If there is one thing you should know about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure before you delve into it, it should be this one thing:
It's dumb. It's so fucking dumb... And yet it works.
While the the story varies wildly based on the arc, it has a basic synopsis. It covers the multi-generational (and eventually multiversal) heroism of the Joestar family, who are constantly getting involved in all sorts of weird shit that results in epic, crazy, surprisingly clever fights and super-manly scenes. The title comes from the protagonists' common nickname, "JoJo", since most of them bear first and last names that start (or sometimes end) with "Jo". Although technically you can just pick up any saga at random, it's slightly easier to follow along if you read from the beginning. Slightly.
Created in 1987 by manga artist Hirohiko Araki, Jojo has had an influence on not only Japanese anime and manga but internet culture as a whole. List a common anime trope, chances are that Jojo is either the originator or made that theme very famous. Cheering sidekicks, multiple-chapter battles, attacks that defy every conventional belief you can dream of, flamboyant poses, you name it.
Naturally, the ever-increasing popularity of the series has led to more visibility for its media AND its fandom, for better and worse. Outside of the obligatory 'actual' references in other shit, this includes such phenomena as people using nearly every opportunity possible to make Jojo references, people complaining about the fandom making references, people complaining about people complaining about the fandom making references, "is this a Jojo reference?" becoming a meme all its own... you know, the usual. Nowadays, you'll probably still see the sporadic Jojo meme here and there outside of /a/. One of the 4chan banners created in the earlier days is based on the manga. ("Your next line will be 'I was just pretending to be retarded!'" "I was just pretending to be retarded! ?! He...he captured...my favorite trick!")
Its most well-known incarnation is probably Stardust Crusaders, mostly for how iconic Jotaro and Dio were as well as the popularity from the OVA and fighting game.
Wamuudes, Custodisi, and Karstodes; the personal guardians to the Emperor of Mankind.
JoJo is one of three anime/manga that /tg/ will openly admit they like, the other two being Berserk and Fist of the North Star. Hell, the early art style of JoJo is heavily inspired by FotNS, even Jonathan's outfit being very similar to Kenshiro's. Like the two aforementioned manga, JoJo is considered to be an extremely manly series, with a predominantly male cast and the protagonists usually kicking ass to get to their objective without much thinking (edit: this is false, Jojo protagonists win fights by creating strategies that could blow up a Zoanthropes' brain from how ridiculously convoluted the strategy is but the sheer ridiculousness of the strategies is apart of the reason why Jojo is so silly). However, at the same time it is flamboyantly gay, with many male characters being shirtless or wearing revealing clothing and striking strange/fabulous poses, making its relationship with /tg/ somewhat confusing and conflicted considering that /tg/ usually shies away from most stuff that is homosexual. It has however, also been described as "flamboyant masculinity", as none of the characters are actually gay despite outward appearances. One could say it's because it's like a breath of fresh air how silly it is, or the end goal of each arc is ultimately pretty simple; protagonist has to beat the shit out of and/or kill the big bad, end of story. The tone of any arc can change in an instant, becoming dumb and happy to dire and grimdark within a couple chapters. It's also because the action is often too awesome that fa/tg/uys turn a blind eye to the gay stuff. Or we just love it that way, since that's mostly what made JoJo popular in the first place. Plus Araki puts scads of references to classic rock and metal into Jojo, so that helps too. Also, the art is honestly very good, especially in the latest tomes.
We've had several Quest threads on /tg/ that relate to JoJo, the most popular being the multi-part Guardsman's Bizarre Adventure. We also have Super Stand Sunday, when /tg/ comes together and makes their own Stand every (you guessed it) Sunday.
The /tg/ interpretation of the Eversor Assassin is pretty much Dio Brando, down to him striking his trademark pose and crying "WRYYYY" before proceeding to cut up whatever enemy is in his way. Probably the most popular /tg/-JoJo relation, however, comes in the form of the YouTuber Bruva Alfabusa's "If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device" series, where he makes several references to JoJo throughout the series. The most popular reference is definitely the Pillarstodes; Adeptus Custodes based on the Pillar Men from Battle Tendency. This actually isn't that far off the mark, since there is in fact official (albeit old) art of shirtless Custodes. Still, the Pillarstodes are quite flamboyant and hedonistic, but nonetheless they're also kickass.
Of course, there's also a RPG based off of JoJo, here.
It wouldn't be surprising if Hirohiko Araki himself was a fa/tg/uy himself. He's mentioned in some lectures and interviews that he decided to create an RPG/board game-style system for JoJo where characters travel to different places to fight enemies, as seen in Stardust Crusaders onward.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's Story unfolds over generations having completely different characters, settings, themes, and even art styles so technically the series should be called "JoJos' Bizare Adventures". The timeline progresses linearly so every Part happens in the order they were published but, for the most part, each story is isolated so it's possible to start anywhere and not miss much. Additionally, each Part takes a different approach to story-telling along with differing with art styles which could almost make any Part after Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency seem like a completely different series. In fact, it's very common for details of characters' designs changing during their first appearance or the art style changing completely within a few chapters.
Here's where the Story of Jojo begins - with a Victorian Aristocrat in the 1880s named George Joestar, who becomes the only survivor of a horrible carriage crash. Mistaking the depraved scavenger Dario Brando for a Good Samaritan, he offers the Cockney lowlife a favor, which he eventually uses to get George to adopt his son, the ruthlessly ambitious, amoral and driven Dio Brando, when he dies. This leads to much suffering for George's son, the goodhearted (if rather dimwitted) Jonathan Joestar, as Dio resents him for his privilege and starts to bully him horribly. While Jonathan eventually learns to stand up for himself and even becomes quote-unquote “friends” with Dio, this all comes to a boil years later when George eventually falls ill and Jonathan discovers a letter from Dario outlining symptoms that look eerily familiar.
As it turns out, Dio is poisoning George to steal the Joestar Fortune for himself. Jonathan confronts him and proves his guilt with the assistance of a trustworthy criminal named Robert E. O. Speedwagon (remember that name, it will be very important), whom he met while gathering evidence of Dio’s crimes. This leads Dio to renounce his humanity and use the power of the Stone Mask to become a vampire, but Jojo manages to trap him in the burning wreckage of the Joestar Mansion during their fight. Unfortunately, Dio barely survives and escapes to repair his body while causing all kinds of chaos. With the aid of mysterious Italian martial artist William Antonio Zeppeli, Jonathan masters a mystical martial art utilizing Hamon, an energy that is anathema to the undead: Best described as harnessing the power of the sun through yoga breathing. Jonathan eventually defeats Dio, and all is well as Jonathan marries the love of his life before disaster strikes. While Jonathan and his wife depart by boat for his honeymoon, Dio returns once again and mortally wounds Jonathan, who is able to set the ship ablaze before dying from the attack. Jonathan's pregnant wife escapes in Dio's coffin with a baby she found just before hiding away, continuing the Joestar Bloodline.
Being the first Part of these Bizarre Adventures, Phantom Blood sets the tone for the rest of the series with its over-the-top violence and strange villains. Phantom Blood is a sign of its time with the story being equivocal to your typical shounen manga, but it obviously has some unique factors. Some would say Jonathan is a boring protagonist and that Dio is what makes the Part shine, or that Dio HIMSELF is a boring and generic villain, but regardless, Phantom Blood lands the ground work for the rest of the series. The anime adaptation cuts a noteworthy amount of content to the point that it may be beneficial to both read and watch Phantom Blood.
In the late 1930s, Joseph Joestar, grandson of Jonathan Joestar, is the second Joestar to get into strife when an elderly Speedwagon is seemingly killed by an old ally-turned vampire, Straights. Straights inadvertently allows Nazis to claim Speedwagon's recent discovery which preludes the awakening of the Pillar Men. These ungodly ancient (and fabulous) near-demigods created the vampirizing Stone Masks as part of a process to find a way around their own weakness to sunlight. Determined to defeat the Pillar Men, Joseph partners with the late William Zeppeli's grandson, Caesar Zeppeli, to defeat them just after they awaken. Joseph and Caesar fail, leading to Joseph being forced to defeat the Pillar Men in 30 days before he dies and/or the Pillar Men find what need to become the Ultimate Lifeforms. With the help of Lisa Lisa, a Master of the Ripple (Hamon), and Stroheim, an extremely hammy Nazi Cyborg, Joseph is able to defeat the Pillar Men's leader by launching him into outer space using a volcano.
Joseph's trickery, the inventiveness of the fights, and outright bizarre nature of this Part make it the favorite of many with the anime only multiplying its popularity with added flair like Bloody Stream. Battle Tendency cements the fact that in JoJo smarts are just as important as raw power, as even when up against seemingly unbeatable opponents, planning and quick thinking prove critical to victory.
In the 1980s, half-Japanese high-school delinquent Jotaro Kujo takes up the role of hero when his grandfather, Joseph Joestar, reveals that Dio Brando has returned after assimilating the body of Jonathan Joestar, and is now in possession of strange new powers. Jotaro had locked himself in jail due to his "evil spirit" possessing him, but Joseph reveals that this spirit is Jotaro's Stand, a manifestation of his life energy brought on by Dio's revival. When they learn that Dio (now called DIO for some reason) is aware of them and that Jotaro's mother, Holly Kujo, is slowly dying from her Stand, Joseph and Jotaro set out with a Muslim fortune teller, Muhammad Avdol, to find DIO in Egypt within 50 days. Almost immediately, the group is attacked by other Stand Users who have been sent by DIO to kill them; despite these attacks they find allies in the Japanese student Noriaki Kakyoin and the French buffoon Jean-Pierre Polnareff, both of whom were brainwashed by DIO. After crossing into Egypt, the Crusaders recruit a Stand-wielding dog named Iggy before their final trek to DIO's mansion as Holly's condition worsens. In the end, despite DIO possessing the power to stop time, Jotaro defeats him and saves his mother and the rest of world from DIO's ambitions, but at the cost of dear friends.
This is by far the most well known and iconic part of Jojo, with the introduction of Stands being very well received as they allowed the series to breakaway and become truly unique among its peers. Whereas most fighting series suffer from power creep issues, Stands presented a totally novel solution by having each ability have their own strengths and weaknesses, and with battles being won by the creativity of the person wielding it. The arc also cemented the multi-generational aspect of the series by bringing back former protagonists and antagonists, tying them directly into the plot. For the longest time, it was the only Part both prominently featured in the United States AND given its own animated adaptation prior to the 2012 anime. While Parts 1 & 2 only received inclusions into old cross-over games, Part 3 has an SNES RPG (Japan-only but has been translated) and an arcade fighting game that contributed significantly to its popularity state-side. Before the release of the 2012 anime, it would have been typical to see Part 3 represent the JoJo series in crossovers.
There's also an American bootleg called Diesel that never survived beyond issue one, and features what is basically an "Americanized" version of the N'Doul fight with Geb being made of blood instead of water.
It's the year 1999 in the Japanese suburb of fictional town, Morioh, and the now 28-year-old Jotaro meets a high-schooler named Koichi Hirose while looking for someone named Josuke Higashikata. Jotaro reveals to Josuke three facts: First, he is Jotaro's uncle, despite the age difference; second, his father is a 79-year-old Englishman (i.e. Joseph Joestar); finally, there is a looming threat in Morioh (later revealed to be a murderer). After dealing with the killer, it is revealed that there is someone in Morioh awakening Stands in people by using a Golden Arrow (used to further connect this with Part 3) for an unknown purpose, so Josuke and Jotaro resolve to find him. When the culprit, Keicho Nijimura, reveals his intentions, he is killed by Red Hot Chili Pepper, one of the aforementioned Stands who then steals the Arrow. Akira Otoishi, RHCP's User, learns that Joseph is coming to help find him, so he plots to murder Joseph as he arrives in order to get away clean, but this plan backfires and he is arrested thanks to Keicho's younger brother, Okuyasu Nijimura.
Eventually Koichi and the surly, eccentric mangaka Rohan Kishibe find out there is a serial killer in Morioh from the ghost of his first victim, who requests that they find him. Soon enough, the killer, Yoshikage Kira, is forced to reveal his identity and disguises himself in order to hide from the heroes while trying to keep his desire to kill in check. Fortunately, Kira's cover is blown thanks to the son of the man whose identity he stole, Hayato Kawajiri, and he is killed in a final altercation. With Kira's threat ended, Joseph and Jotaro leave Morioh in the hands of its citizens, The Golden Heart of Morioh.
This Part marks the full change of Stand names going from Gods and Tarot Cards to songs, albums, and bands (leading to plenty of renaming in subs and dubs to avoid copyright issues) along with their powers being more specialised rather than Part 3 Stands' mostly vague and superabundant abilities. Here we learn what causes Stands to awaken along with a more detailed list of rules for Stands. It is important to note that Part 4 is when Araki's art style completely shifts from the almost blocky, muscled style of Part 3 to a softer, slimmer and more detailed and flamboyant style. This part is also important theme-wise, as the major focus of it is how normal people can live with stands and blend in with society, something which would be integral with future arcs, though trouble stills comes their way because somehow Stand users tend to be drawn to each other. It is also a lot more laid-back with almost half of the chapters being about the characters', mostly Josuke's and Okuyasu's, daily misadventures, drawing similarities at times to the slice-of-life genre.
It's Italy in 2001, Giorno Giovanna (the son of Dio using Jonathan's body, though Giorno never knows this) is a kid with aspirations of becoming a "Gang Star" with the help of his stand, "Gold Experience". After accidentally killing a gangster, Giorno finds himself immersed in the world of the mafia and eventually becomes a member of "Passione" after sparing Bruno Bucciarati. In Passione, he works with Bruno's Gang to move higher in the mafia's ranks and fight off rival gang members that are doing the same. When they are tasked with retrieving the Passione Boss' daughter, Trish Una, so he can kill her, the gang defects and resolve to find the Boss' identity and eliminate him. After fighting off Passione's Assassins, the gang learns of a way to defeat the Boss' Stand, King Crimson (which nobody knows on how it works), from an informant who plans to give them a Stand Arrow. The Boss, now revealed to be named "Diavolo", switches focus to taking the Arrow for himself so he can finally be rid of the gang and take over the world. In a long and intense encounter, Giorno manages to use the Arrow on Gold Experience to turn it into Gold Experience Requiem, which has the insanely overpowered ability of negating any hostile action towards Giorno. Giorno locks Diavolo in an eternal cycle of deaths, and with Diavolo gone, Giorno is able to take his place as the Boss of Passione with his friends as his top officers.
For a long time, Part 5 was considered by many to be one of the weaker entries in the series, mostly due to inconsistencies in Gold Experience's power and an apparently uninteresting character in Giorno due to very flat scanlations removing much of his personality while making several Stands nearly incomprehensible such as Gold Experience and King Crimson. However, newer and better translations are quickly turning opinions to the better. The new anime adaptation also gives it the depth it deserves. Despite whatever flaws there may be, Vento Aureo is still worth reading due to the interesting Stands and villains along with Araki's now more detailed art style. It's especially worth noting the increased attention to villains in this Part, as we get to see actual interaction between them and even character development in some cases.
Vento Aureo is also the first Part besides Part 3 to get its own videogame which is also made by Capcom, and while it doesn't allow one to play all of the notable fights in the story, the rest is detailed in optional cutscenes that can be unlocked. Lastly, this Part is to Italy as Part 3 is to America as this Part is more prominently featured in Italy and is the only Part to have multiple novel side-stories besides Part 3 with at least one being canon.
Jolyne Cujoh was arrested for a crime she didn't commit (though she did have legitimate priors) in 2015 and is then sent to Green Dolphin Street, a maximum-security prison in Florida. Though her dad Jotaro couldn't bail her out, he did give a small locket (containing a fragment of a Stand Arrow), allowing her to develop her Stand, Stone Free, in order for her to survive and get to the bottom of the conspiracy surrounding it. With the help of other Stand Users, Hermes Costello, Foo Fighters (F.F.), Weather Report, Narciso Anasui, and Emporio they pick up on the trail of Father Enrico Pucci. Pucci is a priest and DIO's most trusted follower who is trying in enact DIO's ultimate plan: to "reach Heaven". Pucci uses his Stand, White Snake (which has the ability to physically take a person's stand and memories), to steal Star Platinum and put Jotaro in a comatose state. Jolyne and her gang eventually escape prison in pursuit of Pucci who had gathered DIO's Sons excluding Giorno, but they fail to stop the gang from retrieving Jotaro's Disc. Using a bone that DIO had given him, Pucci transforms White Snake into C-Moon, which is capable of finding the optimal point for another transformation to occur. At the Kennedy Space Center, Pucci successfully transforms C-Moon into Made In Heaven which has the power to accelerate time, the culmination of DIO's plan. Knowing they can't kill Pucci, Jolyne sacrifices herself to send Emporio out to sea where the horizon is accelerating into a void. Waking up back in Green Dolphin Street where Emporio learns from Pucci that they are in a new universe devoid of those killed by Pucci, and the survivors have been implanted with knowledge of their future which is what Pucci calls "happiness". Desperately, Emporio flees to his Ghost Room where he reveals that he has equipped Weather Report's Stand Disc and quickly kills Pucci, "Following the path of Justice is true Fate."
With Pucci's death, the universe experiences another change, where Emporio finds people resembling Hermes, Anasui, and Jolyne. This Jolyne (Irene), invites Emporio and this Hermes to ride with her and Anakiss (Anasui) to go meet with Irene's father for approval of her and Anakiss' marriage. Emporio begins weeping as they drive off before picking up a hitchhiker resembling Weather Report, Stone Ocean comes to an end in this new universe.
A unique factor in Stone Ocean compared to previous Parts is that Stand Users tend to fight alongside their Stands rather than relying completely on their abilities. Overall, Part 6 is the last Part to involve any influence from Dio Brando as well as the end of the original JoJoverse with future Parts taking place in a different universe. Stone Ocean can be considered the most bizarre Part due to the more crude and outlandish nature of some characters combined with some of the stranger Stands and events. Despite what flaws it may have, Part 6 is just as worthy of a read as any other saga of JoJo.
The timeline resets to the 1800's, in a universe mostly unrelated to the original Jojo timeline, save for similar characters.
In this alternate universe, paraplegic ex-jockey Johnny Joestar and Italian executioner Gyro Zeppeli cross paths and decide, for better or for worse, to partner up and participate in the Steel Ball Run, a race that spans the breadth of the United States as a test of endurance for both horse and rider (though a horse isn’t required, most participants choose to use ‘em). Johnny was lauded as a genius jockey, but after an accident, he ended up crippled. He was deeply depressed until he met Zeppeli, who could use a mysterious power called the Spin (this universe's version of Hamon), which is able to make Johnny's legs move for a moment. Along the way, they uncover the real purpose of the race when they become entangled with the Parts of the Saint's Corpse, the mummified body of Jesus Christ (seriously), which bestows its owner with incredible power. Johnny also is tutored in the art of the Spin, and develops his own Stand, named Tusk, which can spin and shoot his fingernails like bullets.
As it turns out, the reason the race was even held was because President Funny Valentine wanted to own the complete Corpse, using the race and its participants as pawns in order to accomplish this goal. President Valentine wishes to use to completed Corpse of Jesus in order to bring prosperity, wealth and luck to the United States. Though his goals are ultimately altruistic in their outlook, Johnny and Gyro still oppose this plan because it requires that only America prospers, while everything else is stuck struggling. However, Funny Valentine's Stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap(D4C), has the extremely unique ability of dimension-hopping, allowing Valentine to escape almost any hostile encounters and access alternate versions of people and things. The President ultimately gains all the Corpse Parts, and gains a new ability called Love Train, which sends any "misfortune" into another place, making conventional attacks useless. Only when Gyro and Johnny develop a special Super Spin, which is a perfect, infinite rotation, can their Stands Ball Breaker and Tusk Act 4 breach Love Train's dimensional walls and defeat Valentine. Although Gyro is killed in the final confrontation against Valentine, Johnny is victorious, and moves in to finish the Steel Ball Run race. Unfortunately for Johnny, Valentine's last plan was to bring in an alternate version of jockey Diego Brando, who possesses the same The World used in Part 3. Johnny and Tusk prove almost equally matched to The World's time stop, but Johnny ends up defeated. However, Diego is stopped from carrying out President Valentine's plan to use the corpse parts when he is killed after he collides with another, deceased Diego Brando's head, destroying both as per the laws of alternate universes.
Steel Ball Run differs slightly from the other parts in that Stands do not do much fighting like the ones in previous incarnations of Jojo. Instead, Stands are more like special abilities that help the user fight, and enhances the capabilities of whatever weapon the user uses, be they fingernails, steel balls, or revolvers. It's worth mentioning that this Part is generally considered one of the best parts in the series (next to Battle Tendency) due to a sharp increase in the art and writing quality and a greater focus on character development and drama. Seriously the art in this Part is fucking gorgeous, go read it.
