Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 7 (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood)

I liked Roundabout before it was a meme.

Oh hell yeah. I've wanted to get at this one for a long time, and after a bit of time spent with a rewatch, I finally get my chance to talk about it. In my Doctor who first impressions post that I threw up... oh, like 3 hours or so ago now, I made mention of how that show's constant reinvention of itself is what's helped keep it going for 55 years. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is... a little like that. It does eventually find a consistent formula of sorts, opting to use its creativity to come up with interesting superpowers for the various colorful characters to use. Still, it does shift drastically. One only needs to compare the newest anime season, Part 5, with what we're covering here today. One show's about a fashionable boy in late 90's Italy with the power to turn objects into living things, and reflect any damage done to those living things back at the attacker, while the other is set in Victorian England and has people using magic sun karate to try and punch that fashionable boy's dad in the face because he's a vampire. Even that is going a bit fast. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a hell of a thing to try and summarize, as anyone who hasn't seen it will probably think you're being outlandish and making it up. They're not, unless they are. Let's try and talk about this thing and pin it down, even as it shifts and changes before us. This is Part 1 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, hereafter referred to as Phantom Blood.


In the end, it starts as a goddamned tragedy and needles you with misery over the first episode. Dio Brando, newly adopted brother to Jonathan Joestar, proceeds to systematically rob all joy from Jonathan's life and make things a living hell for him. It's hard to watch, but in the end that's what this story is about; Jonathan and Dio's relationship. Of course, by the end of episode 2 things just take a left swerve into gothic horror when goddamned vampires are introduced. There's a spooky heirloom in the Joestar house, a stone mask which puts spikes into your head if blood gets on it. Dio wants to use it to kill Jonathan so he tests it on a street thug and... surpirse! It's a magic mask which turns you into a fucking vampire! With all of Dio's schemes and machinations laid bare, the man rejects his humanity and dons it himself, becoming one of the undead. Jonathan, courageous to the end, tries to burn his own mansion down with Dio in it and nearly succeeds in the task. So, right away in 2012, I was really intrigued by all of this. Phantom Blood is tragedy tinged with Victorian-era gothic horror... and some more little black marks against it. Yeah, there's a bit of Victorian-era Chinese stereotype thrown about.  Is it as bad as, oh say, The Talons Of Weng-Chiang? I would say no because it's not the central focus of the plot. It's still an unfortunate black mark against the show, though... but at least no vitrolic brigade of Jojo defenders has harassed anyone I look up to as an influence because of it. So there's that. God, though. Even here, within the confines of one nine-episode arc of the show, the entire thing is shifting and changing. What starts as a tragedy between two brothers of House Joestar becomes a supernatural horror story where one of the brothers becomes a vampire and goes off to create his own army of the night, his first turn being, I shit you not, Jack the Ripper. We haven't even gotten to the halfway point which introduces the magic sun karate!


Okay then. The halfway point that introduces the magic sun karate. So. This came out in manga form in 1987, and one of the big things around at the time was Fist Of The North Star. If you've not checked that out, it has a man in a post-apocalyptic wasteland using magic pressure point karate to make people explode. Well, the immutable power of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure takes that and melds it with the gothic horror vampire story. Thus, we have Jonathan Joestar, a man in Victorian England whose brother becomes a vampire lord, thus forcing him to learn to use magic sun karate to make vampires explode. The power of the Ripple is a real interesting concept; controlling your breathing and using the power of your blood to channel the sun's energy into your fists and punch things really hard. Because it's sun energy, and vampires melt in sunlight, it makes vampires explode. See? We don't have to even mention anything like Stands for Jojo to be absolutely bonkers. Punching vampires with the power of the sun. Good lord. There is a bit of wheel-spinning for about 3 of the 9 episodes as Dio sends two knights he revived as vampires to kill Jonathan and his pals, but I suppose that comes from the serialized nature of the original work. No, the final battle with Dio and his eventual revenge are what really cement all of this. Phantom Blood ends the only way it could: as a tragedy between two brothers. Jonathan and Dio go down together (or so it seems), and it really was the only way things could have ended. Oh, things go on from here. There's another 16 episodes or so of vampire sun-punching action with Jonathan's grandson, a bunch of super-vampires, and an entirely different tone. Imagine Raiders Of The Lost Ark but with more vampires exploding and you've got the idea of what Battle Tendency is like. To summarize the rest of Jojo would be meandering and sound absolutely ridiculous. No, I'll leave it here with these nine episodes. Phantom Blood got me into this series, and its hook was this absolutely strange take on gothic vampire horror. No. I take that back. Not strange.


Bizarre. Ha ha ha. GET IT?