When I first heard about JoJo's Bizzare Adventure this was a fairly underground manga in the West. It was a known series, but there definitely were more people that knew the name but never bothered reading than the ones that did. Things started to change, however, in 2012 when a new anime adaptation of Jojo started and as it adapted more and more parts of the story, the amount of fans grew and grew. It's hard to be an anime fan now and not have heard of Jojo or met a fan of the series. It was only recently that I decided to cave in and check what the hype was all about, so join me as I go through the series and tell you what I think. Put your seat belts on as we go all the way back to 1986.

Now, Jojo is huge and there's a lot of people that love it to death, but lets be fair, most of them will tell you that Part 1 is weak compared to the rest of the series. Sure, there's a lot of fans of it, and even people who prefer it, but the consensus is that it's not the best part, and I can see why.
When I first started reading I liked a couple of things, I like the atmosphere, that Castlevaniaesque vibe it had, it's definitely different than most manga that I tend to read, and I think that's probably because it's not a Japanese setting. It had this mysterious and Gothic aura to it that I really appreciated.

It's in this setting, in Victorian England, that we meet our main characters, the titular JoJo, Jonathan Joestar, who was very happy boy until the day his father introduces him to the newest member of the family, "It was me!" Dio Brando, who is basically Satan. Phantom Blood works around the fact that these two characters are the basic opposites of one another, natural enemies in a battle between morally good and morally bad. This is very cool in concept, but in reality, Dio is somehow the best character in the manga and even then, he is just "evil" and Jonathan is the most bland main character I think I've read. It's easily the worst character in the Jojo parts I've read and it's probably the worst character I've ever encountered.

And this is my main problem. I definitely have more gripes with part 1, that I'll talk about in a bit, but I would've excused it if I enjoyed the characters. If you read my reviews, or just know me, you may notice that I like works that have a good cast in it, and maybe I give it more importance than other people might give, depending on the story told, but I still think it's a very important aspect regardless. Because the story itself isn't bad, I like the setting, I like the mask a lot, I think it's interesting, the story around it is probably the best part of the first two parts of Jojo's, but alone it can't save it. And the main character is the one that I have more problems with, but I can't say that I found any of the supporting cast interesting. Really didn't care for Zeppeli or Speedwagon, and much less for characters like Dire or Straits.

Plus, it's not just the characters, there's a lot of points that, to be fair happen in a lot of other manga that I read from the time, like Devilman and Saint Seya, so one could blame it's age, but I've also read other manga from the same time that doesn't really have these flaws. I'm mostly talking about the dialogues, they are clunky, they feel unnatural, which doesn't help the characters either, because now they're not only bland, but every time they talk I feel a disconnect from the series, because people just don't talk like that.

The art too, I appreciate the designs, I think that amidst everything that I'm criticizing about the characters, their designs are unique and it helps them look varied, but the art itself is not that great. The poses they do, I know it's a meme now and part of the appeal to some people, but they don't look good to me, they are just... well... bizarre and look very ridiculous and non-human. Before I read Part 1 I've seen some artwork of Araki, so I know that he is good, that his art is amazing, but it's amazing now, definitely wasn't in 1986, and that's fine, I appreciate that he improved a lot, but we're judging Phantom Blood for what it is, and while it's not the worst art that I've come across, or course not, but it's quite ugly.

Ultimately, even knowing that the first part was probably the weakest, I still got considerably disappointed. It has a good concept, but there's too many flaws to make this an enjoyable experience. Thankfully a lot of problems I talk about would be improved in later parts, but talking about Phantom Blood on it's own, is it a mark on manga history? Yes, definitely! But is it good? Well, in my opinion, not so much.