We're back in Morioh, but not as we know it. The eight part of JoJo is based around the SBR version of the 2011 earthquake that hit Japan.
It's some years after SBR, and Morioh was recently wracked with terrible earthquakes which make these creepy images on the ground that gets ripped up. An unfortunate girl by the name of Yasuho Hirose discovers a body among the mess and rescues him. Though he's got no memories and is quirky almost to the point of stupidity, she decides to help the amnesiac 'Josuke' discover his real identity and some really wacky adventures ensue as they find various clues and odd characters that know something about his past. Later, 'Josuke' is taken in the wealthy yet enigmatic Higashikata family, and gets caught up in a conspiracy involving his real identity, human-like creatures made of stone, and a fruit with mystical healing abilities.
This is probably one of those parts of JoJo, the ones that are known for lots and lots of skub. The longer it dragged on, the more it divided the fans. A lot of those discussions are about the overall shift from battles to a plot, the plot itself dragging on longer than it should... or not, abandoned plotpoints from the beginnings that some fans thought were much more interesting than the ones we got. So it's up to you to read and form your opinion... or not.
Part 9, tentatively called JOJOLANDS, was announced in the last volume of Jojolion. Nothing is known about it, aside from the fact that it will star the SBR's Joseph Joestar's descendants and a rabbit for some reason.
The first issue released in February 2023, featuring Jodio Joestar in Hawaii in what is apparently a story about getting rich.
Jonathan is pretty much the archetypal gentleman: Well-mannered, intelligent, and damned determined to protect that which he values. There are many words to describe him: kind, caring, forgiving, honorable, strong, tall, handsome, clever, and unfortunately, unfortunate. Jonathan was born into a rich family, far away from the cold, unforgiving slums that Dio grew up in, and this was enough reason for Dio to completely hate him. After Dio beats him in a boxing match, assaults Jonathan's girlfriend Erina, and burns his dog Danny alive in a furnace, Jonathan is furious and confronts Dio in the Mansion foyer. Their brief encounter is life-changing as they both discover the Stone Mask, and Jonathan finds his inner strength that allows him to actually fight back.
Years later, Jonathan is an absolute tank, with it taking 3 people to slow him down in a rugby game, and even then he is still able to pass the ball high in the air. Jonathan is also a scholar, working in archaeology due to his interest in the Stone Mask, and during his work he discovers Dio's plot to poison his father and inherit the Joestar fortune. Making his way to one of the most dangerous places in London, Ogre Street, he befriends the criminal Speedwagon, who helps him prove Dio's guilt. When Dio decides to be a tosser and reject his humanity, Jonathan fights him throughout the mansion and succeeds in impaling him on the statue in the foyer and escapes the burning mansion. Some time after Dio's burning, William Antonio Zeppeli appears, instantaneously healing Jonathan with the ripple and revealing Dio's survival. With this new information, Jonathan resolves to hunt down Dio and put an end to his incredibly ungentlemanly vampire shenanigans and learns the ripple from Zeppeli in order to do so. Their journey has Jonathan killing a zombified Jack the Ripper, learning of Dio's new ice powers, and gaining the sword Luck & Pluck from Bruford the Zombie Black Knight. When Jonathan's neck is broken by the other knight, Tarkus, Zeppeli sacrifices himself trying save him which leads to Jonathan becoming even buffer and destroying Tarkus. Meeting up with the other Ripple users, Dire, Straits, and Tonpetty, Jonathan reaches Dio's castle and defeats him in their final battle, ending the fabulous vampire menace. In the proceeding time, Jonathan marries Erina and they prepare to leave on their honeymoon vacation before a completely unlucky series of events occur as Dio is revealed to have barely survived their fight as severed head. Being shot in the throat with Dio's Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, Jonathan loses the ability to breathe and therefore use the Ripple. Using his Last Ripple, Jonathan rigs the boat to explode and holds Dio's head as Erina hides in Dio's coffins as the ship burns around them. In his last breaths Jonathan expresses to Dio his feelings of attachment to him despite how terribly Dio had treated him over the years and passes away before Dio can reply. In the hundred year gap between Phantom Blood and Stardust Crusaders, Dio was able to cut off Jonathan's head and take over his body.
A sign of the era that Jojo's Bizarre Adventure started in, Jonathan physically resembles another chiseled, heroic anime protagonist that punched his enemies to death. To summarize Jonathan, he was a Muscled Scholar who fought with Power of the Sun and an all-around gentleman.
Despite being the only Joestar to never have a Stand, it's believed that he would've had one similar to Hermit Purple based on Dio's abilities using Jonathan's body.
For context, he's peeping on a woman taking a bath... who turns out to be his mother. We've come a long way.
Whereas his grandfather Jonathan is a gentleman, Joseph is a good-natured but impulsive punk with a temper and a penchant for doing just plain weird things. He is completely devoted to the people he cares for as swore vengeance on Straits for seemingly killing Speedwagon and worrying his grandmother. Joseph is known for his trickster behavior, using his brutal cunning to be cunningly brutal and turning the Tide of Battle in his favor. His famous trick is his being able to predict what his enemy is going to say, followed by them repeating the sentence word for word and being momentarily stunned by their predictability.
Unlike Jonathan, who gained the Ripple through formal training, Joseph was born with the ability, but it's not that strong and he can't control it as well as a true master. Though he doesn't have exact mastery, Joseph manages to use the Ripple in creative ways to get out of some dire situations. These traits, combined with his eccentric behavior, makes Joseph one of the most beloved characters in the series.
We first meet Joseph when he arrives in New York with Erina and befriends Smokey. Then, after dealing with a rowdy racist ruffian, a shady guy informs him of Speedwagon's death (said guy subsequently gets duffed for upsetting Grandma Erina). Joseph assures Erina he will protect and is ready when Straits attacks him at the diner where he utilizes his trademark brutally cunning brutality to outsmart Straits including The Joestar Secret Technique. When he learns from a dying Straits that Speedwagon is still alive and of the Man in the Pillar, Joseph sets out to rescue him from a Nazi stronghold in Mexico.
After cleverly tricking (absolutely failing) to trick two guards with his Tequila Girl disguise, Joseph still infiltrates the base in time to save Speedwagon and Stroheim from recently awakened Santana. After messing around for a bit then finding out that his Ripple protects him from being absorbed by the Pillar Man, with Stroheim's sacrifice, Joseph is able to turn Santana back into stone. At Speedwagon's bidding, Joseph meets Caesar Zeppeli (the grandson of the late Will A. Zeppeli) who resents the Joestars for their role in his grandfather's death; this along with Caesar's overall personality puts him and Joseph at odds.
Later when they face Wamuu and quickly realize they're outmatched, Joseph attempts a suicide tactic to save Speedwagon and Caesar but only ends up getting poisoned rings clamped around his heart and throat by Wamuu and Esidisi. This means Joseph is forced to train his Hamon so that he can face the Pillar Men again or die from the poison. Starting his training, he meets the strict Lisa Lisa and her assistant Suzie Q, and bonds with Caesar through their grueling training. When Esidisi appears in pursuit of the Red Stone, Joseph's discourse with him leads to the famous banner and he manages to outsmart the ancient monster man with some difficulty. Joseph locks in his relationship with Suzie Q before going to Switzerland in preparation for the final battle.
He has an argument with Caesar which leads to Caesar going to fight Wamuu on his own, resulting in his death and final Ripple which strengthens Joseph's resolve. When he defeats Wamuu with Caesar's headband, Joseph shows respect for Wamuu who despite killing Caesar, allowed Joseph to receive the final Ripple out of respect and he salutes the fallen Pillar Man as he passes into the wind. There is no such respect for Kars, who backstabs Lisa Lisa in their duel but he is eventually outwitted by Joseph and his plans seemingly foiled when Stroheim arrives with reinforcements. When Kars becomes the Ultimate Lifefrom, Joseph essentially sacrifices himself to kamikaze with an immortal god into active volcano, losing his left hand in the process. While everyone is grieving at his funeral, he miraculously shows up to everyone's surprise with his new wife, Suzie Q, and goes on to become a real estate mogul and start a family.
Returning in Part 3, Joseph is 50 years older than he was in Battle Tendency, though he's still just as buff and silly as his younger self. Thanks to DIO's awakening, Joseph received his Stand, "Hermit Purple", which are purple, prehensile vines that he can use to project and materialize images in an oracle-like fashion in addition to grabbing objects. Joseph takes the initiative and arrives in Japan with Avdol to inform Jotaro of his Stand's true nature and DIO. Before he can formulate a plan to take on DIO, he and the others suddenly find themselves on a time limit when Holly becomes sick due to her Stand so he resolves along with Jotaro, Avdol and Noriaki Kakyoin to travel to Egypt and end DIO's evil. While Joseph is older and wiser, he along with Polnareff bring some welcome light-heartedness to the 50 day Crusade with his overreactions and sayings, "OH MY GOD!". Joseph's biggest accomplishments throughout the adventure are killing Empress, defeating Mariah with Avdol's help, assisting Jotaro against Terrence D'Arby, and telling Jotaro The World's secret. He is seemingly killed when DIO throws a knife into his throat and later sucks a majority of the blood from his body, but Joseph manages to survive this by the time Jotaro performs a blood transplant from DIO's corpse.
A few years prior to Stardust Crusaders, Joseph ended up having an affair with Tomoko Higshikata which would lead to the birth of Josuke. Meaning that he used the Joestar Sex-Drive to have a child with a 20-year-old woman at the age of 63 while still married to Suzie Q., which she was understandably furious about. For some reason, in the OVA his hair is noticeably a faded blond.
He returns yet again in Part 4 at the age of 79, but it's clear that time hasn't been good to him as his hearing isn't so great and he has to walk with a cane. He's the reason Jotaro arrives in Morioh as Hermit Purple revealed an image of Angelo's Aqua Necklace instead of Josuke when he wanted to see his face. Joseph later has to be protected from Red Hot Chili Pepper as he's escorted to Morioh by boat and finally meets Josuke in person. While he tries to bond with Josuke, he comes off as a senile old man due to his general belligerence before they meet the Invisible Baby. In an attempt to impress Josuke, he slits his wrist so they can use his blood to find the Invisible Baby who had fallen into water. Naming the baby Shizuka, Joseph becomes more lively and no longer carries a cane by the time he leaves Morioh with Jotaro.
Joseph is still alive by the time Part 6 happens and in Araki's words "a little dumber" though he doesn't make a physical appearance. The fact that he wasn't outright killed in the original universe means Joseph was able to avoid the Joestar Curse of dying at young age, but he also broke the rule of finding only one love so there's that. Additionally, in the Steel Ball Run's universe, the Joestar Family Tree includes Joseph Joestar and Suzie Q. meaning that he has a counterpart in that universe, who is known as "Fumi" (And that universe's version of Hermit Purple has a whole body).
Grandson of Joseph, and the son of a virtually nonexistent jazz player (Sadao) and a housewife (Joseph's daughter Holly). Was a happy normal kid growing up but then started getting into fights with gangsters by the time he was 17. Would almost be an unlikeable prick were it not for his badassness, unflappable demeanour, and being a shonen protagonist.
Jotaro's Stand is essentially what kicks off Part 3, as he locks himself up in a local jail because he has no clue what the hell it even is. After Joseph and Avdol convince him that it's not some unholy possession, Jotaro then joins along in an adventure which sees him travel the world and punch the fuck out of a lot of people. While less flamboyant than his grandfather, he's every bit as clever as he uses his unflappable demeanor to bluff his way out of numerous life-or-death encounters.
His Stand, "Star Platinum" is a blue-ish muscleman with long hair with so many powers it becomes pretty clear how much of a protagonist he is: Punching shit really fast, a stretchy finger, the ability to pick out tiny details with precision, and (eventually) the power to stop time as "Star Platinum: The World".
Part 4 sees him help out Josuke with taking care of Stand business on behalf of the Speedwagon Foundation, but otherwise standing back to do other stuff. That said, he's still just as powerful, even moreso because he finally mastered the ability to stop time itself. Also despite being older he's drawn in a way that makes him look younger than in Part 3, because Araki loves putting qualities of himself into his characters.
He returns again in Part 6 after finding out that the jail where his daughter is being held has its own issues with Stands, and that Pucci has plans that involve Dio. At this point it becomes clear what his flaws are, as it's revealed that while he is a badass, he's also pretty useless in anything not involving being a protagonist, like being an even halfway decent dad. Using Star Platinum's Time Stop abilities also took a toll on his body, alongside him ending up in a coma due to Whitesnake stealing his Stand and memories (shown by the durability stat dropping from an A to an E), which might explain why he doesn't put in much of a performance during the arc. He ultimately dies in the final fight with Pucci, when the latter pulled Dio's knife trick on Jolyne, leaving him screaming in horror and without enough time to stop Made In Heaven, who splits his head in two.
He also looks like a commissar which makes him even more badass, who doesn't want commissar Jotaro?
Fun fact: with Japanese naming conventions (placing the surname before the given name), his name would be Kujo Jotaro, making him the first Joestar to literally have "JoJo" in his name!
Became a marine biologist, loves him some Dolphins.
The big shocker here: His father is Joseph Joestar. This in itself is pretty damn scary, as the old man was able to still get kids, though this isn't without consequence. As such, he lives with his mom and grandfather (a policeman). Then he runs into Jotaro and things go very... Bizarre.
Josuke is a bit of a goof like his dad, and sports serious pride in his pompadour to the point that he'll beat the shit out of someone for dissing it. And like his dad, he has a penchant for getting into trouble with his various get-rich-quick schemes. On the flip side, one could say that he's too nice for his own good and his desire to be kind can sometimes put him in bad situations, though he's certainly not Stupid Good. He is, however, very touchy about his hair and insulting it is a surefire way to catch an assbeating. His Stand, "Crazy Diamond", is able to punch things really fast and restore things that were broken if he knows how they work, a power that could be seriously powerful if he puts his mind to it. However, this is incapable of bringing back the dead (he learns this the hard way), and if he uses this power when mad, things get messed up. Oh, and he can't use it on himself. He is, in true JoJo fashion, able to think of creative uses of an otherwise rigidly defined powerset - he can cut fragments from a wallet photo and "repair" the whole wallet, or "repair" an Italian dish to see if its ingredients include, for instance, poison - both of these are completely plot relevant, by the way.
Josuke sums up something missing from other primary Joestars - someone thrust into BIZARRE circumstances despite having no relation to their cause or origin and overcoming them despite this.
Trust us, this is as much personality as he gets in the scans.
The son of Dio using Jonathan's body, making his legitimacy as a Joestar up for debate. Although, less talked about is whether this makes him a Dhampir.
His personality is, simply put, a combination of Dio and Jonathan. He retains Dio's ambition for power, and lusts after leadership of the gang Passione. He is also ruthless to his enemies, and is not above murdering them, or even forcing them to swallow a gun. However, he possesses the Joestar spirit, and genuinely cares of his friends and innocent people. In fact, the main reason he joins Passione is to reform it into a better, kinder organization. Unfortunately, the initial scans and translations of Vento Aureo were dogshit, having butchered Giorno's reserved, steadfast, almost poetic manner of speech into bland, unimaginative and occasionally incomprehensible statements. Because of this, most of the fanbase sees him as boring, unremarkable, and little more than a plot device, though this has fortunately lessened with the anime adaptation. The fact that his Stand, "Gold Experience", has some really bullshit powers doesn't help either. To iterate, his stand can imbue inanimate objects with life (like turning suitcases into frogs or motorcycles into snakes or bullets into trees and beetles or buttons into FUCKING HANDS AND TONGUES) with no respect to conservation of mass and, like Crazy Diamond above, reattach them. He can simply conjure up replacement body parts to heal his comrades, and to add even more bullshit, any damage done to one of his creations will be reflected back to the assailant (though this ability is tapered off in later arcs because even Araki knew how broken it was). In contrast to Crazy Diamond this power is able to resurrect the dead, though it only works on very recent kills and the resulting beings are essentially zombies living on borrowed time. He also has the power to rapidly accelerate the thought process of something he punches, though this is only brought up in one arc and then never seen again.
At the end of the arc, it becomes even more bullshit as Giorno gains "Gold Experience Requiem", which has the power to nullify actions. Basically, if he doesn’t like something he can go “nope” and Gold Experience Requiem will rewind time to make sure it never happened, leaving only memories. It even works within Diavolo's skipped time of 10 seconds, meaning that it will take action, no matter what you do. It's theorized not even The World's timestop can affect Gold Experience Requiem. This also means that he can (and does) reset Diavolo's death, making for a rather horrifying cycle of death and rebirth.
Doesn't matter that she has masculine facial features, she's still hot.
Daughter of Jotaro Kujo, the only female Joestar to bear the nickname "JoJo" thus far, though she beats the shit out of anyone who calls her by her nickname. She's essentially her ancestor Joseph if all his bad traits were pushed up a couple of notches, making for a hot-blooded, rebellious, foul-mouthed, quick-tempered pervert. Seriously, we first see her when a prison guard catches her masturbating in her cell, and at one point she confesses to envying/admiring snails since, as hermaphrodites, they can fuck anything and everything they cross paths with. She's got a huge anti-authoritarian streak, and at first, the series seems set on deconstructing the "Joestar Family Traits" and showing how they can make you an unlikeable prick who needlessly gets yourself into trouble. Luckily, the surfacing of the generation's big bad and her finding allies she can actually share her positive traits with quickly brings her back into line with being the hero.
She's either insanely lucky, or a lot smarter than she appears - which is good, because, on the surface of it, her Stand, "Stone Free", is one of the weakest, as it lets her turn her body partially or completely into string. Sounds lame, right? Wrong. She can do all sorts of shit with that string, from spying on people by using it to catch sounds to tying people up to making stitches to turning into monomolecular wire and reducing enemies to so much hamburger. Also, because the Stand channels its powers through her body, she can use her powers and have Stone Free do its own thing at the same time, so she's got a giant ghost-buddy that will beat the shit out of you whilst she's snaring 'n' slicing with her string. She has extreme daddy issues with Jotaro, shitting on him until near the end of Stone Ocean. It is somewhat justified though, considering he abandoned her and her mother when she was young. She ultimately gives her life to save Emporio from Made In Heaven, staying behind to fight Pucci to the very end.
The SBR version of Jonathan from Part 1, Johnny is easily the most shit-on Joestar of them all. He was a genius jockey raised by a rich horse trainer and racer and pampered through his youth, kind of turning him into a spoiled brat. But later his older brother dies in a jockey accident that may or may not have been his fault, his father disowns him after telling him "God has taken the wrong son", and later after cutting in front of a kid in line for a play, the kid pulls a gun and shoots him, paralyzing him from the waist down. Just to add sprinkles on this shit-fest his "friends" leave him, no one visits him in the hospital, and he is abused and beaten by the nurses. Truly, he is the Jonathan of the new timeline.
Somewhat notable for being a very-much-deliberate example of an asshole Joestar, even if Jolyne cornered that market one generation before. Compared to Jonathan, he's much more of a sarcastic, cynical asshole who mostly thinks of himself. However, when he is filled with determination or the urge to kill, his eyes fill with a dark flame, signaling a Johnny that absolutely will not compromise for his goals.
After he leaves the hospital he meets Gyro Zeppeli, whose spinning steel balls ignited a reflex within Johnny's crippled legs and made him stand up for an instant. Johnny immediately follows Gyro in the nation-wide Steel Ball Run race in order to learn the secret of the Spin and regain the use of his legs. Throughout the journey, he actually brightens up and becomes an overall better person, even if he doesn't win everything in the end.
His Stand "Tusk" enhances his powers of the Spin, allowing him to fire his fingernails like bullets. As Tusk evolves, his Spin gets more and more powerful, until eventually he is able to rotate his nails infinitely, creating what's effectively a mini-black hole that can rip through dimensions and warp through space and time. He also has occasional conversations with Jesus Christ himself, with Jesus usually offering Johnny words of guidance. He almost always rides a horse since he's a paraplegic, if Gyro isn't carrying him or he's not crawling. At the end of Steel Ball Run, having mastered the Spin, Johnny finally becomes able to walk again and marries with Rina Higashitaka.
Of all the Joestars, Johnny suffered the strangest death of them all. After he used Tusk to transfer Rina and George's Higashitaka stone curse upon himself, his head was crushed by a giant boulder thrown by a tree's Stand. Yes, even trees can have Stands.
Otherwise known as "Joey Four-Balls", "Gappy the Gap-tooth Wonder", "Jo2uke", and (worst of all) "Josuke Higashikata 8" in official media. He's essentially the JoJolion-timeline version of Josuke from Part 4 and he is an amnesiac who's looking for his origins and why people are trying to kill him. Personality-wise, he just as intelligent as previous Jojos but he's much more eccentric, having a calm demeanor most of the time while also showing some brutal cunning at others. At first, he was thought to be Part 8's equivalent of Yoshikage Kira, but that was dispelled when a would-be assassin realizes that Kira, among other things, was an utter narcissist.
