The entire series has full-color versions with improved translations. The oldest Duwang translations are the funniest.

Starting with Caesar in series 2, each JoJo has a deuterologist or co-protagonist. These guys often go off on their own without a JoJo & take up a good chunk of reading time, so calling them sidekicks doesn't really get it.

Phantom Blood - Jonathan the Gentleman JoJo/Woobie JoJo/First JoJo. Pure caucasian. An experimental Fist of the North Star riff that morphed into it's own highly successful & ever-changing franchise. The humor comes almost entirely from how awkward the art is. The art style is very Bara.

Battle Tendency - Joseph the Manliest JoJo/Asshole JoJo/Dumbest JoJo. Pure caucasian. The over the top dramatic poses & scantily clad musclebound villains were hilarious. A good time was had. Still a Bara art style, but the art has improved. The story felt far less tedious.

Stardust Crusaders - Quietest JoJo/Handsomest JoJo/Smartest JoJo, half-asian on his dad's side (Jotaro) & Shrieking JoJo/Hyper JoJo/Grampa JoJo (old man Joseph). Joseph is back & like in real life, his personality has changed with age. Maybe a little too much. This series has the best adventure, best friendships, & best humor. My favorite. Also has a non-Jojo who basically overshadows Jotaro until the end & shows up latter again in Vento Aureo. This is the point where bodies start getting a tiny bit slimmer & Araki's love of fashion starts to poke it's head in.

Diamond is Unbreakable - Josuke the Yankii JoJo/Nurse JoJo/Effeminate JoJo, half asian on his mom's side. Jotaro's uncle despite being young enough to be his little brother. This series longer than 2 JoJo series combined & becomes the standard length for following series. It seems to have had heavy influence on Yu Yu Hakusho. It's dropped the seinen genre for shounen & takes place in & around school in a beautiful town you'll wish you could visit for real. The humor is regulated to about 3 arcs & the art style has become more cartoonish so the weird poses end up looking less weird as a result.

Vento Aureo - Italian Jojo/Youngest Jojo/Smartest Jojo. Half asian on his mom's side. Joseph's uncle despite being young enough to be his great grandson. Would you believe Dio & Jonathan could have a son together? His dream is to become the mafia kingpin of Italy in order to prevent drugs from destroying childhoods. This series is a goddamn fabulous avant-garde runway fashion show, & the fighting poses are at Jojo 1 levels & the gore is back to Jojo 3 levels.

Stone Ocean - Girl JoJo/Criminal JoJo/Goth Jojo. 1/3rd asian on her father's side. Jotaro, Spider-Man, a bunch of crossdressers, & a zombie Spongebob villain break out of prison to fight a gay priest & send the Jojoverse into an alternate reality.

Steel Ball Run - Johnny the Prettiest JoJo. This is an alternate universe reboot of Phantom Blood, therefore is a new beginning & not a continuation of the original series. This time it's bishounen & not bara-esque. For some reason Hol Horse is reincarnated as a Zepelli.

JoJolion - Josuke 2.0 the Hybrid JoJo. This is an alternate universe reboot of Diamond is Unbreakable. My favorite villain & the gayest Jojo merge into Donald Duck. Bromance with Okuyasu has ended.

Rohan Spinoffs - Author's Self-Insert Jojo/Eccentric Jojo/Cryptkeeper Jojo. He is predominantly used to tie unrelated one-shot stores together in a cohesive manner, giving the various series a Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt vibe.

... Last updated on November 2nd, 2019, 4:37am

I have little tolerance for absurdly prolonged series (in any genre), so for years I put off giving Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken a try. Luckily, I realized my mistake while reading another of Araki Hirohiko's works -- Under Execution Under Jailbreak -- which opened my eyes to the extent of the mangaka's writing prowess.


Part 1 - Phantom Blood - While this is my least favourite instalment of the Jojo saga, it's still better than most mainstream shounen action series. The course of events tended towards being somewhat predictable, but the ending was thoroughly unexpected; a much more fitting conclusion than the one I'd predicted.

Part 2 - Battle Tendency - This is where strategic thinking really begins to come into play during the battles - a feature which continues in all the sequels. It's better than part 1, but still the second-to-last in terms of quality (of plot, characters and art).

