JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood (2007)

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 ファントム ブラッド

An adaptation of the original five volume arc of the popular JoJo's Bizarre Adventure manga, covering the Phantom Blood chapters. Jonathan Joestar is an aristocratic boy whose life is suddenly turned upside down by a mysterious new boy who arrives, Dio Brando. Dio has a connection to his father, and over time, a rivalry forms as Dio becomes obsessed with a mysterious, ancient, and mystical stone mask that Jonathan's father keeps. This film has not been publicly released outside of its original limited run in Japanese theaters and is considered virtually lost.

Date of release
2007-02-17
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (25)
Runtime
2h 0m
Genres
Action, Animation, Adventure
Director
Junichi Hayama

Casting

Interesting facts

Phantom Blood is a Japanese manga series created by Hirohiko Araki, and the first main story arc of the larger JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series. The manga was originally serialized by Shueisha in Weekly Shōnen Jump under the title JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1 Jonathan Joestar: His Youth and was collected in five volumes; a three-volume collection was released by Shueisha in Japan in 2002, and by Viz Media in North America in 2014. The arc was serialized for more than 10 months; from January 1 to October 26, 1987. It was followed by Battle Tendency.

Production

Phantom Blood was written and drawn by Hirohiko Araki. 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.

Phantom Blood was created using a ki-shō-ten-ketsu structure – introduction (ki), development (shō), twist (ten), and resolution (ketsu) – along with the rule of rising and falling, in which the hero must grow over time in relation to their starting point in the beginning of the story, and not stagnate or regress.

The themes of Phantom Blood were described by Araki as "being alive" and "an affirmation that humanity is wonderful". He explained the latter as a description for humanity's ability to grow and overcome hardships through one's strength and spirit; this is a recurring theme that has been used in all following parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, portrayed through people succeeding in fights through their own actions, without relying on machines or g…

Wanting readers to know that the stone mask and its powers would be what would drive the plot, Araki started the manga with a prologue involving the mask, focusing on communicating the mood, rather than the standard way of opening a manga with an introduction of the protagonist.

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.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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