Later its revealed that he's really Josuke and Kira (who's a Joestar in this timeline) fused together through a geographical anomaly that combines the DNA of two organisms inserted into the hole. This explains his gap-teeth, both of his eyes being different colors, his quadbollocks, and his Stand's appearance and powers.
His Stand is "Soft & Wet", which is able to create bubbles with stars on them that are capable of taking away properties from his intended targets. For example, he is able to take away a person's vision, making their eyes explode temporarily, take away sound, or even remove friction which causes people to slip and slide on the affected surface. He also has weird star-shaped ears.
Thanks to the merger that created Gappy, Soft & Wet also has some of Killer Queen's powers, like being able to make explosive bubble mines. Its ultimate power-up, "Soft & Wet: Go Beyond", allows Gappy to fire deadly bubble bombs from his birthmark, which can phase through walls and are completely unaffected by causality, which ends up being the key to defeating Wonder of U for good.
The new kid on the block, whose story seems to revolve around him earning a fortune upon some Tropical islands. He's supposedly a descendant of the SBR Joseph Joestar, which he immediately proves by beating up some corrupt cops sexually harassing his brother. He does this with his freaky hell-spider Stand "November Rain", which creates extremely heavy raindrops to keep falling on the cops' heads, likely also turning their eyes red.
Note: The allies are organized based on their originating part... because there are an assload of minor protagonists, and an increasingly large amount of minor villains.
Robert E.O. Speedwagon: Speedwagon is somewhat popular for being the only normal guy in a series about superpowered martial arts and vampires, with his only real "power" being his razor-sharp hat and big hammer. Also for the meme"Even Speedwagon is afraid!" (which wasn't even said by him in the anime, it was totally said by him in the manga). Despite being fairly average, he still manages to be good friend to Jonathan and Zeppeli. After Jonathan's death, he moves to America and becomes an oil tycoon. This business eventually becomes the Speedwagon Foundation, which is a vague organization dedicated to helping the Joestar family with things like Stands. Come Part 2, he's now an old man, and he gets kidnapped by Nazis because he knows something about a Pillar Man they discovered. Joseph bails them out and Speedwagon leads them to Italy, where they meet Caesar and Lisa Lisa. By this point, he kinda fades into the background, being an old man and all, but gets a final showing leading the German military forces against Kar's vampire minions. After the events of Part 2, he eventually passes away, without any family or heirs, but having left the Joestars and their descendants a semi-paramillitary organisation filled with cutting edge tech and resources to fight against any paranormal threats, something that becomes rather helpful in Parts 3 and 4.
William A. Zeppeli: First off, he has a fabulous hat. Second off, he was trained in the Ripple by a man named Tonpetti after his father and the ship he was in sinks because of the Stone Mask. having been trained by a master, he manages to pull some fine tricks like shooting disks of wine as weapons and stretching his arms to punch things. He then trains Jonathan after learning that the Stone Mask is still around. He eventually dies in a fight with Tarkus (not the awesome bald mehreen) where he literally gets split in half with a chain and then gives his last life's energy to power up Jonathan. This in itself begins the long line of close allies (usually Zeppelis) sacrificing themselves for Joestars.
Caesar Zeppeli: Grandson of Baron Zeppeli. A student of Lisa Lisa, he has a major chip on his shoulder as he blames the Joestar family for his grandfather's death. However, he also blames himself for the accidental death of his father shortly after discovering the Pillar Men in Rome. As a Hamon user, he's more experienced, even adapting a unique bubble projectile attack. Caesar dies fighting Wamuu because he gets impatient and goes after the Pillar Men alone, but not before putting up one hell of a fight. He hates Joseph's guts at first, but under Lisa-Lisa the two become totalbros, fighting by each other's sides until his death. Since he's Italian, he automatically makes women wet when he talks to them.
Lisa Lisa: Aka Elizabeth Joestar, Joseph's mother. She was forced to abandon Joseph and adopt a new identity when she discovered that her husband's murderer, who was also a top British military leader, was in fact a zombie, and killed him. She becomes the Hamon mentor for Caesar and Joseph, pushing them to their absolute limits to prepare for the Pillar Men. Lisa Lisa uses a special scarf that conducts Hamon in her fight against Kars. However, because Kars doesn't play fair, he nearly kills her and takes the Red Stone that she was guarding. Towards the end she tells Joseph that she's his mother... which, had she said so sooner, would've prevented him from spying on her bathing in an earlier scene. Considering she's 50 years old, she's an absolute MILF since looks like she's only in her early thirties.
Baron Rudolf von Stroheim: A goose-stepping Nazi who just can't shut up about how Germany is the greatest country in the world. Arguably one of the most fabulous minor characters in the series, and allegedly also the design inspiration for Guile. Initially a bad guy for kidnapping Speedwagon and seemingly trying to weaponize the Pillar Man he found in Mexico, he eats a grenade in an attempt to prevent Santana from escaping. That would be the end of it, but then he suddenly appears in the Swiss Alps as a cyborg with a fucking .50 cal in his chest to help kill the other super-vamps. Said machine gun is seemingly fired via pelvic thrusts. After spending the remainder of the arc being a badass and saving Joseph's bitch ass a couple times, he returns to the Wehrmacht to fight World War II. The epilogue describes him singlehandedly covering the retreat of Nazi forces from the Soviet invasion of Berlin, or Stalingrad in the anime. He died as he lived, screaming his head off about German greatness, and stuffed with enough guns to run an artillery battery.
The titular main crew of Part 3 and while the title is never actually used as they normally referred to as the "Joestar Group", it goes unspoken that "Stardust Crusaders" is the true name of the group. They are a team of four, later five then six, Stand Users united together to save Holly Kujo by traveling to Egypt and stopping DIO's evil within 50 days. Considering that they're all of different nationalities, it's a point of humor that they're all able to communicate with each other perfectly with no mention of their native languages.
Muhammad Avdol (or Abdul): An Egyptian fortune teller and expert on Stands. His stand is Magician's Red, which uses fire-based attacks. Avdol is a close friend of Joseph, and helps explain Stands to Jotaro. He's a no-nonsense character who uses his knowledge of the other Stands to great effect. He defeated Polnareff and spared his life and allowed him to join the group. After arriving in India, Avdol is seemingly killed by a cowboy and an in-bred man, but survives because the bullet apparently only grazed him. He uses his faked death to purchase some safe transportation for the team (which ended up being boarded by another assassin anyways). Avdol is killed off for real by Vanilla Ice, when he pushes Polnareff out of harm's way despite saying he wouldn't do so again. Props to Araki for not making him a Middle-Eastern stereotype, considering Stardust Crusaders came out around 1989.
Noriaki Kakyoin: A Japanese student and MILF enthusiast from the same school as Jotaro. His stand is Hierophant Green; its main attack is an emerald projectile shower called "Emerald Splash", and he can also extend its whole body into coils that stretch long distances, as well as enter very small spaces. At first he's being mind controlled by DIO through a flesh bud and attacks Jotaro, but the latter manages to subdue him and even remove his flesh bud in an extremely risky impromptu surgery. In a show of gratitude, Kakyoin joins Jotaro's team, having found kinship in the other Stand users. In the final battle against DIO, Kakyoin is killed, but not before figuring out DIO's power and conveying the message to Joseph. That's right, Kakyoin is Jotaro's Zeppeli.
Jean Pierre Polnareff: A French swordsman with an absurdly tall hairdo; in fact, some guys from /v/ might recognize him as the inspiration for SNK's fighting game character Benimaru. His stand is Silver Chariot, an armored swordfighter that can slice with incredible speed and precision. Like Kakyoin, Polnareff was being controlled by DIO's Flesh Bud, but is defeated by Avdol and promptly joins their group. His motivation is to find the man who raped and killed his sister, who just so happens to be one of DIO's assassins, as well as get revenge on DIO himself. Polnareff is highly emotional; he hits on every lady he meets, he's deeply concerned about finding adequate toilets on their many stops (a difficult task in the Middle East), and he blames himself for Avdol's death (both times; see above). Nonetheless, he's a very capable fighter. Polnareff is the only fighter besides the Joestars to survive the battle against Dio. In all he's also a big goofball who is frequently the butt of jokes, which due to Araki's writing style led to him getting the most screen time of the heroes in Part III. Some point after Part 3 but before Part 5, Polnareff would find himself battling Diavolo and nearly DIE, lost both his legs and almost an arm, becoming wheelchair-bound as a result. He then becomes a contact for Giorno's gang as they begin looking for clues to Diavolo's identity and they all meet at the Coliseum. And then he pretty much dies and stabs his stand with the Stand Arrow, turning it into a super-stand that can swap spirits and force evolution. Once the battle ends, it's revealed that Polnareff's spirit survives... inside a turtle. Granted, it's a stand-using turtle, but still.
Iggy: The final member of Jotaro's team, introduced halfway into the series. He's selfish, ornery, anti-social, and likes to fart on Polnareff's face. Oh, also he's a dog. Yes, dogs can be Stand users too. His stand is The Fool, which allows him to construct anything from sand, whether it's a giant attack dog, a hang glider, or a protective shell. He gets in a vicious fight against Dio's guard falcon, Pet Shop, which ends up costing him his leg. Iggy later sacrifices himself to save Polnareff from Vanilla Ice.
The Morioh Stand Users. From left to right: Yukako Yamagishi, Jotaro Kujo, Joseph Joestar, Shizuka Joestar, Arthur, Reimi Sugimoto, Tonio Trussardi, Koichi Hirose, Okuyasu Nijimura, Nijimura Sr., Josuke Higashikata, Rohan Kishibe, Toshikazu Hazamada and Aya Tsuji.
Given the nature of Part 4 the JoBro gang is more modular in nature than it was in the previous parts. The below three, combined with Josuke and Jotaro, are sometimes known as the "Duwang Gang", aka the main characters of the show.
Koichi Hirose: Josuke's best friend, he's a short dude who just happens to be the same age as Josuke. He's not quite as weird, but he finds himself in much weirder situations as a result, like getting stabbed by an arrow and evolving his stand, or finding out his girlfriend's a stand-using psychopath. His Stand, Echoes, is a real special one because it gains three modes over the course of the story: ACT1 just makes lots of noise, ACT2 throws these sound effects and they actually happen (like making a sound effect for fire and then the place combusts), and ACT3 suddenly replaces the sound powers and becomes some short guy whose punches imbue such a powerful force that its targets slam into the ground. He's usually the more reasonable guy and he happens to be nice. He's just incredibly bad with luck. He appears again early in Part 5 to help Jotaro confirm Giorno's identity.
Okuyasu Nijimura: The archetypical yanki thug with a really big heart. Sure, he first met Josuke as an enemy and nearly killed Koichi, but it's revealed that he and his brother were only causing trouble to find a cure for their freakishly-mutated unkillable dad. They eventually find common purpose when Okyasu's brother is kidnapped and killed by an enemy stand user and they become friends from there. And then...the gangster becomes a bigger nut than Josuke. His Stand is called The Hand and its freakishly huge right hand can erase whatever it comes into contact with (including the air, which creates vacuums that pull Okuyasu and his victims around). Like Vanilla Ice's power, this is fucking awesome, but Okuyasu is too dumb to use it properly.
Rohan Kishibe: A master manga artist who happens to live in Morioh. He's an egotist to the worst degree and hates Josuke's guts, but has nothing but respect for Koichi and Jotaro. His Stand, "Heaven's Door" allows him to read people like literal books, which lets him rip out pages (which harms the user in a way) and write in commands that the victim must obey. His whole jackass act is a bit more justified once it's revealed that as a kid, his parents and a neighbor of his were murdered by Kira, and he was only able to survive because the neighbor hid him. Some believe him to be a self-insert of Araki though this likely wasn't true in his earliest appearance in Part 4 due to his personality not being representative of Araki's own. The fact that he received his own side mangas, with one of them being "Rohan at the Lourve" which is very likely inspired on Araki's own trip to the Louvre.
Diamond is Unbreakable takes place entirely in Morioh, so almost every supporting character is a citizen and very few are not in some way quirky or bizarre. With the rule that Stand Users are attracted to other Users put into play, a lot of characters are either normal people who happened to gain Stands or are affected by them. Many of them start out as antagonists but later calm down once whatever craziness they were involved in is resolved, so here are all the citizens that are forgiven.
Tomoko Higashikata: Josuke's mother, who had him with Joseph. Despite not actually being a Joestar by blood, she seems to have had a few of the family traits rub off on her, like not taking shit from cat callers and promptly smashing their face through a car window, denting the door. Despite Joseph walking out on her (and being an old, old man) she still wants him back for some reason.
Tamami Kobayashi: A con artist who guilt-trips people into giving him money. He is aided in this goal by the power of his Stand, The Lock, which attaches itself to people and amplifies their guilt, growing heavier when doing so. Eventually people give in and do anything to stop the weighing guilt, including killing themselves. He tried to swindle Koichi but failed, instead going after his mom and sister (the latter of which he was going to try and fuck using the power of his Stand). He was beaten by Koichi when Echoes hatched from its egg and Koichi used its sound abilities to counteract Tamami's guilt-trips. Despite effectively trying to ruin his life and nearly killing his mother, Koichi forgives Tamami after some threatening jokes. Started out as an average-sized dude who shrank down for no reason in the manga, while in the anime he was short all the time.
Toshikazu Hazamada: An introverted student that goes to the same highschool as Josuke & Co. that gained a Stand thanks to Akira Otoishi. Hazamada appears to be timid at first but it's quickly discovered that he has a very stubborn and depraved personality which is characterized by his Stand, Surface. Surface is a Stand with no real form unlike others such as Crazy Diamond, instead it is able to control human-shaped objects like wooden mannequins at Hazamada's bidding and mimic a person's appearance down to their voice and personality. If the person being mimicked is close enough, Surface is capable of completely controlling all of their actions through its own movements, though it can't control Stands.
Yukako Yamagishi: A classmate of Koichi, Yukako develops a crush on him that quickly develops into an obsession. The inspiration for the Yandere archetype in modern Japanese media, but with the twist that she actually grows into a genuinely decent person over time. Has the stand Love Deluxe, which lets her grow and control her own hair.
Nijimura Sr.: A former servant of DIO and the father of Keicho and Okuyasu Nijimura. He has an unidentified Stand, which got him attention from DIO and while he was paid well for his services, DIO didn't trust him and implanted him with a flesh bud. Unfortunately, when the Stardust Crusaders killed DIO, the flesh bud burst and mutated Nijimura into the monstrous form of a green, tumour-ridden elephant-man. This wracked his mind, rendering him unable to speak in anything but moans and thanks to the cells from the flesh bud, he is functionally indestructible.
Tonio Trussardi: An Italian chef who moved to Morioh and opened a restaurant, Trattoria Trussardi. Like real Trattorias, there is no written menu but unlike a traditional Trattoria, Tonio studies his customers to find what to serve them. His food is amazingly good except for the part where customers are violently torn apart for a moment before coming back together, better than ever. That is because of his Stand, Pearl Jam, which allows Tonio to alter dishes he makes to cure a person of some kind of ailment by cutting up his Stand (a bunch of large pepper-shaped things with faces) and adding them to the dish. In the anime he speaks very formally with lots of desu peppered into his speech, likely because as an Italian Japanese is not his native tongue.
Reimi Sugimoto: The ghost of a teenage girl, one of Kira's first victims and the kickstarter of the main plot of Diamond is Unbreakable. She is an old babysitter of Rohan's (which he forgot as he was a toddler) who saved him from the Morioh Killer 15 years ago and through her we learned that Stand Users can see ghosts as if they were actually there. Reimi and her dog, Arnold, haunt Morioh's "Ghost Alley" which is essentially a limbo between the living world and the afterlife, where you must not look back, lest you get torn apart by ghostly hands. She informs Koichi and Rohan about her killer and requests that they stop him for the safety of Morioh and so she can finally pass on. Reimi's story of her and Arnold's deaths are likely a play on The Licked Hand urban legend where a girl finds her dog dead in the bathroom.
Mikitaka turning into a d6. And yes, Josuke points out he got the sides wrong.
Mikitaka Hazekura: An Filthy Xenos alien... maybe. As far as bizarreness goes in Diamond is Unbreakable, Mikitaka is up there. Has a shape-shifting ability called Earth Wind and Fire, but it might not actually be a Stand. Araki has never truly stated whether or not Mikitaka was actually an alien and it is likely we will never know.
Shigekiyo Yangu: Otherwise known as Shigechi. A weird looking underclassman, Shigechi is pretty childish and greedy, but can be quite clever when the situation calls for it. Tries to swindle Josuke and Okuyasu out of the money they agreed to split, but was defeated and made to share. Has a Stand called Harvest, a whole swarm of small fat hornet-shaped things who can run around really fast and far to collect things for Shigechi. After his defeat Shigechi became friendlier with the JoBros and hung out with them for a bit, but was brutally murdered by Kira when he accidentally discovered the man's identity.
Aya Tsuji: The owner of a beauty parlor, Aya can seemingly make people fall in love with those whom she treated. Yukako was skeptical at first (especially when Aya molested her), but after a one treatment Yukako had Koichi fall in love with her. The treatment came with a caveat though: she had to apply lipstick periodically. Aya fancied herself something of a fairy godmother, a career that was tragically cut short when Kira barged in, forced her to put another man's face onto his, then killed her.
Shizuka Joestar: A baby with the Stand Achtung Baby, which turns her and things around her invisible depending on how stressed she is. Saved from drowning by Josuke and Joseph. Rohan briefly kidnaps her so he could win a game of rock-paper-scissors against a middle-schooler and somehow loses track of her moments later. Gets adopted by Joseph. This means that she's the adopted sister of Josuke and Holly, making her Jotaro's aunt and Jolyne's great-aunt, despite Shizuka being the same age as the latter. We unfortunately don't get to see her again in later parts, and given how part 6 ended we're probably not going to see her ever again. A pity, considering her stand's potential for growth was A-rank.
So handsome nobody will ever take my girls, my Highway Star is a deep purple, I got everything.
Yuya Fungami: A handsome and fit biker who got hospitalized after a road accident, Yuya is introduced some time after we first see his semi-remote Stand, Highway Star. It is a humanoid figure that can disassemble itself into a bunch of feet, allowing it to chase its targets down at speeds of up to 60km/h (that's around 37mph for any American readers). Once it catches its victim, it buries its feet in the target, draining them of their vitality and healing Yuya. He is doted on by a trio of delinquent girls, and he in turn is very protective of them.
Hayato Kawajiri: An elementary school aged kid, Hayato starts out as an introverted little creep, spying on his parents' bedroom with a closed circuit camera. Unlike his mother, Hayato is perceptive to Kira's actions in his Kosaku Kawajiri disguise, and gathers proof of Kira's false identity. Hayato threatens to reveal Kira's secret when Kira super creepily attempts to interrogate him in the bathroom, but this leads to his death. Killing Hayato puts Kira into a corner and the resulting stress leads to him gaining Bites The Dust. Then the boy develops a pair of massive unbreakable diamond balls, forcing Kira to undo Bites The Dust by baiting him into revealing his identity. Hayato is then integral to Josuke's final showdown with Kira and quietly spends the end of Part 4 with his mother, saying he would wait for his father to return.
Bruno Bucciarati: The top guy in the gang, Bucciarati tends to be the level-headed one and is a rather compassionate person for being a capo of the most powerful mafia in Italy. In his first appearance, he pulled some messed up tricks and is the source of the infamous "This taste... it's of a Liar!" scene where he licks Giorno's sweat to freak him out. His stand is Sticky Fingers, which makes zippers on absolutely anything, letting him do things like create impossible space inside objects (or people) to completely severing limbs. A fighter of incredible utility, especially when some thought is applied to the way his powers are used. His defining moment is being literally unable to die. No, seriously, King Crimson puts a fucking hole through his midsection, and the motherfucker just keeps walking. Being technically dead, he lost the ability to feel pain and used it to his advantage and even blew his own ears out to win the fight against Secco and his Oasis, but then began losing his sight. He only dies after the whole soul-switcheroo of the Silver Chariot Requiem. Has his own battle cry like Jotaro and so on: "ARI ARI ARI ...ARRIVEDERCI!"
Guido Mista: A more punkish guy who has a MASSIVE phobia of the number 4. His stand is Sex Pistols, six little bullet-shaped guys numbered 1-7 (skipping 4 because of said phobia) who can kick bullets (or effectively anything bullet-sized) in a way almost identical to the Emperor, except for the fact that his gun is perfectly normal. Sex Pistols are also able to to deflect projectiles that would harm Mista, in a flashback showing his first use of them, he was shot at by multiple thugs and was able to pick up a gun and shoot each of them without hassle or injury. He gets seriously messed up when he fights more dangerous stands, e.g. he was shot in the head at close range during by Prosciutto and almost killed himself shooting at White Album's Gently Weeps. Mista is the only one of the original gang, excluding Fugo, to survive the arc, which is rather impressive, considering that he took a hit from his own bullets no less than 30 times.