Part 3 - Stardust Crusaders - From here on out, Araki Hirohiko's brilliance really begins to shine. The special abilities (Stands) and the outcomes of the fights become entirely unpredictable, and the characters are much more endearing. Jotaru Kujo as the protagonist is a marked improvement on the more old-school type Jonathan and Joseph. The art has improved, and the mangaka shows definite signs of having learned how to better convey action sequences as well as subtler details such as facial features and expressions, despite retaining his trademark style of weirdly-drawn bodies.

Part 4 - Diamond wa Kudakenai - The draw in this series lies in that it deviates from the formula followed by its predecessors. Josuke and his friends are not under direct threat from Diego Brando, and focus their energy towards battling opponents on a much smaller scale. The drama and tragedy which characterized the earlier instalments is virtually non-existent, making it more fun (and childish) than any other part of the saga.

Part 5 - Vento Aureo - I refrained from reading this, as the scanlators of Steel Ball Run (JoJo Project) have cautioned that the translations on the 'net are (despite their apparently good quality) grossly incorrect in several crucial places. No alternative is currently available, though.

Part 6 - Stone Ocean - The elitist "real fans" are fond of claiming that the series went downhill in this season, but I disagree. Stone Ocean is one of the most interesting, insane and unpredictable instalment to date, and I do not recommend missing out on it. The stands are bizarre, as are their users; the prison setting and strong female protagonist (Jolyne is a great character -- every bit as awesome as any male JoJo) make for a refreshing new angle, and the mind-boggling conclusion was something I enjoyed very much.

Part 7 - Steel Ball Run - Gyro Zeppeli's presence as a protagonist alongside Johnny Joestar is a welcome improvement, and imo he's one of the top 3 JJBA MC's so far. He and Johnny also make an excellent team, beating out Jolyne and Hermes as my favourite JoJo fighting duo to date. The plot is creativity itself, strangeness and all, making this probably my favourite instalment so far (though it has tough competition). The art is pretty weird in that the bodies/poses are still bizarre, but the faces of some of the characters (both male and female) are oddly beautiful. (Jojolion is the same, though not parts 1-6: perhaps Araki Hirohiko decided to update his art style together with the series reboot that came at the end of Stone Ocean)

Part 8 - Jojolion - Waiting on further scanlations, but from what I've seen, the romance aspect of this one is a bit annoying. Stone Ocean is the only preceding season which featured a clear pairing, and both Jolyne and her boyfriend were interesting and likeable characters (so I had no worries going into Jojolion), but Yasuho and Josuke are irritating as no other pair of JoJo MC's has been so far. Oh, well. Only time will tell, I suppose. Plot-wise, on the other hand, it's just as satisfactory as its predecessors.


Despite my gushing praise, I'm not surprised that very few people actually like Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken -- despite being a long-running battle manga, it's pretty much the definition "non-mainstream." If I were to recommend it to anyone, they must be: (1) someone looking for something different from the typical action shounen/seinen (and that includes overt romance, ecchi/sex, school life, and in-your-face comedy), and (2) with a high tolerance threshold for weirdness. If you don't possess one or other of those qualities, this isn't for you. But don't be daunted by the volume count -- I guarantee you'll barely feel it: in 111 volumes (as of the time of this comment), the plotlines, the characters, the Stands, the battle strategies, and the humour have yet to become stale, flat, cliché or repetitive.

... Last updated on October 27th, 2018, 11:38pm

I have read lots of manga since I started about ten years ago, and I still haven't found anything that is better than JoJo. The artwork is pretty crude at first and the story may seem pretty ridiculous but when you realise the greatness of it, there's no turning back. You keep reading and reading, and the best part is there's lots to read, 97 vols (currently, if you count in STEEL BALL RUN) and it never gets boring or repetitive. You have to be a total genius to manage doing it (or nearly god). There are longer manga, like Golgo #13 and KochiKame, but they are pretty episodic.

Go read it already.

