation proved harder. Viz Media reportedly planned an English edition in the early 1990s under the title The Strange Adventures of Jojo. A 2002 idea to publish monthly comic books did not succeed. From November 2005 to December 2010, Viz published Stardust Crusaders, the most famous part, in 16 volumes. The company changed the names of several characters and Stands because of legal concerns. It also censored some scenes, including violence against animals that Araki redrew himself.

  In 2013, Viz explained that localizing the series stays difficult because Araki refers to so many real musicians and fashion designers. Its later editions imitate JoJonium. Phantom Blood appeared digitally in September 2014, and a three-volume hardcover followed in 2015. Stone Ocean began appearing digitally in January 2022.

  In May 2008, Shueisha and the studio A.P.P.P. halted shipments of the manga and the OVA after a complaint from anonymous Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists. They had noticed a scene in the Stardust Crusaders OVA in which Dio reads a book showing pages from the Quran while ordering the mercenary Hol Horse to kill the heroes. Sheikh Abdul Hamid Attrash, chairman of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar, claimed the scene portrayed Muslims as terrorists. He also said Shueisha would be considered an enemy of Islam. Some Muslims feared a backlash like the one after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons.

  The manga did not contain that scene. Still, Shueisha asked Araki to redraw scenes of characters fighting on top of mosques and destroying them. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an official report that Shueisha and A.P.P.P. had no blasphemous intentions. Viz and Shueisha stopped publishing for a year. Viz resumed with the eleventh volume on the 7th of April 2009, but the OVA was permanently discontinued. Years later, the manga critic Jason Thompson placed Shueisha's changes on his list of "The Greatest Censorship Fails" in manga.

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• 7. Beyond the Page

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  The first screen version arrived in 1993, when A.P.P.P. began a 13-episode original video animation based on Stardust Crusaders. Pony Canyon released the first six episodes, which begin mid-story, on VHS and Laserdisc through 1994. Klock Worx later issued the whole series on DVD and VHS from 2000 to 2002, with seven new prequel episodes covering the start of the arc. An English dub from Super Techno Arts reached North America on DVD between 2003 and 2005. A.P.P.P. also made a feature film of Phantom Blood, released in Japanese theaters on the 17th of February 2007.

  At a July 2012 press conference marking the manga's 25th anniversary, Araki announced a television series by David Production. It premiered that October. The first season adapted Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency in 26 episodes. Stardust Crusaders came next in two halves, in 2014 and 2015, for 48 episodes in all. Diamond Is Unbreakable followed in 2016 with 39 episodes, and Golden Wind with another 39 from October 2018 to July 2019.

  Stone Ocean broke the pattern. It reached viewers worldwide on Netflix in December 2021, before its Japanese television broadcast in January 2022. Steel Ball Run premiered worldwide on Netflix in March 2026. Abroad, Crunchyroll streamed the 2014 season of Stardust Crusaders one hour after each Japanese airing.

  A live-action film of Diamond Is Unbreakable came from Toho and Warner Bros. Takashi Miike directed it, Kento Yamazaki played Josuke, and it opened in Japan on the 4th of August 2017. The studios hoped for worldwide distribution and sequels.

  The spin-offs spread the world further. The first, "Episode 16: At a Confessional", appeared as a one-shot in Weekly Shōnen Jump in July 1997. It follows the manga artist Rohan Kishibe from Diamond Is Unbreakable and began the Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe series. Four of its stories were later adapted as OVA episodes, with the last two screened in Japanese theaters in December 2019.

  Games came early. A role-playing game based on Part 3 reached the Super Famicom in 1993, and fighting games followed, including Heritage for the Future in 1998 and All Star Battle in 2013. Light novels each have a different author but all carry illustrations by Araki. The writer Otsuichi said he wrote over 2000 pages of a Part 4 novel and then discarded them. His finished book, The Book: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 4th Another Day, came out on the 26th of November 2007. Ōtarō Maijō's Jorge Joestar, from September 2012, features characters from and inspired by nearly every part.

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• 8. Fame and Tributes

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  More than 100 million copies were already in circulation by December 2016. Sales figures tell only part of the story. The first volume of JoJolion was the second best-selling manga in its debut week, and all three of its first volumes ranked among the best-selling manga of 2012. In the United States, every volume of Viz's Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency reached the top seven on The New York Times Manga Best Seller list.

  Honors followed. In 2006, Japanese fans voted the series second on a list of the top ten manga of all time at the Japan Media Arts Festival. JoJolion won the festival's manga grand prize in 2013. In TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, in which 150,000 people voted, the series ranked tenth.

  Reviewers have praised Dio most of all. Cole Watson of Comics & Gaming Magazine called him "the literal embodiment of Satan in manga form." Watson still gave Phantom Blood 7.5 out of 10 and found parts of it agonizingly slow. Faye Hopper, writing about Diamond Is Unbreakable for Anime News Network, argued that its lack of a strong narrative throughline is one of its greatest strengths. Jenni Lada of Siliconera praised Giorno, saying the first volume of Part 5 shows how skillfully Araki makes readers care about a character quickly.

  The series has reached well outside comics. In 2009, the Louvre's exhibition Le Louvre invite la bande dessinée featured Araki as one of five artists. To mark the honor, he drew a 123-page full-color story in which Rohan Kishibe visits the museum and finds a cursed painting tied to his family. NBM Publishing released it in North America in February 2012. Heidi Kemps of Otaku USA praised the art, drawn in full color by hand.

  Fashion came next. From the 17th of September to the 6th of October 2011, the Gucci store in Shinjuku hosted an exhibition marking the brand's 90th anniversary. It featured a life-size Rohan figure and Araki illustrations that incorporated real pieces from Gucci's 2011-2012 fall and winter collection. The magazine Spur ran a one-shot in which Rohan visits a Gucci factory to learn the secret of a magical handbag.

  Science and music joined in. A 2007 cover of the journal Cell, drawn by Araki, showed a ligase as a Stand. In 2013, scientists named a newly found species Neostygarctus lovedeluxe after a Stand from Diamond Is Unbreakable. The heavy metal band Lovebites named a song "Don't Bite the Dust" after another Stand from that part. Street Fighter's Guile and Tekken's Paul Phoenix were inspired by Polnareff.

  The 25th anniversary in 2012 produced more tributes. In Sendai, Araki's birthplace, a Lawson store was remodeled into the "Owson" store seen in the manga. The October 2012 issue of Ultra Jump carried a booklet, 25 Years With JoJo, with tribute art from Akira Toriyama, Yoshihiro Togashi, Eiichiro Oda, Clamp and 18 others. For the All Star Battle game, a JoJo-themed train ran on Tokyo's Yamanote Line from the 29th of August to the 9th of September 2013. Its exterior carried 33 characters.

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