Leone Abbachio: Looks like Sephiroth, only acts stoic and tries to keep his conscience clean (He was a cop and only defected when he saw how fucked the police system was after his partner died). His stand, Moody Blues, allows him to play back time like a cassette tape, as his stand begins impersonating someone and repeats their actions. Considering how this could discover Diavolo's identity, this leads to Abbachio being assassinated by King Crimson personally, but not before leaving a mold of Diavolo's face.
Narancia Ghirga: Despite looking younger than everyone else, he's actually older than Giorno by two years (despite Giorno looking fucking 20 but he's really 15). He's pretty book-dumb and loud-mouthed, which ends up with him being the first victim of several stand attacks. His stand is Aerosmith, a miniature airplane that traces things by their CO2 emissions and then blasts the fuck outta them with dakka. In both of his fights he ends up in a literal stand-off after forcing the enemy out hiding, first against Formaggio and his Little Feet and later against Squalo's Clash. He gets killed in the Silver Chariot Requiem switcheroo, being assassinated in the mayhem, Giorno tries to revive him but by then his soul had already departed so he was left surrounded by flowers. His favorite manga was Fist of the North Star and he had his battle cry that he used whenever Aerosmith shoots someone to hell: "VOLA VOLA VOLA...VOLARE VIA!" He's also a reference to the Aerosmith song "Dude looks like a lady", which has resulted in him being considered a trap. There is an absolute, metric fuckton of fan-porn of Narancia, despite the fact that he is only 17.
Panacotta Fugo: Whereas Narancia is book-dumb and impulsive, Fugo is book-smart and methodical in his actions albeit a bit heartless, like when he stabbed Narancia in the face with a fork for getting a maths question wrong. His personality seemingly contrasts with his stand, Purple Haze. See, Purple Haze is something insane, easily-agitated, and compulsive with little capsules in its fists filled with a virus so potent that it eats alive anything it touches. This power is so OP that Araki was forced to write him out of the plot by making him reject the notion of revolting against the Boss and leaving to the gang. He makes a small appearance in the possibly non-canon side-novel, "Golden Heart, Golden Ring", and is the main character of the "Purple Haze Feedback" novel where he is given a mission to prove his loyalty to the gang six months after the events of Part 5. Known for his "Swiss-cheese" outfit which is a suit jacket with large holes all over it.
Hermes Costello: One of Jolyne's fellow inmates, Hermes is about as much of a match as you can get, except for the part where she has a serious revenge-boner for one of Pucci's subordinates for killing her sister. Her stand Kiss allows her to slap stickers on things, duplicating things, but the moment it comes off, the duplicate and original slam together again and blow up a bit.
Emporio Alnino: Poor little Emporio. The first 6 parts of Jojo had this weird rule where the more a child helped the Joestar gang, the more they'd end up suffering. After his mother got killed by Pucci for her stand disk, he grew up in Green Dolphin Street prison within the confines of his stand Burning Down The House, a pocket dimension that preserves the "ghost" of the prison's old music room before it caught fire, including any items that were in it. Although the room makes a good hiding place, and the ghost items can be reused indefinitely, the stand itself was pretty useless in combat, meaning Emporio served more of a support role, providing intel, resources, and being the gang's designated driver. After Pucci gains MIH and TPKs the Part 6 cast, Emporio is left screaming and crying in fear as the last line of defense against the priest, not even having time to mourn as he gets chased around the newly-reset Green Dolphin Prison. As hope would have it, however, Emporio is able to trick Pucci into inserting Weather Report's stand disk into him, giving him the chance to defeat Pucci once and for all. Afterwards, the universe is reset once more, placing Emporio in a new world without Pucci's influence, as well as meeting alternate versions of his friends who instantly bond with him due to the bonds they formed in the previous universe. Unfortunately, his original friends are gone for good, and their replacements won't remember everything they all went through. Emporio's last words in the series are simply "My name is Emporio", symbolizing that although his old life is gone for good, the start of a new, better one waits for him ahead.
Foo Fighters: This here is the single most awesome character. She's a fucking swarm of plankton with a stand. Taking the form of a dead inmate. She was originally controlled by Pucci, but eventually Jolyne manages to defeat her and they become friends. Her stand is also non-conventional, as she's constantly using it to keep herself together.
Weather Report: He's amnesiac and unstable. And he wears a giant buffalo hat. His stand is also named Weather Report, and it allows him to control the weather and manipulate the atmosphere, such as blowing things around with wind, deflecting bullets by manipulating air resistance, or making it rain poison dart frogs. This 39-something man displays something of a "dissonant serenity", where he is soft-spoken and calm to the point where he rarely raises his voice above a whisper, yet speaks rather aggressively to his enemies with frequent threats of violence or death, as well as having an informal form of speech. However, once he realizes his identity as Pucci's brother, he discovers a second part of his stand, "Heavy Weather", created from the rage he once held against humanity when a set of unfortunate circumstances led to the KKKlynching him and causing his girlfriend to commit suicide. Heavy Weather is even more fucked up than his base power as it somehow uses rainbows to submit subliminal messages like turn into fucking snails. Shit's creepy. What's worse is that upon regaining his memories, he instantly turns into That Guy, gleefully strolling amidst the snail-ridden chaos while inflating a nurse with waterto turn him into a chair as well as electrocuting a pair of teenage girls in the manga to force them to give him a massage. What a dick. Despite all the shit he went through, his sense of justice and love for his friends still remains, and he spends his last moments getting stupidly fucking close to killing Pucci despite having both of his legs cut off, before leaving behind his stand disk that eventually defeats his brother. What a badass.
Narciso Anasui: Another messed up dude, but he's only restrained by the fact that he seriously has a thing for Jolyne despite her dad's refusal. Despite that, however, he manages to be more reliable than Weather and Ermes by not getting stuck in the infirmary for a third of the part. His Stand is Diver Down, with the mundane yet neat power of phasing through matter. This allows him to climb into things, break them from the inside, and then break out. He wears what can be described as a "fishnet" connected to thigh-high boots under a short skirt which is notable considering he was originally going to be female and is very clearly a woman in his first appearance (Araki stated it was a decision he made to "portray a character with an androgynous image that went beyond the standard definition of genders."); oddly enough, his female self was wearing a more modest version of his outfit. He and his stand ultimately come in clutch in the C-Moon and Made In Heaven fights, where he transfers several otherwise lethal strikes that Pucci inflicts on the other characters onto himself, on top of providing Jotaro an opportunity to hit Pucci by forcing the priest to target him first (Though this ends up failing.) At least he (Or Annakiss, rather) finally gets together with Jolyne in Emporio's reset timeline.
Gyro Zeppeli: That's right, he's another Zeppeli. He's still the guy to teach the Joestar about the power du jour (Spin), and he still dies near the end (though by then, he's done way more than his fair share of things and Johnny's come a long way). In the rebooted Jojolion universe, the Zeppelis were executioners and doctors for the kingdom of Naples, mastering the art of the Steel Balls for this particular job. Gyro, while competent, found himself questioning his conscience when he was instructed to execute a young boy for his possible involvement in a murder. Denying this accusation, Gyro decides to flee to America in order to participate in the Steel Ball Run race and win that boy a pardon, hoping to learn about his convictions along the way. He gains an ability at one point thanks to the Saint's Corpse, called "Scan", which allowed him to see using his steel balls, but he eventually loses it when he gave the Saint's eye to Lucy. However, when he masters the Golden Spin near the end, he obtains an actual Stand named Ball Breaker, who can bypass D4C's barrier and nearly ages Valentine to death. Sadly, due to a flaw in his ball, he was unable to properly finish him off before he died due to D4C's powers fucking up his heart.
Hot Pants: She starts off as one of several competitors in the race who manages to keep well ahead in the race, all while rather thinly disguised as a dude. As time goes on, however, Gyro and Johnny cross paths with her and somewhat become enemies (Gyro's kinda pissed for her thieving them of the Corpse Parts, but Johnny's slightly more understanding as well as aware of her identity). It's eventually revealed that she was a nun of the Vatican in penance for letting her brother die years ago, and participated in the race to recover the Saint's Corpse, thinking that recovering such a relic would grant God's mercy. Her stand is the utilitarian "Cream Starter", which is a spray can of meat foam that can be used to heal wounds, dissolve flesh, and even disguise faces.
Lucy Steel: Despite the 17-year age gap, Lucy is somehow the wife of industrialist Stephen Steel, the man who organized the Steel Ball Run (under Valentine's orders). Though she doesn't really do much early on, she's the first person to realize that everything's not kosher in this mess and fears for her husband's safety around the President. From here, she gets caught up in the mess of the Corpse, helping Hot Pants with infiltrating the President's house by impersonating Valentine's wife and delivering a warning to Johnny and Gyro. And she does all this despite lacking a stand. Welll...sorta. Eventually, she's revealed to somehow be pregnant with the Corpse's head (Don't ask. Seriously, don't ask) and eventually becomes the Corpse itself, serving to empower Valentine's Stand through Jesus' own Stand, Ticket to Ride, which can manipulate misfortune and probability to protect its user, as long as they get cut by their sharpened tears. Unfortunately, as one would expect from having the severed head of a demigod inside your cunt, Ticket to Ride is slowly killing Lucy and taking her over, which leads to Hot Pants' death. After Valentine's demise, she then manages to save the day by killing Dio using one last moment of "D4C" fuckery.
Yasuho Hirose: Josuke's lover/girlfriend/fuckbuddy and the first person to discover his unconscious ass amongst the Wall Eyes. She doesn't have much in the way of personality since she's mostly there for sex appeal and to help Josuke find out who he truly is. Her Stand, Paisley Park, has some of the most vague powers in the series. It's main ability is to "guide" Yasuho through situations and to an end goal, either by giving her cues or manipulating electronics around her. Of course, considering how intentionally vague this power is, expected it to be abused like a disobedient child. Also, she named Josuke after her dog and she said he looked a lot like him. What a bitch.
Yoshikage Kira: The alternate universe counterpart of the villain of Part 4. Actually a pretty good guy. A doctor who worked on a boat, he pursued the bizarre Rokaka fruit in search of a cure for his mother's disease, putting him at odds with the Rock People who smuggled it. He still has Killer Queen, but now it shoots exploding bubbles and can summon thousands of tiny Sheer Heart Attacks. Critically injured by the Rock People, Kira ends up fusing with Josefumi and forming Gappy.
Josefumi Kujo: The other half of Gappy. Josefumi Kujo aids Kira in his quest to cure his mother, out of gratitude for how the two of them saved his life when he almost drowned as a kid. Eventually he attempts to sacrifice himself to save Kira, resulting in their fusion and the birth of Gappy. He was the original user of "Soft & Wet", and his bubbles had no stars in them.
These guys are a mixed bag. Some of the family members directly aid Gappy, whilst others scheme against- or try to manipulate him. They also all happen to have the word "king" in their stand names.
Norisuke Higashikata IV (Original Name: Josuke Higashitaka): Father of the family, runs the fruit parlour. He's very strict about the parlour's bussiness model, and is against any sort of change that he deems too radical. Otherwise he is a loving father, which is very rare in Jojos as a whole. His stand is King Nothing, and it can track things by their smell.
Joubin Higashikata: One of the most awesome characters in part 8. The guy acts like he's on summer vacation every day of the year, has a very large stag-beetle collection (he has an entire room for it) and is all around the chillest of dudes you can think of. He even gambled away his gold painted lambo to Gappy, just because he felt like it. He's very open minded and all for improving the fruit parlour to bring in more profit for the family. He takes a lot of his traits from Norisuke, as he cares very much for his son Tsurugi, and the rest of the family. He doesn't hate Gappy, but doesn't involve himself with him too much (unless it has something to do with the Rokakaka fruit). He let the Damo & co. use the parlours trade route for smuggling the Rokakaka trees into Morioh. The reason for this was that he was (and still is) looking for an alternative way of curing the rock decease, a way that wouldn't involve collaterals or equivalent exchange. He's also one cunning fucker, as he has made people do his bidding multiple times during the part, mostly through contracts (like the one with rock humans), but also through deception and manipulation. His stand is Speed King. It lets him store heat in objects, so that it can be let loose when someone touches the spot, and fries them up. At one point he was even thought to be the main antagonist, so his brutal death at the hands of Wonder of U was quite a shock.
Mitsuba Higashikata: Joubin's wife, and mother of Tsurugi.
Tsurugi Higashikata: Jobin's son who is dressed up as a girl to supposedly ward off the rock disease. His stand is Paper Moon King, which allows him to conjure up illusions using origami.
Hato Higashikata: Norisuke's eldest daughter, an air-headed model who's fiercely protective of her family. Her stand is Walking Heart, which allows her to project spikes from her heels. Doesn't sound that impressive, but the spikes can penetrate hard surfaces, allowing her to walk on walls, extend up to four meters (little over 13 feet), and can move faster than a human can react.
Joshu Higashikata: This little fuckwit is Josuke's stepbrother and is by far the worst of the family. Every negative trait you can think of he probably has, including; spoiled, petty, possessive, selfish, perverted, idiotic, amongst any other things. Just a horrible person in general, constantly antagonizing and arguing with Josuke because he wants Yasuho for himself. Also, his Stand Nut King Call is basically Sticky Fingers but with nuts and bolts; attaching a bolt something then removing it causes whatever it was attached to to fall apart when it's removed. Naturally, he deserves to have one of most rocking themes in Eyes of Heaven, right? As of chapter 101 he has gotten a tremendous amount of development, compared to his introduction, but he's still a creep.
Daiya Higashikata: Youngest daughter and child of Norisuke at 16 years old. Playful and child-like, but severly sight-impaired, being barely able to see light. Her stand is California King Bed, which allows her to steal memories from any person "fussing over" her, the memories exiting from a persons orifice as a chess piece with an orb containing the memory within. Daiya can view the memories by touching the pieces herself. If a piece is destroyed, the memory is destroyed as well, and any damage done to the piece is reflected back to the person the memory came from. The memories can only be returned to the person if Daiya steps on their shadow.
Dragona Joestar: Jodio's older brother and partner. He also dresses in drag and has breasts, but given that Jodio refers to him consistently as male and some cops sexually harassing "her" discover something "down there", Jodio's word seems trustworthy for now. He's also the one person that keeps Jodio from going nuts from sheer RAGE, and gods help you if you harm him in front of his brother, as a bunch of pigs in blue learned the hard way. His Stand is Smooth Operators, a colony of tank-like creatures that can rearrange the features of any object Dragona touches, like altering a license plate, removing locks from vaults or rearranging faces in horrific ways when pissed off.
Usagi Alohaoe: The person who looks like Pink Guy and who buys drugs from Jodio at the start of the first chapter-though is seemingly a good student according to Meryl Mei Qi. He's very intelligent, seemingly, but is laid back and his care-free attitude gets him in trouble. His stand is Matte Kudasai (no, it's not an untranslated name, it's a reference to a Crimson song. Anyway, the ability grants the wish of someone else other than the user, turning itself into an object such as a security camera or lock pick.
Paco Laburantes: Essentially the that guy of the gang. No one really likes him, though Jodio respects his skills as a thief. He's a dim-witted, aloof, and often comes off as rude-not to mention the fact he's a kleptomaniac. His Stand reflects this-The Hussle allows his muscles to grab objects and attach them to his skin. Basically, think of him as the Barbarian of the party.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure covers generations of exploits of the Joestar Lineage and their allies as they battle foes with wildly varying beliefs, ambitions, skills, personalities and fashion sense. Though the series changes almost completely with each Part, there is one factor that stays constant throughout all the adventures: evil is arrogant and flamboyant. Since most fights in JoJo are battles of wit rather than straight brawls (even these occur, there's an amount of strategy and thought involved), the majority of villains reflect and enforce this idea. There is no shortage of flamboyant sadists, violent killers, conniving schemers, fatalistic worshippers, maniacal assassins, arrogant mercenaries, psychics, arrogant psychics, arrogant psychic assassins, fabulous dicks, malevolent assholes, jerkwads (...) and anything in-between which makes for a truly bizarre rogue's gallery.
Part 3 Dio and his Stand "The World", also known by its Japanese name of ZA WARUDO.
Technically the BBEG of the overall series, although he's only actually on-stage in the first and third sagas. Arrogant, vain and frankly something of a coward, Dio was born the son of abusive, stupid, drunkard Dario Brando, but had a natural intelligence, ambition and drive that his father lacked. Poisoning his father, he was sent to live with George and Jonathan Joestar, as part of a debt the elder Joestar owed to Dario. Despising Jonathan for his attempts to befriend his new stepbrother, Dio bullied Jonathan throughout their childhood, and even after they seemingly made amends, was secretly plotting to steal Jonathan's birthright. He attempted to poison George, only for his scheme to be revealed, whereupon he used the Stone Mask the Joestars had unwittingly guarded to become a vampire and attempted to conquer England by creating an army of zombies. As mentioned above, this eventually left him a severed head trapped on the bottom of the ocean, until he managed to assimilate Jonathan's body and escape for the third saga. He sits in his lair for most of it because he has difficulty controlling Jonathan's body and doesn't fight the heroes himself until all his minions are dead. When he does however he proceeds to completely wreck their shit until Jotaro narrowly manages to defeat him. Afterwards his body is thrown into the desert and incinerated by the Sun to make sure he doesn't come back. Although he was defeated, agents and plots of his were the primary source of trouble for the next three sagas. Ironically, for all his arrogance and power, Dio ultimately owed everything he had to the Joestars. His life of luxury in his teens was paid for by Joestar money. He became a vampire with a Stone Mask owned by the Joestar family. He needed Jonathan Joestar's body after his own was destroyed by Ripple energy. He needed Joseph Joestar's blood so he could better merge with Jonathan's body. He even makes extensive use of Hermit Purple #2 which is the same as Joseph, but presumably belongs to Jonathan, during the third saga.
He is well-loved by the fans for his over-the-top flamboyance (even by the series' standards), grandiloquent speaking style, and sheer dickishness such that Eldrad himself would be impressed. He is the source of ZA WARUDO, which is his Stand ("The World") freezing time around him. While he typically follows that up with an improbably numerous volley of knives, he is infamous for what comes after: Slamming a road roller from out of nowhere down on his opponent, punching it until the vehicle explodes, screaming, ROAD ROLLER DA! then screeching in triumph.WRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
Dio's power is super broken with the only restriction being he can only use it for five seconds at a time, but has no restriction on how often he can use it. After drinking Joseph's blood and getting control over Jonathan's body, Dio's time limit increases to nine seconds. Narration by him states he could only freeze time briefly at first but had been steadily increasing the more he used it. He is only beaten because Jotaro figured out how to stop time himself and got Dio in between time freezes when his guard was down.
Considering the design of DIO's Stand, The World, it may in fact be a "Holy Diver."
He also has a slew of minions and henchmen in both Parts 1 and 3. From Zombie Black Knights and literal Mancats in Part 1 to a Womanizing, Ghost-gun wielding Cowboy and what is essentially baby Freddy Krueger in Part 3:
Jojo is going to be so surprised when he sees me, he'll be left Breathless as he looks into my Evil Eyes. Then he'll realize, he's been left all alone... like a Rainbow in the Dark...
Dio Brando: Villains aren't born, they're made and spending his childhood with an abusive father in the slums of England made a villain of Dio Brando. Dio is meant to contrast with Jonathan starting with the fact they both lost their mothers, Dio being precociously intelligent and born poor while Jojo acts his age and was born rich. His story starts with his dying father, Dario Brando, requesting he move into the Joestar Mansion. From the moment Dio met Jonathan, he decided he would cause Jojo as much misery as possible ensure to he would be the sole heir to the Joestar fortune. Kicking Danny, turning all the other kids against him, and stealing Erina's first kiss("But it was with I, DIO!")lead to Jonathan fighting back. In retaliation, he burns Danny alive as a final act of spite before the seven year time-skip to their adulthood. As adults, he is seemingly friends with Jojo until Jojo uncovers his plot to poison his adoptive father. Events lead Dio to use the Stone Mask, and as vampire he fights Jonathan throughout their burning mansion,"Goodbye, JO-JO~!". Dio escapes and goes into hiding to heal himself while committing sadistic and unnecessarily cruel acts like causing a mother to eat her child and creating human-animal hybrids. The eventual final battle between Jojo and Dio leaves Dio a severed head, so he decides the only body worth having is that of his greatest enemy. When Dio's ambush on Jojo's honeymoon has them both trapped on a doomed boat, only then Dio realizes that Jonathan was his only friend.