... Last updated on November 20th, 2009, 4:11pm

Words can't describe how clever some of the situations are. I get left speechless with some of the stuff. It isn't comedy based but there is alot of humor in this series that makes you almost piss your pants your laughing so hard. You find yourself hating the enemy and rooting for the good guys. This is a long series but it does not get old. READ THIS NOW or else you will regret it.

... Last updated on October 29th, 2009, 1:37am

This series covers so many bases across it's 22 (at the time of this comment) years of publication that it's hard to say what group it best caters too. Part 1 is closest to horror and action combined, and while short is very good. Robert Edward O. Speedwagon is the most awesome name ever. Literally anybody can die, and most do. Part 2 takes place 40 or 50 years after Part 1, and is more of a martial arts series a la Fist of the North Star. Like Part 1 is pretty short, and not as many people die but the body count is still pretty heavy. Part 3 is considered by many to be the crowning moment of the series, and introduces the psychic forces known as Stands. very actiony/RPG-ish with some of the most clever fight sequences out there. The gruesome body count of Part 1 returns, with some characters even dying twice. The final battle between the Joestars and Dio is one of the most memorable in the entire series.

Post Part-3 is where most of the fanbase has a schism. There's the group that considers JJBA done at this point since Dio is dead, and there's those who still read on. I didn't like Part 4 at first, but it grew on me. Good luck finding scans that aren't ohmaigawd awful though. It takes a far different turn from the earlier parts of the series, almost being like a mystery instead of an action series. Due to Araki being a fan of traveling, most of the series takes place in several real locations. Part 4 all takes place within a fictional town. The body count is drastically lower, with Josuke usually just "beating the evil" out of others. Part 5 attempts to cash in on Part 3, but localizing it to Italy instead of the whole world. How successful it was is up to you (I liked it, but I like Part 3 more personally). Part 6 was just silly. It's localized more like Part 4, but the art style is so odd and the Stands so off-the-wall it's hard to take seriously. Part 7 is semi-separate, but takes an interesting angle. Not enough has been released for me to make a final call on it, but I like it so far.

So tl;dr - Part 1 = good, Part 2 = also good, Part 3 = The best, Part 4 = very good, Part 5 = okay, Part 6 = subpar, Part 7 = good.

This is my favorite series for the last year... it's just so crazy and weird. The bizarre plot and unusual art drive a lot of people off, sadly. My friends and I found that if you just put up with the art for the first 5-10 books, you'll probably be brainwashed into loving it and then you'll go spend $100 on the artbooks. I gotta say I usually hate series that are longer than 20 books or have a lot of character death, but.. well, no one part of Jojo is over 20 books, and... eh... I dunno, I just love it so much I get over everyone dying, I guess. It's exciting because you never know if the heroes will live; you never know what crazy thing someone will think of in a fight (it's hard to see anything coming in this manga); the fights are blessedly short for shounen manga; and people use their brains to fight, not their hearts and inner goodnees and crap like that. Really you can say that most Jojo fights are really thinking contests, and your reward for outwitting your opponent is getting to punch that person in the face. XD

Regarding a previous comment, I guess there's not a lot of overt comedy, but... come on, this is still hilarious.The current story is basically a fetch quest to gather the mummified body parts of Jesus Christ while fighting off dinosaurs. How can this not make you giggle?! The series has a kind of internal drama that keeps you worried, but it's hard to actually take it seriously; I don't think even the author does that. He just thinks of more crazy crap every month. And no, there's very little romance, yay! No sappy idiotic useless girly shounen-manga-standard love interests who need rescuing. There are very few Jojo girls but at least they're all asskickers.

I began to read it while it was still a gothik story about a strange mask and the rivalty against good and evil... then it became natural to keep on reading it but I didn't even know why... This Manga has a strange style, but this is to emphasize the strange story of Joystar Family... if you're keen on story i which you don't know where it lead you, just start to read it you'll surely be possessed by the stand of fun.

it's not bad but the poses often leaving thinking why do they do that? lol but it's still a really good read since i just can't stop myself from continuing to read it.

this is ont of my all time favorite books. Yes at times it seems like you know what will happen next but it almost never does. The art has its own soul and style witch makes it even better. It is not about one person only. It is the story of a blood line and the journy each generation has to do to stop evil

The fighting is some of the best I've ever seen.