Dio is considered to be the biggest appeal of Phantom Blood with his trickery, violent tendencies, and personality which are only reinforced by the performance in the anime. "Dio" means god in Italian but it is also the name of the late heavy metal singer, Ronnie James Dio and his band,”DIO", combined with the last name of the late actor, Marlon Brando. It may be possible that Dio is based on the eponymous main character from a previous manga by Hirohiko Araki, "Cool Shock B.T."
Dio's Minions
Wang Chan: An old Asian man that ran a curio shop on Ogre Street and sold Dio the poison he used on George Joestar and his father. He's Dio first real minion and is essentially the reason why Dio was able to recover from the mansion fire, giving Dio his blood and hiding him away. Wang Chan fought using claw blades on both hands which used when he attacked Jojo during his training, but was warded off. He would save Dio again after the final showdown with Jonathan when he recovered Dio's head and brought him to Jonathan's honeymoon boat, hoping to place Dio on Jonathan's body. Wang Chan got overzealous and underestimated a weakened Jonathan, getting his head blown off and his body stuck to the boat's workings causing it to explode. His strong loyalty to Dio stems from their first meeting where he notices Dio's birthmark and believes he is destined for greatness.
Jack the Ripper: As in THE Jack the Ripper, depicted here as a vaguely brown man with a beard as either a brunette or redhead and is huge just like almost every other character in Phantom Blood. Dio encounters him while Jack is, presumably, killing his last real-life victim and subsequently converted into a powerful zombie. He attacks Jonathan and Co.'s stagecoach ride, cutting off the horses' heads, replacing the coach driver's head with one of them, and hiding in one of the still standing horses. Jack hid scalpels inside of his body that he was able to shoot out and jumped around holding a modified guillotine. He doesn't prove much a threat and gets absolutely obliterated by Jonathan, so the reason the Jack the Ripper Murders stopped was because he was turned to dust by two extremely buff gentlemen.
Bruford: One of two zombie knights resurrected by Dio to take out Jonathan and his merry crew who fights using his hair and his sword, "Luck". Alongside Tarkus, he was a retainer of Queen Mary of Scotland when he was alive and allowed himself to be executed to save her. Learning she was killed regardless, Bruford cursed humanity and uses his hair to kill one of the executioners before dying. Bruford, still being an honorable fighter, fights Jonathan one-on-one and takes the fight underwater where it turns out he's a crazy good swimmer even while wearing armor. He's defeated when Jonathan hits him with a "Sunlight Yellow Overdrive" which purifies his soul, causing flowers to bloom under his feet. Fading, Bruford tells Jonathan how grateful he is to have fought him and rechristens Luck to "Luck & Pluck", giving the sword to Jonathan which would prove helpful in the fight against Dio. Then Tarkus, being "that guy", crushes his remains and calls him a disgrace.
Tarkus: The other undead knight resurrected by Dio as a zombie, so most definitely not the Tarkus you were already thinking of. He's huge, as in Terminator huge, and crazy strong such that he lifted a lifted a boulder with one finger; additionally when he and Bruford were executed the executioners needed multiple axes as they would break on his neck, tensed by rage. Unlike Bruford who turned out to be a pretty cool guy in the end, Tarkus proves to be 100% medieval That Guy by crushing Bruford's remains. He doesn't care for honor in the slightest, setting a trap for Jonathan in the Room of Dragon Decapitation that forces him into a Chain Neck Deathmatch where they're both shackled to ceiling by chains and the only way out is to kill the opponent for their key. Being unreasonably tall and strong, Tarkus is easily able to knock Jonathan around then use the chains to bisect Zeppeli and break Jonathan's neck in one pull using his Hell Heaven Snake Kill move. Tarkus being a sadistic jerkass, finds this funny up until Jonathan breaks his neck collar (which is something Tarkus couldn't even do with his bullshit level of strength). He pretty much starts bawling when Jonathan slices his arm up the middle then punches his stupid head off, leaving nothing behind.
Doobie: A zombie Dio had with him in his castle, he's big and wears a sack on his head; fortunately, he doesn't have a brother. He gets an anvil dropped on his head by Jonathan and later reveals that under the sack on his head is a bunch of man-eating snakes that bit Jonathan a few times. Jonathan then just rejects the venom and makes the snakes transfer hamon to Doobie which melted him, and that was Doobie. He had a nice hat.
Page, Jones, Plant and Dornam: Four grotesque zombies that could extend blood-sucking proboscises from their heads and all got taken out by Straits dropping a chandelier. They were all named after Led Zeppelin members, and that's all there is to say about them.
The Pillar Men (Wamuu, ACDC/Esidisi, Kars, Santana)[edit]
ACDC, Wamuu, and Kars...After 2000 Years they are finally free to pose once again.
A pre-human tribe of supermen from the ancient past, these beings possess superhuman control over their bodies, allowing them to manipulate their own flesh and the flesh of other people as they see fit. This makes them virtually indestructible, capable of reassembling themselves from being blown to bloody scraps. They feed on the flesh of all other races, and their body manipulating traits allow them to literally absorb flesh with a touch. By the time of the series, only four members of this tribe survive, having slaughtered the rest of their kind, ostensibly in self-defense as they didn't like their leader's scheme since the increased metabolism induced by the Stone Masks would lead to the hunting of all other life to extinction if they became widespread. Kars and Esidisi took the two infants that survived, Wamuu and Santana, with them as they went in search of a way to gain complete immunity to the sun. Their search went on for tens of thousands of years, until they learned of the Red Stone of Aja, a perfectly cut gemstone that can channel light and refract it to point that it fires a concentrated laser beam. Believing the "Super Aja" to be the key unlocking their evolution, the Pillar Man fought against Hamon users in order to obtain it but somehow failed and were sealed away in a stonewall. ACDC, Wamuu, and Kars each have an elemental "mode" which they theme their personal body modification around, for instance, Wamuu can form a lethal wind shear by spinning his arms like turbines. The tribe's only weakness is sunlight, and thus by extension Ripple energy; Kars' claim to fame was attempting to fix this with the Stone Masks, which didn't work as the Masks can't pierce their skin deeply enough, but did create dickass vampires like Dio and massively boosted their shape-shifting powers. Free from their stone prison, they once again seek the Red Stone in order to power a modified Stone Mask that will finally allow them to become "Ultimate Lifeforms". Appearance-wise they are all built like bodybuilders being at least 6ft. tall and dress in ancient Mesoamerican style. A Group of Custodians seem to have taken after their appearance
Santana: The first Pillar Man to awaken, the first to be fought, and the first to put up with Joseph's weirdness. He was awakened by German scientists when they doused his stone form with blood under Stroheim's orders. At first Stroheim writes him off as a simple caveman-type, but the events that follow show he is far more than a primitive human.Stare too long and you might just get sucked right in. Santana shows off each of the Pillar Men's natural abilities by eating a vampire through body contact then breaking his own bones at high-speed in order to fit into a vent. Everyone learns that Santana is incredibly intelligent when he disassembles a machine-gun in seconds without breaking it. Joseph arrives in time to save Stroheim and Speedwagon, and with Stroheim's help he's able to expose Santana to sunlight and turn him back into stone. While Santana is essentially a sign of the Pillar Man threat, he's nothing special compared to the other three. Realizing who he is at the mention of him, since Santana isn't his real name, Kars basically says he was a weakling that only lived 1/10 of their [Kars, Esidisi and Wamuu's] lives which implies they abandoned him. While it's amazing that Santana learned to speak a language within minutes of hearing it, his speech is slow and simple. When the other Pillar Men awaken they are capable of full sentences within a smaller time frame meaning Santana is also an idiot by comparison. He is shown to still be alive in his stone form, but it is unlikely he will ever make another appearance.
The Warrior's Code says nothing against looking this good.
Wamuu (Wham): The Pillar Man who can use "Wind Mode" and the second to awaken but the first to get shit done, Wammu is a servant of Kars and Esidisi though he is in no way weaker than either of them, in fact in terms of abilities he's arguably the most dangerous. Of the three, he upholds a Warrior's Code of Honor and while he does obey the others' commands completely, he lives to fight by this code. Upon awakening, he immediately slaughters most of the nazis present using his wind horn and somehow deflates the rest before doing his iconic "Wammu!Awaken my Masters!" and posing dramatically alongside a freed Esidisi and Kars with Pillarstep blasting in the background. Wham subsequently eats Caesar's best Nazi friend, Mark, just by walking past him and puts Caesar and his bubbles in the trash without even really trying. He decides to get a little serious against Joseph and uses his "Holy Sandstorm", blasting out Whamstep all over the place and bodying Joseph. Joseph plays to his code of honor in order to survive which leads to Wham agreeing to fight him again in 30 days, leaving a "Wedding Ring" inside him so he can't back out. Much later on, Caesar rushes to face Wham at the mansion in Switzerland but dies in the resulting fight. Respecting Caesar for giving him the best fight he had had in millennia, he allows him to take the antidote ring for Joseph and leaves vowing that he would always remember their battle. Meeting Joseph in the Skeleton Heel Stone Arena for their final fight, a chariot race using vampire horses with countless vampire spectators. After a number of tricks, gouging his own eyes out, and losing both of his arms, Wamuu activates his "Final Mode: Atmospheric Rift/Gathering Gale" which is a concentrated blade of wind from his horn. The battle leaves Wham as only a head, though Joseph expresses respect for him due to the respect he has shown Caesar previously. Using the very last of his strength to kill a group of vampires who were poised to attack Joseph, he fades into ash and is carried away with the wind. In the end, Wammu upheld his Warrior's Code and was glad to have the honor of fighting both Caesar and Joseph as truewarriors. His namesake is the English duo, Wham!, who would be formed about 50 years after the events of Part 2 in real-life.
Esidisi (ACDC): Pillar Man with the power of "Flame Mode", he's Kars' closest companion, being the one to side with him when their entire race turned on them. His Flame Mode allows him to raise his body temperature to 500 degrees, allowing him to use his own blood as weapon by extending his veins out of his body. Being able to heat himself up to such a degree, fire and explosives have no effect on him such is that he was able to swallow TNT with no problems.Better lock up your daughters, because you're about to be Thunderstruck. Contrary to his odd appearance, he's not to be taken lightly as is a cunning strategist who was able to outsmart Joseph for a time. He traveled to Air Supplena Island on his own when he deduced it would be the location of the Red Stone. Esidisi kills Loggins just before Joseph shows up for his training duel and is forced to confront him."Well it looks like I'm on the Razor's Edge this time." Fighting on a bed of spikes, Esidisi shows his cunning by seeing through some of Joseph's tricks and even using Joseph's "What you're going to say next is..." trick against him and stating that he had personally met Sun Tzu himself at some point. In another iconic moment, he starts crying his eyes out when Joseph destroys one of his arms as a way of calming himself down "Oh-ho, MY GOD~! HEEEYYYY!!!" He's defeated and left as a brain with his blood vessels attached as he makes his way to Suzie Q, taking over her body and sending the Red Stone of Aja to Switzerland. When Caesar and Joseph remove him from Suzie Q, instead of outright destroying Esidisi, Joseph shows respect for him as even though he was utterly destroyed, he still did all he could to make sure Kars' plan came to fruition. If it's not clear, his namesake is the rock band AC/DC; his theme "The Disturbing ACDC/Esidisi" alludes to this and the same may be true for his Eyes of Heaven Theme. The banter he has with Joseph is depicted in a popular banner, and his crying face has been parodied a number of times.
Kars: The leader of the Pillar Men and creator of the Stone Masks out of ambition, essentially making him the indirect cause of all the events of Part 1. Thousands of years prior to the series, Kars invented the Stone Mask to overcome his race's weakness to the sun, but by the time of Part 2 his ultimate goal is really complete dominion over the animal kingdom. Being an incomprehensibly muscled, fabulous, and intelligent ancient being he is understandably arrogant and could care less for humanity, seeing us as obstacles and primitive scum compared to his race of buff, flawless demigods. Though he hates humanity, Kars is shown to care for nature to such a degree that he diverted a car with a drunken driver to save a puppy and knocked himself into chasm walls to avoid landing on flowers at the bottom.Hasn't worn anything more than a thong and a bejeweled head wrap for thousands of years, yet he's looking so good he might cause a Kars Accident. His mode is "Light Mode" which takes the form of metal blades called "Light Slip Blades" that jut out from his arms and legs; the light comes from small "teeth" on the blades that move across them similar to a chainsaw. Kars is able to use his blades to cut farther and more times than seemingly possible, like when he cut an entire room of Nazis into pieces from the outside wall. His first time taking action was when he correctly assumed that Esidisi had been defeated: he set out wearing a beautiful winter ensemble to claim the Super Aja himself, and would've had it if it weren't for the Pinnacle of German Science delaying him. After Wamuu's defeat by Joseph, he reveals the proof of his superiority to humanity - the fact that he has absolutely flawless hair that would make even the most depraved, vain fool mourn their lack of such flowing, shimmering violet locks. In spite of all of his planning, during his final battle against the Ripple users he is defeated by Joseph who, of course, managed to outsmart him. When it seems as though Kars had completely lost, he reveals himself wearing the custom Stone Mask with the Red Stone equipped. When the Stone Mask breaks off after a dramatic event, it is revealed that he has the ability to create sentient, living creatures from his own body. Everyone thinks he's beat when the sun rises, but as Karstep starts blasting throughout the world, his enemies realize that Kars is now immune to the sunlight, that he is finally the Ultimate Lifeform. Kars' first decision as the Ultimate Being was to eliminate the one who had caused him so much turmoil since his awakening: Joseph Joestar. Growing wings and taking flight to catch Joseph who had taken the Red Stone and a plane, he creates piranhas and an octopus to crash the plane which Joseph survives thanks to Stroheim. When he is poised to finish Joseph, Kars accidentally causes the volcano they were fighting in to erupt, launching them into the sky. After one final discourse with Joseph, the Ultimate Lifeform ends up launched further into Earth's atmosphere. In Earth's orbit, Kars attempts to push his way back but begins to freeze and is unable to form anything capable of keeping him warm so he is left floating through space. With nothing left but his own thoughts in the cold void of space, Kars yearned for death and eventually stopped thinking.
Lesser Villains
Straights/Straits/Straizo:"Now that I have my youth again, it is time to put Joseph and Erina in Dire Straits...but with just Straits" Back from Part 1, Straits is 50 years older than his previous appearance, but is still looking relatively young for his age thanks to hamon. Unfortunately, being able to do Sun-Breath Magic Martial Arts that keep you spry isn't enough for him and he reveals that he secretly admired Dio's powers. On an expedition with Speedwagon to see the Man in the Pillar, Straits suddenly kills everyone present. He activates one of the Stone Masks using Speedwagon's blood to become a Ripple-using vampire and decides he needs to go kill Joseph and Erina to top off his heel-turn. Straights tries to act coy when he meets Joseph, but he didn't expect Jojo to be packing heat. During their fight, Straights names the blood laser previously used by Dio: "Space Ripper Stingy Eyes", but his mastery of it doesn't stop him from being made a fool of by Joseph. Joseph reveals that he attached a bunch of grenades to Straights' back and blasts him into pieces, then runs away like a true hero would. After regenerating, Straits takes a journalist hostage to lure Joseph into fighting him directly. Unfortunately for "Stup-raights", Jojo figured out how to counter his Stingy Eyes which reflects the beam into his head. Admitting defeat, Straits talks about the Man in the Pillar and the threat he knew it would present, he then blows himself using the Ripple while content that he died with a young body. It is later revealed that he was the one that raised Lisa Lisa after the events at the end of Phantom Blood, so it's a real shame he decided to be a team-killer and attempt to murder his friends for essentially nothing.
Donovan: An elite Nazi soldier tasked with tracking down Joseph and interrogating him for information on his encounter with Straights. Donovan had the ability to move so lightly that he could track people at close range without being noticed and could hide himself in an unfurled cloak in mid-air, seemingly invisible. He's defeated when he gets cocky and gets buffeted by a cactus that Joseph had hit with Hamon which lets Joseph turn the tables and interrogate him. After getting the information, Joseph left him tied upside-down to a cactus before driving off, leaving his fate unknown.
Wired Beck: A gratingly flamboyant vampire encountered by Joseph and Lisa Lisa before the start of the final battle with the Pillar Men, he ends all of his sentences with "OK" or "K'". They meet him when Joseph tries to open a door which turns out to be Wired Beck in disguise and talks about his backstory, that before Kars made him a vampire he was a criminal convicted for strangling his girlfriend. He reveals his ability to create spikes all over his body from his skin and hair and talks about how he's going to take Lisa Lisa's blood. Lisa Lisa then just twirls her scarf around him, leaving him seemingly unharmed before Joseph informs him that "You're already dead, OK," just before he disintegrates.
Part 3: Stardust Crusaders Villains
The antagonists of Part 3 are divided into three rough groups which are mostly separated by their naming conventions, and all but one are loyal to DIO be it out of greed, fanaticism, or malice, they're all out for the Stardust Crusaders.
The Tarot Assassins
The first is the Tarot Assassins, a variety of hitmen hired by DIO to kill the Crusaders with their Stands all being named after tarot cards. Some are just the the name of their associated card though most of them include the color of their Stand as part of the name. Thematically, their names are also representative of their abilities and how they use them or, in some more literal cases, their appearance. All of the assassins themselves are named after musical groups, singers, songs and albums despite some of these groups existing around this time.
Gray Fly: An old codger of an assassin whose MO is getting on the plane/train/boat as his target, then crashing it with no survivors except himself. His Stand is Tower of Gray, a flying beetle so fast it can dodge Star Platinum's punches. It has a long, Xenomorph-style tongue with which it rips out the tongues of its targets. Kakyoin managed to trick it into a predictable pattern that allowed him to shred it using Hierophant Green's tentacles. Tower of Gray's destruction split his head open and seemingly killed him, but he was able to live a little longer and make his way to the cockpit to taunt the Crusaders.
Impostor Captain Tennille: A man who killed and impersonated the captain of a boat tasked with transporting the Crusaders to India, who wields the Stand Dark Blue Moon. DBM is a sea monster, capable of creating barnacle-like growths on his victims that drain their energy, creating whirlpools, and releasing his scales that are like miniature razors. No one suspected him of being a Stand User until he fell for Jotaro's trick and made himself look like an idiot. He forced Jotaro to fight him alone underwater, but was unexpectedly stabbed in the face by Star Platinum's Star Finger. Like Gray Fly before him, he had a back-up plan and rigged the boat with explosives. His real name was never revealed, but his censored name is "Captain Dragon", which is the real name of the captain in "Captain & Tenille".
Forever: A sapient orangutan that likes smoking pipes, human pornography, posing as a regular ape and brutal murder. His Stand is Strength, which can possess objects and bring out their "true potential": in the manga this turns a tiny yacht into a massive freighter that Forever has total control over, which lets him phase through its walls. The Crusaders end up on his freighter sometime after the fight against Imposter Tenille since they were forced to abandon ship with the sailors. Forever first appears when the Crusaders are searching the ship for its crew and they find him in a cage where he simply acts smarter than the average animal, doing things like lighting and smoking a cigarette. After killing the last of the sailors, he prepared to molest Anne who was traveling with the Crusaders, while he used Strength to trap them in the floor of the ship's deck. Luckily, Jotaro was wary of him, appearing to save Anne and beat him by using Star Finger to push a button into his forehead. In the OVA, Jotaro doesn't escape from being trapped during the fight so Polnareff intervenes and cuts Forever in half. Based on the intelligent orangutan from the horror movie Link. Named after the Wu-Tang Clan album, Wu-Tang Forever.
Devo the Cursed: A Native American assassin with scars covering his entire body who's able to "curse" people to die horrific deaths. In truth, he's a masochist and uses his Stand, Ebony Devil to possess a killer doll and take a few pages from Chucky's book by murdering someone who hurt him in various brutal and creative ways. When he crawls out of his hiding spot in Polnareff's mini-fridge, he gets one of his eyes poked out only to claim his curse has taken hold and jumps the balcony, leaving his doll to do the job. This shit is fucking brutal, we're talking razors to the back of the foot, shampoo in the eyes, razor-toothed lamprey-mouth, slicing a bellhop's face clean off, and dousing a bed in alcohol in order to ignite it/electrocute Polnareff using a short-circuiting hairdryer. Polnareff manages to outmaneuver him and rip his doll (and therefore his Stand, and therefore him) to pieces, leaving a janitor at the hotel to find Devo's bloody mess in a bathroom. Also called Soul Sacrifice in the official sub to avoid lawsuits, notable because Araki picked the name himself.
Rubber Soul: Another assassin sent by DIO who was promised a fuckton of money to kill the Stardust Crusaders. His Stand, Yellow Temperance, is an amorphous blob of flesh that allows him to disguise himself as other people and eat organic matter by covering and dissolving it. The more Yellow Temperance absorbs, the larger it gets and the only way to get rid of it is to attack Rubber Soul himself and since Yellow Temperance is an incredibly fast blob that can act as a shield, it's not an easy task. Rubber Soul was able to "perfectly" disguise himself as Kakyoin sometime after the Devo fight and Hermit Purple detected his presence when used on a television. While his disguise is physically perfect, he acted overly hostile, putting a pickpocket into a "Coconut Backbreaker" and infamously making the cherry licking sound, "Relo relo relo relo..." When Jotaro gets sick of his shit, still thinking he's Kakyoin, he punches him and knocks his jaw off which breaks the disguise. Asking Jotaro,"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" but after experiencing the Joestar Family Secret Technique and having his weakness revealed to him he tries to play it off. Jotaro seems to consider letting him go, but when Rubber messes that up for himself he gets a one passenger ticket on the ORA ORA ORA train. Even though he's terrible actor, doing nothing resembling Kakyoin's behavior he oddly shared the same habit of licking cherries as Kakyoin. His namesake is the Beatles album of the same name but he is called "Robber Soul" in the American version of the PS1 game.
"Bingo, if you tell me to hit a lady one more time...
Hol Horse: An assassin sent by DIO to take them Joestar Boys out, he's a modern cowboy whose stand is a gun named The Emperor and is the "Nicest Man in the World". The Emperor's only real ability is that the bullets are part of his stand, so Hol Horse can manipulate the trajectory of its bullets mid-flight and change their speed. He's a womanizing coward, making lady folk fall in love with him solely so he can take advantage of them and save his bacon. Due to his stand's relative weakness; Hol Horse never fights alone, preferring to fight with a partner because "It's always better being No. 2". He teams up with J. Geil at first claiming they're the "strongest combination" but when that all goes South, he gets blamed for J. Geil's death and is almost done if wasn't for those Stardust Boys saving the day. After meeting with DIO, he shows up again with Boingo, and they have a hootenanny using Thoth's predictions to get the drop on them Joestar Boys like hamburger on a grill. After sticking his fingers up that escargot-loving Polnareff's nose causes them Crusader types to get hit by a truck, he makes a mistake and shoots himself in his dang ol' face, forcing him to [RETIRE!]. Despite his luck, he manages to survive Stardust Crusaders, but in the OVA he ends up incapacitated after the fight with Justice instead of escaping. His name is likely a warped pronunciation of the duo, Hall & Oates, plus he has some real knee-slappin'theme songs.
J. Geil: An ugly motherfucker with two right hands. A sadist through and through, he raped and killed Polnareff's sister, which ironically drove Polnareff to also work under DIO to find him and later join the Crusaders. His Stand, The Hanged Man, is made of light that can jump between reflections and attack from them. He is rather clever , and lies to the Crusaders when explaining his powers to throw them through a loop instead of telling the truth like a chump. He tricks Polnareff using a decoy then calls out homeless people so he can use their eyes as hiding places for The Hanged Man. This did not stop him from being turned into a pincushion by Polnareff and hung upside down like his Stand's counterpart in Tarot.
Nena:: A morbidly obese, short lady disguised as a teenage Indian girl, who possess The Empress. The Empress is an odd bit in that it manifests itself by infecting victims using Nena's blood. The blood will then grow into an unsightly cyst and evolves into the stand itself, going from a face to a full upper body. Even as just a face, it was strong enough to kill a doctor using only a scalpel placed into its teeth, and when the upper body formed it was able to deliver powerful punches. Nena infected Joseph with a blood drop on his arm and planned to kill him, thinking it was an easy gig as Hermit Purple is not combat-oriented and Hamon can't harm the user's own body. However, Joseph uses his decades of experience and manages to trap The Empress and kill her, resulting in Nena dying as well and freaking out Polnareff who had been flirting with her at the time.
ZZ:: The person who possesses the Stand: Wheel of Fortune. Similar to Strength; WoF takes the characteristics of a vehicle, which in his case is a beaten-up old car, which he turned into a spiked death mobile that would make even a Warpsmith jealous. At first ZZ tried tricking the Crusaders into a car accident and later tampered with a roadsign to make them go the wrong way where he would ambush them. After causing them to get into another accident, he reveals his identity and that WoF is capable of climbing up walls and burrowing underground. He almost manages to kill Jotaro after shooting him with gasoline and delivering an electric shock, but was fooled by a decoy trick and his car was punched into scrap metal. Losing his car, the Crusaders laugh at his lack of well-toned abs, as he only has four, and leave him chained to a rock Prometheus style. One of the characters to break the 4th Wall, claiming he "ended Part 3 early" when it looked like Jotaro was burning and is noted for having gigantic, muscled arms but a comparatively small body. His namesake is the rock band, ZZ Top.
Enya Geil: One of DIO's inner circle and his chief adviser. A shriveled old hag who encourages DIO to develop his powers and to rule THE WORLD with them. Has two right hands just like her son, J. Geil mentioned above, she loves her son and dotes on him, overlooking the fact that he's a rapist serial killer. She is, naturally, extremely mad at Polnareff and the Crusaders for killing "innocent son". Her Stand, Justice, is a mist taking the form of a giant skull with a English crown that can raise the dead and can control body parts it puts holes into by using a preexisting wound. It can also create illusions and is next to immune to physical damage because it is made of smoke and large enough to cover an entire city. Enya manages to take control of Polnareff's tongue and makes him lick feces from a toilet before being saved by Jotaro. She was then captured by the Crusaders who wanted to interrogate her, but when Steely Dan activated the flesh bud inside of her, she died loyal to DIO and refused to give them information. Ultimately responsible for parts after the third having Stands flying out of their asses by finding and abusing the Stand Arrow. Despite being old and short, in the OVA she takes on a disguise that makes her look young and like a normal woman which she uses to trick Hol Horse, and later, Polnareff. Also in the OVA, she dies immediately after Jotaro defeats her.
Steely Dan: A kebab-stand owner(?) who controls the Stand named The Lovers. The Lovers is microscopic and can't do anything in straight-up combat. Its specialty is that it can infiltrate the bodies of opponents and do damage from within, but more importantly transfers any damage he would take to the infested person so they would feel it in the same area but amplified. Harmful to the point that, Dan, cracking his knuckles was felt by Joseph in his prosthetic hand so this allowed him to blackmail Jotaro into being his punching bag/man servant. He's pretty notable in the series for pissing off Jotaro to such a degree that 6 whole pages/20 seconds were entirely devoted to him being ORA ORA ORAed into oblivion. His namesake is the band, Steely Dan, censored to "S-Terry Dan" in the PS1 game and "Dan of Steel" in certain material. Rather confusingly, in the older Viz Manga Translation it was "censored" to Rubber Soul despite the actual Rubber Soul, mentioned above, being censored to Robber Soul.
Arabia Fats: The person who controlled the stand: Sun, which is a literal sun that could shoot some kind of energy projectile with extreme accuracy. He attempted to burn the Crusaders in the middle of the desert, forcing them to hide under a rock as they had no way of finding him way out in the open. At first it seems like Kakyoin, Jotaro, and Polnareff have gone crazy from the heat as they start having a good laugh which freaks Joseph out. In reality, they had figured out Fats' trick leading Jotaro to throw a rock at him and they leave Fats knocked out in the middle of nowhere in a desert. Fats had no dialogue outside of the noise he made when hit and was given extra quotes in the PS1 game, Joseph even notes how easily he was defeated. His namesake is the pianist, Fats Domino.
Mannish Boy: An impossibly intelligent baby who was given to the Crusaders by an unknown person who turned out to not know anything about the him or his parents. He has fangs for some reason, but that's just a clue that he's one of the more depraved characters in Part 3, something only Kakyoin was able to notice. Mannish Boy knows full well how to smoke and was able to avoid suspicion while manipulating the Crusaders into losing trust in Kakyoin. His most directly dangerous quality is his Stand, Death 13, which is a clown-like reaper that can take people into its own personal carnival dreamworld. Whenever someone falls asleep in vicinity to Mannish Boy, they're taken in and can only remember what happens in the dreamworld if he wants them to; in addition, any injuries a person sustains in the dream will show up in real-life. After an absurd amount of creepy shenanigans, he is defeated when Kakyoin figures out how to summon Hierophant Green in the dreamworld. The real final blow is dealt when Kakyoin mixes Mannish Boy's own feces into his baby food which he can't refuse since he's just a baby. Though his Stand is named after a tarot card, it's not clear if he had an association with DIO and he's never seen again after defeat. His namesake is the song, Mannish Boy, by Muddy Waters. "Lali-Ho~"
Cameo & Judgement: The user of the stand, Judgement, which looks robotic and can grant "wishes" that are all made to backfire. After finding Judgement in a genie's lamp, one wish, a "HAIL 2 U!" and the possibility of becoming a famous manga artist to become bigger than Disney and build "Polnareffland", Polnareff wishes for his sister to be brought back to life but there is a twist. Judgement creates an incomplete copy of her out of sand that believes it will only becomes whole by eating Polnareff and the same happens when he creates a clone of Avdol. Before Judgement can have the clones kill Polnareff, Avdol makes his grand return "YES! I AM!" After forcing Judgement to retreat, Avdol and Polnareff find Cameo hiding underground and do some good old male bonding into his breathing tube before being giving him his "HELL 2 U!" Cameo's namesake is the singer of the same name, Cameo.
Midler: The final of the Tarot assassins sent after the Crusaders. Her Stand, High Priestess, can possess and transform any mineral matter. She first attacked the Crusaders on their submarine by taking the form of different objects to surprise them. It took the form of a giant face to drown the Crusaders when they were fleeing their sinking submarine, only for Jotaro Kujo MD to do some dental work on her, ORA ORA ORA style. Only seen in the manga and anime as being knocked the fuck out with Polnareff saying her teeth were all gone. When Capcom made the fighting game, they asked Araki to draw a more presentable design for her, and delivered with a smokin' hot belly dancer. Araki apparently liked this design enough to make it canon, as it appears in later artbooks for the series. Some of her artwork in the PS1 game is redrawn art of Yukako Yamagishi from Part 4, most notably her character select portrait. Her namesake is the singer, Bette Midler.
The Egyptian 9 Glory Gods
As the Stardust Crusaders arrived in Egypt, Araki DIO realized he'd gone through almost the entire Major Arcana from the standard Tarot deck and needed a new naming gimmick. To this end, DIO personally met with each of these assassins and sent them out to finish the Stardust Crusaders once and for all. All of their Stands' namesakes are the Egyptian Gods and they are, for the most part, just as dangerous as any of the previous enemies faced (if not more so, since most of them required some amount of teamwork to defeat).
N'Doul: A blind man who possesses Geb, a liquid-based Stand capable of traveling underground to strike from unexpected directions. While Geb can be used from a long distance; N'Doul can't see, so he had to rely on vibrations he felt in the ground in order to track his victims. Despite his handicaps, he was able to incapacitate most of the Crusaders, outmaneuvering Avdol and most notably injuring Kakyoin's eyes to a degree that he needed medical attention. He was defeated when Jotaro found him using Iggy and had a literal stand-off with him. He kills himself using Geb as an act of loyalty to DIO before talking about the other Egyptian 9 Glory Gods, something Jotaro respects and gives him a proper burial for.
As long as we don't fail any Stealth or Luck Checks, they don't stand a chance.
The Oingo Boingo Brothers: Brothers who are both stand-wielders and work as a pair, Oingo is the taller one who does all of talking while Boingo is the shorter, introverted one. Oingo possessed "Khnum", a Stand that allows him to alter his physical characteristics to disguise himself as another person, but he can apparently only change his body (though he possibly used his hair to disguise his hat). Boingo possessed "Tohth (Thoth)", a Stand taking the form of a manga that can predict the future with 100% accuracy, but only describes specific events and none in-between in addition to being vague on minor details.Thoth's predictions had to be obeyed to the exact detail, otherwise, consequences will happen now or later. The two originally attempted to assassinate the Crusaders, with failures leading Oingo to disguise himself as Jotaro to plant a bomb disguised as an orange. Despite succeeding, Oingo became the victim of the explosion instead of Jotaro because he effectively became Jotaro (which he saw coming, but kept going because of his trust in Boingo). Regrouping, the Brothers end up hospitalized without the Crusaders knowing due to a previous prediction going awry. Boingo is later kidnapped by Hol Horse and convinced into helping him despite Hol Horse initially not believing in Thoth's predictions. Everything goes exceedingly well until Hol Horse messes up a prediction and is [RETIRED!] leaving Boingo on his own. Boingo decides to change and use his predictions for good but this was before being mauled by Iggy, leaving him even more perturbed. The Brothers are notable for causing the art style to change to be more abstract with exaggerated features as this is how everything appears in Thoth's pages. The art change was expanded into giving them their own outro in the anime, where the Brothers sing about themselves and their stands. Their namesake is the band, Oingo Boingo, which is censored to Oing & Voing and later "Zenyatta & Mondatta", an album by "The Police", in other material.
Mariah: She's a hot Little Red Riding Hood who's completely devoted to DIO out of her attraction to him. By touching random conspicuous outlets, the Stand Bast allows Mariah to turn her victims into living magnets that can attract anything metallic, though the power of this magnetism is based upon how close she is and how much time has passed. Mariah instigated one of the more, if not the most, comical fights in all of JoJo by causing Joseph and Avdol to become magnetized and stuck together in compromising positions. With the way Bast works, they had an embarrassing time tracking her down as she was able to evade them and keep her distance as the effect would wear off if she wasn't close enough. When Joseph and Avdol seeming corner her from opposite sides, their magnetism keeps them from moving. Mariah was defeated when she failed to realize that Joseph and Avdol were strongest magnetized objects nearby and they crush her between them, knocking her out. Her namesake is the singer, Mariah Carey but her name was censored in the past to "Mahrahia" in Heritage for the Future. She is normally depicted with bluish white or plain white hair, but keeping in line with JoJo's fluid colorations she's blonde in the official colored manga.
Alessi: A sadistic, axe-wielding man who controls the stand Sethan, who takes the form of a bird-like shadow with large eyes while its other features are only visible from the side. Alessi enjoys picking on things weaker than him, especially children, to the point that many call him a pedophile. Being a shadow, Sethan can reflect his actions and what he's holding to extend its reach and it can also make some parts of itself tangible in order to inflict physical damage. Sethan's most dangerous power, however, is that anyone who comes into contact with it will be de-aged and lose their memories over time. In a bizarre turn of events, Alessi turns Polnareff into an 8-year old boy, attempts to kill him but fails as he didn't count on a child still having a stand. A female stranger takes Polnareff in to her home after finding him and while she was giving him a bath, Alessi de-ages her into a fetus. A kid Polnareff ends up running around fully naked while holding the dying fetus of his good Samaritan, while being continually de-aged and hunted by Alessi like a deranged pedophile. Alessi is beaten when he encounters Jotaro and after de-aging him to 7 years old, is knocked out because Jotaro is really strong even as a child. When he wakes up, Alessi is truly [RETIRED!] when Jotaro and Polnareff beat him down for good. He's notable for recreating the infamous"Heeere's Johnny!" scene from The Shining, and his ability to transform characters in Heritage for the Future, his namesake is the duo band, The Alessi Brothers.
Anubis:Anubis is a stand that inhabits a sword with its original user being long dead, it has absorbed the skills of its past users and opponents. Anubis has the ability to pass through things it doesn't want to cut, the ability to memorize his opponents' moves (making sure the same tricks don't work twice), and the ability to possess whoever wields the sword. This makes Anubis a trifecta of a threatening opponent, and this leads to probably the longest fight in Jojo history between switching wielders five times from farmer named Chaka, a barber named Khan, Polnareff, and lastly, a child. The sword almost kills Jotaro, but he's able to shatter the sword to the hilt with the blade ending up in the Nile River. Its an odd bit in that despite Anubis being forged in ancient Egypt, he is shaped and handled like a Japanese Katana (likely indicating history's first proto-weeaboo was Egyptian). Chaka and Khan together have a namesake in singer, Chaka Khan. In the PS1/Arcade game, Anubis is playable as three different characters, Chaka, Khan, and Anubis Polnareff (or Black Polnareff because putting "black" in your name and having your skin color become a shade of brown apparently means "evil version" or "possessed").
Daniel J. D'Arby (D'Arby the Elder): The only real fight the heroes couldn't just punch, D'Arby is a professional gambler and cheater whose stand, Osiris, works on psychology. Those who admit defeat in their hearts get their souls ripped out and turned into poker chips for his games so long as it was bet. He's so good at cheating that he found a way to cheat a coin drop game against Joseph. Osiris also affords D'Arby with enhanced tactile senses, to the extent that he can tell what a face down card actually is through touch alone. Jotaro broke his two of fingers to keep him from sneaking cards when they set-up poker, but even this doesn't stop him having a kid who works for him rig the game regardless. D'Arby is defeated when, upon seeing Star Platinum's speed, he begins suspecting that Jotaro cheated even though D'arby himself has extremely good cards and knows that Jotaro should have a bad hand. When Jotaro keeps raising the bet with the souls of Avdol, Kakyoin, and his mother, and demands that his opponent ante up with information about DIO's stand, D'Arby psyches himself out so badly that in one of the most well-done scenes in the Anime, OVA, AND Abridged Series, he fails to call the bluff and has a complete mental breakdown. His breakdown releases all of the souls he collected and becomes unresponsive when asked about DIO's Stand. He's popular in the fandom for his hilarious attempt at southern-accented Engrish. He started the trend of gambler characters in later parts exclaiming "Good!" when a bet is made.
Pet Shop: Dio's pet falcon who's as crazy as any other assassin in the series. Its Stand, Horus, can create and manipulate ice to lay traps and launch spikes like homing missiles. He's either very smart for what he is or extremely territorial as he killed the informant that was at the mansion gate so he wouldn't report back to the Crusaders. Iggy opts to avoid him when he sees that Pet Shop had impaled two dogs' heads on a spike, but decides to fight him when the dogs' owner shows up. When Iggy tries to escape, the guard falcon displays how fixed on killing him it is by diving underground after him. Pet Shop is killed when he tries to shoot ice of his beak before Iggy launches himself at him and bites it closed which leads to him exploding. Pet Shop's also infamous for being hilariously broken in any game he appears in, because he's a bird with all the frozen Dakka he could ever need while everyone else is stuck on the ground. Perpetuating the saying "FUCKING HORUS!" beyond the realms of the Imperium. He's also the only villain none of the Crusaders but Iggy encountered (except maybe Boingo), his namesake is the electric pop band Pet Shop Boys.
To be good at games is to be a transcendent being, equal to the Gods, omniscient.
Telence T. D'Arby (D'Arby the Younger): Daniel J. D'Arby's younger brother by 10 years who is highly proficient in videogames and last of the Egyptian 9 Glory Gods. Similarly to Daniel, his stand Atum both sucks out souls when they admit defeat or are defeated by him and relies on psychology, but he has the added ability of being able to read the souls of his opponents to decipher their strategies, but can only decipher them through yes or no questions. Unlike his older brother, he binds the souls of his victims into wooden dolls as trophies, complete with them being fully conscious. Telence has a dislike for his brother as he believes he is better and that Daniel is scared of him as Daniel would never play games with him like he believed normal brothers would; furthermore, Daniel apparently apologized to him after Telence physically beat Daniel for trying to steal his girlfriend. He claims he doesn't cheat like his brother, but his planning ahead allowed him to beat Kakyoin in a racing game and his ability to read souls let him outplay Jotaro in a baseball game. Jotaro defeats him when he finds a way to cheat by having Joseph use Hermit Purple to play the game in his stead. Since Telence lacks his brother's intuition he was unable to see through the trick until it was too late, and as Jotaro points out, Daniel would've noticed easily. He's not as lulzy in terms of accents as his brother, but his video games deliver the encounter's much-needed Engrish and the soul-reading dialogue is a nice touch. Telence shares his namesake with brother, musician Terence Trent D'arby.
Kenny G.: One of DIO's more minor henchmen, his Stand is Tenore Sax, which is an illusionary stand that manifests as an endless labyrinth. While seemingly a daunting foe; he was quickly detected by Iggy and disabled. Pretty much a joke character, but his Stand is notable for being named after an instrument rather than a song, band or performer.
Nukesaku: The only one of DIO's henchmen not to wield a stand or be named after a musician, Nukesaku is a runt vampire, who's only power besides being vampire is that the back of his head has a female face to disguise himself. Needless to say, even his only shtick was horrible and Jotaro decided to test his immortality by ORA ORA ORAing him into submission. He is killed by DIO after willingly leading the crusaders into DIO's main chamber. A hilarious note is that "Nukesaku" is not really his name, in Japanese it roughly translates to "Idiot". People just call him that so much that it became more common to call him idiot, rather than his real name. He's called "Loser" in the English dub.
Vanilla Ice: DIO's most fanatical and powerful vampiric servant...who appears to have taken fashion tips from the Pillar Men. Vanilla Ice became a vampire after Dio tested his loyalty by saying he needed his blood to fully regenerate, where he went the extra mile by using his own stand to decapitate himself without hesitation. Impressed by his devotion (or maybe it was his massive bulge) DIO used his blood to resurrect Vanilla Ice, granting him near-immortality. His stand is named Cream, a humanoid monster that has a unique ability where it swallows itself (and Vanilla Ice) in order to become a null void, literally wiping out chunks of reality like the Eldar's D-Cannons. This power is so fucking awesome that it killed Avdol effortlessly, leaving only a pair of arms on the floor. He then killed Iggy by kicking him to near death, out of rage when they tried and failed to assassinate him with a sand clone of DIO (he was forced to destroy the clone with his master's image, which made him ballistic). He would have likely killed Polnareff as well but DIO forgot to tell him that sunlight would incinerate him, which Polnareff used to kill him after he shrugged off every other attack used on him. He's named after American rapper: Vanilla Ice, although due to copyright concerns, he's named as "Cool Ice" in the English dub.
A serial killer with a really creepy hand fetish. As in, he chops off women's hands to make the severed hands into his "girlfriends", keeping them in fancy boxes and having romantic dinners with them... until they rot and he has to get a replacement. The worst part is that he's seriously obsessed with living an ordinary life as a mediocre person...while also being a serial killer with a really creepy hand fetish. Yet his facade of mediocrity belies an incredible ruthlessness and guile that makes him a genuine threat to anyone who crosses him. Although he's the least threatening main arc villain in terms of his objectives (occasional serial killing compared to stealing fortunes/ruling the world as a vampire, becoming a perfect being and exterminating/ruling humanity, ruling the world as a vampire again, controlling all crime in Naples/Italy, rewriting the entirety of reality, using Jesus's corpse to make America great at the expense of the rest of the world, and...whatever the fuck the stone humans want), he's easily among the creepiest by dint of how coldly meticulous and under the radar he went.
For the most part, he's watched over by his dad, who's a ghost inside of a photograph thanks to his own Stand's abilities. Otherwise, he uses his Stand "Killer Queen", a pink catlike humanoid, as a killing instrument. See, its power allows it to imbue objects with an explosive charge which he can set off at will. These explosions are so efficient that they don't leave any trace of his victim, which has led to his long career as a killer. The only thing that he chooses to leave behind is a hand, which he will usually have a relationship with despite being the hand of some girl he just murdered. When combined with Stray Cat's air bubbles, these bombs become invisible projectiles. "Killer Queen" also has two separate components to it. The first is "Sheer Heart Attack", a skull-faced tank-bomb that comes from his right hand. This bomb chases down any heat signatures, which makes it effective for hunting down solitary targets, but when crowded with many heat sources, gets disoriented easily. The second power he gains after switching faces with another person and getting stabbed with a Stand Arrow. This power, "Bites the Dust", is a tiny "Killer Queen" which passes Killer Queen on to a non-Stand user, kills anyone who even asks them about Kira, and then loops time back to when Bites the Dust was activated, which will happen as much as it needs to until Kira can find out who it is that died. Additionally, anyone killed by Bites the Dust in a time loop will still die at the same moment in subsequent loops, allowing Killer Queen to kill multiple people at the same time. However, he can only have one bomb active at a time, and attacking him directly forces him to withdraw Bites the Dust. The time-loop power was going originally going to be more complicated (Araki considered having its use on Josuke as being the explanation for an identical looking stranger saving his life as a child in the snow) but it was scrapped for being too difficult to write in without inducing plotholes.
Anjuro "Angelo" Katagiri: A real sick fuck and first villain of Part 4, Angelo is a 34-year-old convicted serial killer and rapist who was put on death row for his crimes in 1994, meaning he was 12 when they were committed. Joseph's vision of him brings Jotaro to Morioh so he can warn his Josuke of the danger. Prior to his execution Keicho Nijimura shot him with the Stand Arrow, granting him his Stand which he used to survive his hanging. His Stand, Aqua Necklace, is similar to N'doul's Geb, but instead of being an extremely long-ranged body of water, it's a small being that take the form of and fuse with liquids and can become mist (if evaporated). Unlike Geb, Aqua Necklace can be used for communication and is effectively invulnerable as heating it up only made it turn into steam but if it's held in a container and moved around, Angelo will be moved as well. Angelo uses it to enter people's bodies and control or outright kill them. When Josuke foiled his robbery, he began targeting his the Higashikatas out of spite but Josuke captured him. Aqua Necklace's ability to disguise itself allowed Angelo to kill Josuke's grandfather and escape to plot his grand revenge. Over the week, Angelo had sabotaged the house to be filled with water during a rainstorm to literally flush the out. Luckily, Josuke had prepared for the situation when Aqua Necklace jumped into his mouth, it was captured in a rubber glove he swallowed and repaired. Cornered in the street, Josuke fuses him to a rock before Angelo starts spilling how he got his Stand and who gave it to him. The criminal stealthily takes a child hostage to force his release and makes the dire mistake of insulting Josuke's hair while doing so. Josuke then completely fuses him with the rock and reforms it to look like a big face, leaving a sapient boulder and landmark of the city: 「Angelo's Rock」: A big stone shaped like Angelo, a popular meeting place for couples despite its creepy appearance. Setting the bar for future Part 4 antagonists, Angelo was incredibly violent and intelligent with a simple Stand ability that could be lethal if used properly. Angelo also set the bar for violence in Part 4 in his first physical appearance, he bites off a dog's face and spits the blood into the owner's mouth along with his Stand because he had stepped in the dog's feces.
Keicho Nijimura: The elder Nijimura Brother and the brains of the two, instigating the entire first half of the Part. Shortly after the events of Stardust Crusaders Keicho and Okuyasu's father was mutated by DIO's fleshbud, so Keicho took it upon himself to care for both his brother and father. He resented the responsibility, hating what his abusive father had become drove Keicho to believe that the only way to begin his life would be to find someone to kill his father who regenerated all damage. When he obtained the Stand Arrow he set out to find a person with a Stand capable of finally killing his father, so Stand users in the first half of Diamond Is Unbreakable are his doing. Keicho himself has a Stand called Bad Company, which is an army of small soldiers complete with tanks and helicopters. While they are small, the damage dealt by their weapons is lethal if focus-fired and the missiles launched the helicopters are comparable to weak grenades. Additionally, being a colony-type Stand, damage dealt to Keicho is minimal if only a few of his units are taken out, significant amount of them must be eliminated for him to take notable damage and all of them for it to kill him. When Josuke and Koichi investigate the Nijimura Residence, Keicho shoots Koichi with the arrow and takes him inside while Okuyasu dealt with Josuke. He later faces Josuke and is overconfident when has all of Bad Company focused on Josuke, but is defeated when Josuke repairs two of Bad Company's missiles and sends them back at him. He was stunned when Josuke repairs the photo that Nijimura Sr. had been looking for the last 10 years and when Josuke suggested finding a Stand User to heal him instead of killing him. Suddenly, Red Hot Chili Peppers appears through an electrical outlet, seeing him about to strike Okuyasu, Keicho sacrifices himself to knock him out of the way before calling his brother a burden one last time. Keicho is dragged into the electrical outlet and his body is found fried on power lines, with RHCP taking the Bow & Arrow for his own purpose. Near the end of Part 4, Keicho makes one last appearance in Okuyasu's near-death experience where he asks his brother where he truly wants to go and disappears when Okuyasu answered. His Stand, Bad Company, gets its name from the English Rockband of the same name.
You can tell he knows his AC from his DC.
Akira Otoishi: One of the Stand Users shot with the Bow & Arrow by Keicho: an arrogant and selfish rock guitarist with a magnificent mane of lavender hair. His Stand, Red Hot Chili Pepper, is powered by electricity and can travel miles away from Akira so long as it has a power source. RHCP is capable of having insane power and speed when it has enough electricity, but if it runs out of power it can't return to Akira which could be lethal for him. When Akira learned from Josuke that Joseph was coming to Morioh to search for him, Akira devised a plan to fly a remote-controlled plane out to Joseph's ship and kill him. Personally encountering Josuke and Koichi on the docks, he explains his plans to be a "Ultra Super Guitarist" like his idols: Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Eddie Van Halen. Akira tries to act haughty by saying he can beat Josuke with only his pinky which prompts Josuke to break it with a punch which makes him SO MAD his only reaction is to belt out a legendaryface melter. Despite all his rage, he still ended up locked in a cage after Josuke defeated him and Okuyasu saw through his disguise when he got to the boat. Akira was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison on felony charges as he used RHCP to steal a lot of expensive stuff and stayed well-behaved as Jotaro and Josuke would "Chase him down to the deepest corner of Hell and end him," otherwise. He made his latest appearance in Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe Episode 2 where he asks for Rohan's autograph, apparently reformed from villainous attitude. Akira is notable for having the chapter be interrupted by an explanation of how his guitar works and his Stand's namesake is the band of the same name. His theme songs in All-Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven both sound like Red Hot Chili Peppers songs and he likely has the least butchered censored name, Chili Pepper.
Bug-Eaten and another rat: Two rats who were pierced by the Stand Arrow, giving them both the same Stand. Though we never see their thoughts like we could with Iggy, it is obvious they are relatively intelligent and cunning compared to normal rats. Their Stand, Ratt, is a small turret that fires toxic barbs that causes flesh to slough off and form into some kind of bloody gelatin for the rats to eat at a later time. They still act very much like normal rats; the primary use of their power has them collect food and expand their territory, except with a horrifying flesh melting cannon at their disposal. Jotaro takes Josuke with him to go hunting for the rats after teaching him how to use ball-bearings as ammo by flicking them. The first rat gets cornered and killed pretty quickly, but the second one (which Jotaro named Bug-Eaten because of its mangled ear) puts up quite the fight. Bug-Eaten almost kills Jotaro with a shot to the neck and almost kills Josuke when he uses himself as bait, since Josuke would not be able to repair himself should he get hit.
Yoshihiro Kira: Kira's father. He and his wife did not have Yoshikage until they were both at an advanced age, and therefore died when Kira was still young. He became a ghost and somehow obtained a Stand as well, Atom Heart Father. This Stand with no physical body allows Yoshihiro to bind himself to pictures, and anything that he manipulates inside the picture moves outside of them as well. Yoshihiro can turn the area depicted in an isolated space meaning anything outside the room cannot enter and anything inside cannot leave. Jotaro managed to trap him by folding up the photograph he was in and nail it to a wall, but Yoshihiro tricked Okuyasu into unfolding it and letting him fly off, taking the Stand Arrow with him. Unlike Keicho, he let the arrow guide him to people that were worthy of obtaining Stands. He knows all too well what kind of horrible monster his son had become, but he still protected him because Kira was his only son and he loved him. Yoshihiro reunites with his son to help him plot against Josuke and Co. and unknowingly gives Yoshikage the key to his victory. During the final confrontation, he slipped into Hayato's backpack and told Yoshikage Josuke's location through a cellphone. Josuke burns him out and using the phone has Yoshikage blow up his own father.
Ken Oyanagi: The Janken Kid. A child with a hole in his cheek courtesy of the Stand Arrow, Ken loves janken (rock-paper-scissors) and pesters Rohan into playing with him. Rohan is not amused and at one point decks Ken in the face for being an annoying little shit. The punch turned out to be a bad idea though, because Ken had just thrown paper. This triggered his Stand, Boy II Man, to take away a third of Heaven's Door as its ability is similar to the D'arby Brothers' Stands. If Ken wins three out of five games he gains permanent control of the opponent's Stand. This lead to an epic game of janken that looked like an actual fight in any other series as they were both glowing with energy and flying into the air as they cast their choices. When Rohan wins, The kid would rather die than submit and jumped in front of a truck, but Rohan jumped after him using his own luck to have it narrowly avoid them. Oyanagi's Stand's namesake is the American singing group, Boyz 2 Men.
Tama: Also known by his Stand, Stray Cat. He started out as a normal British Blue until he was struck in the throat by the Stand Arrow. He then broke into the Kawajiri residence's basement, where Shinobu found him. She wanted to chase him out, but he got cut to death by broken glass shards. Kira buried the cat in the yard, and after two days a strange plant sprouted from the grave. Reborn as a plant, he held a grudge against Shinobu and attempted to kill her with with his Stand. Stray Cat can manipulate air into bubbles that only burst on command and are easily capable of suffocating, trapping, and puncturing its targets. Kira saved Shinobu from him, but nearly died of an emphysema (Stray Cat can also form air bubbles beneath others' skins) trying to kill him so he used yarn to calm him. Kira found out that Stray Cat sleeps when not exposed to sunlight, so he dug him up and put him in a flower pot in the attic. Hayato finds him and later uses him in a plan to kill Kira which fails and has Kira place him in Killer Queen's abdomen, allowing him to make bombs out of the air bubbles. After Kira's death, Okuyasu decided to keep him as a pet and he got along with his father nicely.
Toyohiro Kanedaichi: A weird dude living in an old telephone tower by himself. He's self-sufficient, having everything he needs in or just around the tower in places he can reach with some contraptions. He's got a good reason for this: the moment he tries to leave the tower he turns to metal and stays like that until he enters it again. This is because the tower he's in is actually a Stand, Super Fly. It is an autonomous stand keeping him prisoner, and it needs someone else to enter before he can leave. On top of this, Super Fly returns all damage dealt to it into the same direction as said damage came from. Trapped inside with nothing to do, Toyohiro became an incredible acrobat to navigate Super Fly and memorizes exactly where things will ricochet inside. He lures Josuke in with help from Yoshihiro so he can leave but has a change of heart in the end. He decides to stay in the tower and becomes something of a local celebrity, often being visited by tourists.
Terunosuke Miyamoto: A man obsessed with fear. Terunosuke's Stand, Enigma, only works after he has identified a person's tell for when they're afraid. Once he confirms the tell, he can place people into sheets of paper which also works on non-sapient things like cartons of milk, bowls of noodles, scorpions and electricity. A trapped person or object can be freed by having the paper opened. He kidnaps Koichi and Tomoko, using them as hostages to scare Josuke when he and Yuya Fungami track him down. Josuke delivers a warning to Miyamoto when Josuke is trapped, and the audacity pressures Yuya into confronting the Enigma Boy despite his own fear. Chasing him down, Terunosuke uses his sense of smell to find Josuke and Koichi among hazards trapped in paper, and finds Josuke and Koichi seconds away from being put into a paper shredder. Allowing himself to be turned into paper also, Yuya pulls the duo, and they quickly incapacitate Miyamoto. Josuke decides not to kill Terunosuke, but instead decides to Angelo him, and uses Crazy Diamond to fuse him into a book, which remains with the Morioh library to this day.
Masazo Kinoto: An architect hired by Rohan to evaluate the damage done to his house by the fire Rohan had caused due to his intense game of chance with Josuke. Masazo is a weird looking dude, who is mostly bald with a tuft of hair in the shape of the Morioh M. He acts even stranger, always keeping his back to the wall unless he's sure Rohan is right in front of him. Rohan gets suspicious and uses Heaven's Door to get a read on him. It looks like Masazo is just somewhat neurotic, but when Rohan tricks the man and looks at his back, it bursts open as the independent Stand Cheap Trick jumps onto Rohan's back, killing Masazo. Cheap Trick's abilities are to hold onto someone's back no matter what, and to kill that person when someone sees that person's back as well as transferring onto the person who saw its victim's back. It can also talk with non-Stand users and even animals. Rohan exploited its ability by heading into Reimi's alley and walking out, turning his back to Koichi. The moment Cheap Trick turns around, however, it was grabbed by the evil spirits in the alley and dragged into Hell, with Rohan writing that last part into Cheap Trick using Heaven's Door to make sure it happens.
Diavolo (which is his moniker by Polnareff) is the boss of the Mafia group "Passione", though he never shows his face and operates under the pseudonym "Soliddo Nazo". He also has pink hair and doesn't wear a shirt, but he is anything but fabulous. Diavolo's main quirk is that he is a MAJOR control freak, which mainly manifests as an anonymity complex, a pathological need to erase the evidence of his own existence, and a split personality named Vinegar Doppio who acts as his Consigliere, his second-in-command.
His stand, "King Crimson", is a red and white man with a tiny face on his forehead and has a power that's really difficult to understand. The simplest explanation is, there is a point of time, Point A. In 10 seconds, Diavolo and only Diavolo can move around, but he can't interact with objects unlike The World's timestop. Other people within these 10 seconds are not conscious, but follows what actions they were supposed to do according to fate. 10 seconds later, at time Point B, anybody caught in King Crimson's power would be where they would be in 10 seconds from Point A, but they have no memory of doing that, seeming like time has skipped. Meanwhile, Diavolo had moved during those skipped 10 seconds to a perfect position to impale an enemy with his fist. As Doppio, "King Crimson" has a secondary Stand in its forehead called "Epitaph" which allows him to see 10 seconds into the future. Combining King Crimson with Epitaph's ability to know exactly what will happen in the 10 seconds of skipped time means that Diavolo is effectively untouchable, as he can dodge and counter almost any attack thrown at him. It just works.
Between Diavolo being a mysterious figure (unintentionally making him a dull character thanks to how little we know about him), and his confusing powers, he's regarded as the weakest of the major villains.
The biggest mafia outfit of Italy, Passione has its hand in every criminal pie, ranging from illegal taxis to hired murder and, of course, drug trafficking. In true Jojo fashion, each and every single member that isn't a generic mobster is flamboyant as fuck to the point one wonders why the Italian cops don't just arrest every fabulous person they come across just to be sure. Probably has to do with all high-ranking or elite members of Passione being Stand users.
Leaky-Eye Luca: An "officer" of Passione in charge of collecting their share of the profit illegal taxis make around Naples. His nickname comes from him surviving being stabbed in the eye, at the cost of said eye permanently crying. Luca is an asshole who fakes pitying drivers who can't or don't want to pony up before beating them to death with his shovel and selling drugs to kids on the side. Giorno fucks him up with his own shovel when he refuses to pay his share, setting up the events of Part 5.
Polpo: An ABSOLUTE UNIT in both girth and height. This ginormous specimen of a dude lives a cozy life in a decked out prison cell including a gun safe and a pantry, he's also a religiousHERETICAL man in his own twisted way, claiming that God forgives even murder if it's for a right cause. Polpo is Passione's recruiter, tasking applicants to prove their craftiness by giving them a lighter they must keep alight for 24 hours. If the lighter goes off (and since the test is designed to be failed, it will), lighting it up again triggers Polpo's Stand, Black Sabbath, an automatic Stand who attacks the lighter's holder with a Stand arrow; survivors get inducted into Passione. Infuriated by Black Sabbath killing a bystander who turned on the lighter after it got snuffed, Giorno, with the help of Koichi, destroys Black Sabbath and tricks Polpo into shooting himself in the head with a revolver Gold Experience turned into a banana.
Mario Zucchero: A low-ranking member of Passione who, with his buddy Sale, try to eliminate the Bucciarati gang to steal Polpo's fortune, hidden by Bruno Bucciarati on Capri Island. Despite being weak by Part 5 standards, his hit-and-run style of combat manages to pick off almost all the gang before Bucciarati and Abacchio manage to get him. His Stand, Soft Machine, allow him to stab people and things and make them deflate like balloons. Notable for his attack plan, involving deflating and hiding a copy of the boat the Bucciarati gang rides inside said boat to give himself plenty of ambush points.
Sale: A low-ranking member of Passione who, with his buddy Zucchero, try to eliminate the Bucciarati gang to steal Polpo's fortune, hidden by Bruno Bucciarati on Capri Island. Sale is much more of a direct fighter than his pal, thanks to his Stand Kraftwerk, who can remove or add kinetic energy from items, allowing him to do things like stopping and sending back bullets to an attacker. While insanely overpowered against his opponent Mista; who uses a gun; his cockiness and ignorance about how Sex Pistols work ends up doing him in, when his own power was turned against him by the Pistols and left him lobotomized. Despite bleeding a literal lake of blood on that truck's roof, If Purple Haze Feedback is canon, he somehow survived the bullet in his brain. Only to die to one of the new bad guys who tears his heart out.
La Squadra Esecuzioni
The "Execution Team" of Passione, regrouping their hitmen. Upon seeing their colleagues leading drug trafficking and illegal gambling had more territory and money than them, they started complaining and threatened to start digging into Diavolo's past. In retaliation, Diavolo cut one of them into pieces while still alive, cast the parts into resin to form a puzzle and mailed it to them as a warning. This proved to be the last straw and they defected, hunting down Trish as payback.
Sorbet and Gelato: The two members of La Squadra who tried to find dirt on Diavolo and paid the ultimate price when their boss found out about it. Sorbet was the guy turned into a human puzzle mentioned above while Gelato, his (really for once in JoJo) gay lover was forced to watch, killing himself rather than watching the full ordeal. Notable for being bland as fuck-looking compared to everybody who isn't a background character in Part 5.
Formaggio: The sadist of the bunch and the first one the Bucciarati gang faces. His Stand, Little Feet, causes objects and living beings to shrink once he touches them, stopping only when he decides it or instantly reversing the shrinking; a flashback has him kill a politician by shrinking a car to microscopic size, drop it in a glass of wine, then growing it back once his target swallowed it. He loses to Narancia, ironically the smallest of the group.
Illuso: The arrogant of the bunch. His Stand, Man in the Mirror allows him to drag people into a "mirror world" where everything is reversed and invisible to anybody Illuso didn't drag with him, in addition to having his Stand being virtually indestructible if enemy Stands don't enter the mirror world with their user. Purple Haze, with some help from Abacchio and Giorno, melts his face off.
Prosciutto: The cool dude of the bunch. Acting as a big brother and mentor of sorts for his partner Pesci, he's also a ruthless guy who doesn't take chances. The Grateful Dead, his Stand, induces extra-rapid physical and mental aging on people it touches unless it's cold enough, causing Prosciutto and Pesci to hoard ice cubes to not die. Badass to the end, he manages to survive being thrown under a train long enough to try to kill Giorno and team one last time and imparting some last-minute wisdom to Pesci.
Pesci: The pussy of the bunch. Pesci is a whiner who can't do anything without angsting or asking Prosciutto for validation, to the point he's called a "momma's boy" even by bystanders. However, like every pussy, Pesci has a breaking point that causes him to go postal once reached, using his Stand Beach Boy, a fishing rod able to snare people through walls and reflect damage to whoever tries to cut the line, with great skill. Ironically the more dangerous of the duo he formed with his brother, as Beach Boy's hook can cut almost anything and even snag its hook into someone's heart. Bucciarati nearly gets killed by him once he pushes him far enough, but manages to exploit his blind rage to finish him off, lamenting how wasteful Pesci's defeat due to misusing his newfound spirit was.
Melone: The sex pest and womanizer of the bunch, and no they're not one and the same. He is always on the hunt to find an ideal "mother" figure so he can harvest some genetic data for his Stand, Baby Face. Once he has the data, his Stand is created and becomes an automatic Stand that, while capable of absorbing any form of matter, requires a time to develop. As this is an automatic Stand, once it reaches a certain point, it goes mad and control is lost. Once Baby Face was dealt with, he was pretty much helpless when Giorno tracked him down.
Ghiaccio: The fuck-ass mad one of the bunch, with grammar being his main trigger, stopping in the middle of a battle to rant about mispronunciations of Italian words in other languages. He is also very dangerous as his Stand White Album not only allows him to freeze anything around him, but it also forms a suit of impenetrable ice armor with skates. It gets worse when he manages to reach absolute zero, when he can stop bullets in midair and then throw them back. In fact, the only weakness of this stand is a singular airhole in the back of the suit's neck, a weakness that could only have been exploited by Giorno and Mista.
Risotto Nero: The boss of La Squadra and so goth he shits Hot Topic shirts, though he doesn't involve himself with matters until Sardinia and never even faced Buccierati's gang. By that point, he tries to murder Doppio in order to flush out the boss with his Stand Metallica, tiny metallic ghost-looking orbs that can manipulate iron into any shape, including the iron in blood. What he didn't account for was that Doppio would be so persistent in escaping or that he was actually able to use some of King Crimson's power. It took a hell of a fight, but he was eventually done in by an unsuspecting Narancia; who thinking that he found an assassin out in the open instead of in a fight; ambushed him.
Unità Speciale
The "Special Unit" of Passione, acting as Diavolo's elite guard. While powerful in their own right, they also are completely nuts. Diavolo siccs them on Giorno and team once they betray Passione.
Tiziano: One of the two Stand users awaiting the gang in Venice and a creepy fuck matched only by his butt-buddy Squalo. His Stand, Talking Head, is a parasite that affixes itself to the tongue of a person and forces them to only tell lies, no matter how blatant, confusing everybody while Squalo moves in for the kill. Took a bullet for Squalo both out of love and to give him an opportunity to off Narancia.
Squalo: One of the two Stand users awaiting the gang in Venice and a creepy fuck matched only by his butt-buddy Tiziano. Squalo's Stand is Clash, a robotic shark that can appear in any body of liquid, including drinking glasses and puddles. Notable for being the second guy to almost off one of the Jobros (Narancia) after Pesci, and like Pesci, losing because he got overconfident; in his case, gloating while his target could still fight back.
Carne: Like Pesci above, Carne is fucking weird-looking and way more dangerous than he looks. His introduction has him menacingly stroll towards the group and getting shot in the face by Mista as they're about to travel by plane. Just as planned since Carne's Stand, Notorious B.I.G, can only trigger when it's user dies (How anyone ever found out this was his ability is unknown, it probably did something else too... maybe). Notorious B.I.G is an immortal fleshy blob that feeds on kinetic energy, growing bigger and hungrier the more people or things move in addition to being completely invincible and unkillable. Trish saved the day at the last second, dropping Notorious B.I.G in the ocean where it endlessly chases the currents.
Cioccolata: The absolute king of sick fucks in the whole series, hated even by Diavolo. Before joining Passione, Cioccolata was a doctor who intentionally fucked up anesthesia so his patients would wake up in the middle of operations, and before that he worked at a nursing home where he emotionally abused old people till they killed themselves. Green Day, his Stand, diffuses spores that start growing rapidly once their carriers move down in altitude even by a few inches, devouring them in seconds while the sick fuck records it. Once Giorno got to him, he got MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA'd for 7 pages/30 seconds before being catapulted into a garbage truck.
Secco: Cioccolata's human dog/sex slave/gimp/whatever the fuck. Secco does whatever his "master" tells him to in exchange for headpats and sugar cubes, including fighting Stand users with his own, Oasis. Oasis looks like a DIY gimp suit that allows Secco to turn solid ground into mud, allowing him to swim through it or fling it at his enemies. Bucciaratti manages to kill him by turning his ground-liquifying powers against him, blowing out a tire underground and Secco's ears with it.
The big bad of Part 6, a gaystraightSOMETHING ex-Catholic priest who worships the ground Dio walks on and who seeks to use his Stands to rewrite reality as Dio would have wished it. Some say he's gay, as there's flashback scenes where they're laying in bed together (not naked, but their clothes are visibly ruffled), but there is a lack of confirmation as to whether or not Pucci was just that big of an admirer of DIO or actually down bad for him. His Stand "Whitesnake" can swipe away other people's Stands or memories in the form of a disk. Pucci can then insert these disks into other people, allowing them to view these memories or use the Stand on the disk. "Whitesnake" later becomes "C-Moon", which can manipulate gravity. Then shit really hits the fan when he later attains the Stand "Made In Heaven" which can accelerate time and manipulate gravity. To make a complicated explanation a little easier to explain, as time continues to travel, the universe will hit it's eventual end, and a new universe will be created, where everything repeats itself, according to "fate". Pucci can then alter this universe to his desire, basically making the perfect world that Dio always wanted. With his newfound power, Pucci single-handedly slaughters Jotaro and Jolyne's group, leaving Emporio as the sole survivor. Ultimately, he gets fucked over by Weather Report because Emporio turned his own Stand's powers against him and the universe ends up resetting itself, with Pucci erased from existence.
Gwess: A typical parrot-loving Florida woman who Jolyne shares a bunk with upon arriving at Green Dolphin. Her stand is Goo-Goo Dolls, which gives her the ability to shrink people down the closer they are to her stand. Gwess forces a tiny Jolyne to speak in "uwu" talk and cosplay as a mouse (With an actual mouse corpse). She doesn't join the group after being defeated, as Jolyne doesn't trust her, but she occasionally provides her with information.
Johngalli A: A near-blind inmate with an inexplicably thicc ass who orchestrated the events that led to Jolyne's imprisonment. Holds a striking resemblance to N'doul, especially when he goes to snipe Jolyne and Jotaro from far away with a smuggled sniper rifle, using his stand Downtown Manhattan to angle his bullets towards his target.
Thunder McQueen: A suicidal inmate who was given the stand Highway To Hell by Whitesnake. Sounds like a stand with an awesome name, right? Well, too bad it's wasted on ghostly propellers that share damage on nearby people whenever the user tries to kill himself.
Miraschon: A hoop-haired inmate possibly related to the D'Arby brothers with the stand Marilyn Manson. After being caught stealing by Pucci while he was performing Kakyoin's cherry trick 2.0, he gives her the stand via disk and sends her out to defeat the Green Dolphin gang. The stand works by forcibly taking money from a target whenever they lose a bet or wager, which may extend to organs based on their black market value if they lack the necessary funds.
Lang Rangler: Contender for one of the weirdest fashion senses in Jojo (And that's saying something when people like Fugo and Anasui exist.) Attempts to kill Jolyne while she attempts to send her father's stand disk to the Speedwagon foundation with Jumpin' Jack Flash, a stand that would solo any of the other Jojo protagonists with its ability to create a zero-gravity zone, complete with horrifying effects such as losing bladder control. Unfortunately for him, he exists in the same part as the OP Weather Report, who generates astronaut suits made of clouds in order to survive the effects and counterattack. Other notable feats about him include stabbing a teacher 69 times and having some slightly wonky cgi in the anime adaptation.
Sports Maxx: Ah yes, another terrifying psychopath with a silly name. This time around, Sports Maxx is a ruthless gangster (And not the fun Passione type of gangster) who murdered Hermes's sister Gloria for reasons that amounted to Hermes simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite having been caught committing murder, his sentence manages to be reduced to a measly 5 years under charges of tax evasion and assault, so Hermes decides to take matters into her own hands and kill him herself. In a series first, she actually manages to ambush and kill him before he has a chance to fight back, but soon discovers his stand Limp Bizkit (Or Flaccid Pancake in some localisations) has the ability to spawn invisible zombies from nearby corpses, which attack and eat anything alive in their vicinity. Maxx becomes a zombie himself and manages to chomp away at Jolyne, Hermes, and F.F several times until he is pummeled to dust by Kiss.
Guccio: Boy, Bucciarati did not age well, did he? Jokes aside, this weird, scrawny man never fights Jolyne and the others directly, instead being used by Pucci to activate Survivor within the maximum security ward. The stand itself doesn't do much other than spread a weak electric shock of 0.07 volts, but those volts are enough to radically increase aggression while removing pain and fear, escalating a disagreement or slightly aggravating mistake into a gory, animalistic brawl. After turning the maximum security ward into an average /v/ board, Guccio mostly stays out of sight to wait for the conflict to blow over until Anasui finds him and turns him into a human beartrap with Diver Down by inverting his ribcage. Later on, Pucci finds his corpse and turns him into his personal boombox to play Georg Friedrich Händel's Messiah. If you've gotten this far into the series, this should sound pretty normal by now.
Viviano Westwood: Not actually an inmate but a security guard driven ballistic by the effects of Survivor. He's also an anomaly in the Jojo series as one of the few people to actually wear normal clothing. After beating a bootleg Giorno Giovanna into a pulp, he releases all the prisoners in the MSW to start a "fight club" and picks Jolyne as his next target. The two engage in hand-to-hand combat, something that doesn't go too well for Jolyne as Westwood is trained as a prison guard to subdue unruly prisoners. Furthermore, Whitesnake gave Viviano Planet Waves at some point earlier in the story, which causes meteors to fly towards him from orbit and burn up before making contact, blowing chunks out of anything or anyone that happens to be in the way. This ability, the effects of Survivor and Westwood's training make this fight brutal for Jolyne, to the point where TEARING WESTWOOD'S FUCKING TOENAIL OFF isn't enough to stop him. Aside from making you question Japan's standards for kids' entertainment, the fight ends with Jolyne hitting the prison guard with the force of his own meteors by wrapping his boot around one of the meteors, causing it to continue flying even after the meteor burns away. The fight leaves Jolyne critically injured, which becomes a problem when the next stand user shows up right away.
Kenzo: A sprightly 78-year-old man and ex-cult leader who lost his power and reputation after surviving a mass suicide. (Though he doesn't exactly make a good job maintaining it when he proudly promotes urine therapy.) He then spent the majority of his prison life perfecting the art of Feng Shui assassination, a one-time concept which takes half of the fight being explained. The other half has Foo Fighters perform all kinds of acrobatic shit against Kenzo, who uses his stand Dragon's Dream like a compass to pinpoint the lucky and unlucky directions of Feng Shui in order to trigger a coincidental series of events that lead up to gruesome accidents, similar to Final Destination. F.F manages to barely survive thanks to their inhuman composition and the fact that Dragon's Dream is a neutral stand that helps F.F and even back sasses Kenzo until he misinterprets his lucky direction and gets fried by an electric chair. Kenzo somehow survives this (Maybe that urine therapy actually works?) and makes a desperate dash towards Jolyne. Before he can successfully pull off his assassination, however, Anasui intervenes and uses Diver Down to obliterate his legs and reform them into springs, causing him to bounce helplessly out of commission. A good time for a reminder that Anasui's supposed to be one of the good guys.
D an' G: Technically the penultimate boss of the Maximum Security Ward arc before Pucci, though we see more of his automatic stand Yo-Yo Ma than we actually see him. After seemingly being built up as this smart, calculating badass, he ends up as the victim of Anasui's ribcage trap and starts blubbering like a baby over his now-shredded arm (AKA having one of the only normal reactions to injury in this goddamn series). He spends the rest of his screentime being taken into intensive care while his stand attempts to discreetly assassinate Jolyne and Anasui while feigning sycophantic servitude. This almost works as Anasui is too busy trying to get a kissy from Jolyne, but he is eventually incapacitated by his brain getting rewired into a frog's, and dies for good once F.F BLAMs his user, whose last thoughts were probably "DanG."
The Green Baby: A homunculus created from the clusterfuck of violence that went down in the security ward. It doesn't directly attack Jolyne and Anasui due to being an actual baby, but its automatic stand Green, Green Grass Of Home poses more than enough trouble to the duo due to its ability to shrink anyone moving towards the grassy gremlin until they grow microscopic. Fortunately, the effect is nullified by anything the cabbage child touches or finds interest in, which Anasui exploits by knocking a bottle that they're in towards it. It's unknown whether the baby would've been a Jobro or become a leafier Dio, as Pucci recites the holy words to have the baby gobble up his arm (To which he is ecstatic, of course) and merge with him to create C-Moon.
Miuccia "Miumiu" Miuller: Like Viviano above, not actually an inmate but Green Dolphin's head of security. She's tasked by Pucci with preventing the inmates from escaping, a job that must account for the fact that several of the prisoners are dangerous Stand users. So her Stand, Jail House Lock, prevents those affected from remembering more than three new pieces of information at a time or focusing on more than three tasks, erasing the first memory every time they try to remember a fourth. As you might have already guessed, that is a huge pain to deal with. Furthermore, the longer those affected keep looping, the more it erodes their capability to remember what they're trying to do until they give up completely. She also pretends to be an inmate to mess with her targets and taunt them. Jolyne eventually manages to beat her with Emporio's help, and the gang escapes Green Dolphin afterwards to pursue Pucci.
Note that this is actually meant literally. They're bastards too, though.
Ungalo: An hedonistic, flat-faced loser who inherited Dio's cruelty and hatred of the world. His stand is Bohemian Rhapsody, a phenomenon that causes copyright-friendly (but not visually friendly) versions of fictional characters who live out their stories in the real world. Given the types of stories that exist, this is already bad. VERY, VERYBAD. But it gets worse when someone interacts with these characters, as it forces them to play the role of the character they most relate to, including the events leading up to their death. This effect can even include historical figures, as Weather was attacked by Vincent Van Gogh and nearly died like he did. Weather eventually manages to counter this ability by creating Put-Back his own overpowered OC, who sucks up all the fictional characters roaming around, causing the effect to disappear alongside Ungalo's will to live.
IT CANNOT BE OVERSTATED HOW TERRIFYING THIS ABILITY IS. IMAGINE IF CHRIS-CHAN ESCAPES FROM PRISON AND ACTUALLY MAKES THE DIMENSIONAL MERGE HAPPEN.
Seriously, its range and effect was GLOBAL. In the short time he used it, Ungalo probably killed more people than every other Stand user in the series combined (not including when the world was cosmically retconned, of course).
Rikiel: A MAN WEARING A DEAD ANIMAL. Initially a meek child, he took a level in badass after receiving the stand Sky High, which looks like a cheap and shitty children's toy but grants Rikiel the ability to control cryptids known as rods that feed off body heat. This causes all kinds of lovely things to happen to Jolyne, Emporio and Hermes, including forcing eyelids to close, controlling muscle movement by taking away heat, and pissing blood. Inherited Dio's resolve and determination, and probably the closest equivalent to Giorno, though his stand is ironically the only one out of Dio's children not tied to fate.
Donatello Versus: Not a ninja turtle, but a literal (and figurative) dickhead who inherited Dio's ruthlessness and tendency to be an asshole. Under World is the name of his stand, and allows him to recreate memories of people, minerals and events that happened in Florida by digging them up from the ground. If someone gets caught in the event being replayed, they are forced to experience everything that occurred within the memory, including the impact from a plane crash. As previously mentioned, he's not exactly a pleasant fellow, as he repeatedly tells Pucci to "shut the fuck up" in response to advice that he perceives as backseat gaming, and later returns Weather Report's memory disk to him, endangering the entire planet and indirectly killing Weather just for a chance to obtain heaven for himself. After escaping an initial defeat, Donatello searches for Jotaro's memory disc and discovers it on Emporio's person after taking off his clothes and making some seriously concerning faces. He ultimately dies unceremoniously when Pucci disguises him as himself with Whitesnake in order to cover his escape.
He's named after both Gianni Versace's daughter Donatella and one of his brand's diffusion lines, Versus.
The fucking president of the United States! No, seriously, he's the 23rd President of the United States, a veteran of the Civil War with the fucking Stars and Stripes as scars on his back, and the real mastermind of the Steel Ball Run. His goal of the race? To recover the Corpse of Jesus Christ and use it to lead America to a new age of lasting prosperity. And that's why you don't fuck with this President!
Oh, and his Stand, "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" (D4C), which allows him to essentially jump between parallel universes. While anything else he brings will be destroyed the moment it comes into contact with its dimensional equal (meaning that he can find someone, drag him into another dimension, and collide him into his dimensional equivalent and kill them both), he is utterly immune to it and is able to replace himself by having his Stand transfer between Valentines. The issue, though, is that it is anchored to one universe: The universe where the Corpse originates from. Eventually, he does recover the Corpse, and at this point, he develops "Love Train", a secondary effect to "D4C" which sheaths him in a field of parallel dimensions. Anything that tries to hit him that passes through the field gets deflected and redirected elsewhere, allowing only good fortune near him. The issue is that it he has to leave this sheath in order to attack. Like Devo, D4C was a victim of copyright law, and in his video game appearances the subs are very careful to never refer to D4C by its full name. The writers still managed to make this as hilariously stupid as the rest of the series, though; Valentine's signature move in All Star Battle is renamed "Filthy Acts Performed at Fair and Reasonable Prices."
Can you take a guess of what character he's based off of?
Essentially the SBR version of Dio Brando from the original series. Though he is calculating and callous like the original, he is much more considerate with his actions, not killing innocents left and right. However, he won't hesitate to absolutely destroy anyone who gets in his way. His backstory differs in that his father left him behind and he was raised by his mother longer than Dio's (though it was only until he was six). As the original rejected his humanity because it made him weak, Diego takes a different spin on it and blames humanity as a whole for his misfortunes. He participates in the Steel Ball Run race against Johnny and Gyro, wanting the fatass cash prize at the end for himself.
His Stand, "Scary Monsters", has, arguably, the stupidest yet most hilariously awesome power in Steel Ball Run and maybe JoJo as a whole. Scary Monsters allows Diego to transform into a blue-green raptor and attack his enemies. For whatever reason as a raptor he has "DIO" plastered over and over again all over his body. If he wishes Diego can simply change his body to have sharp teeth or claws. He can also infect people through bites and scratches and turn them into raptors that are under his control. Essentially he is a wereraptor, which is awesome in every sense of the word. This even extends to his horse, which he turned into a colossal raptor than can climb up walls. After being upped by Johnny and Gyro on several occasions, he teams up with Funny Valentine in order to gain some revenge and to find some of the Corpse Parts. But in a sudden but inevitable betrayal, Diego makes a 180 and tries to kill Valentine. Naturally, this fails.
Diego 2: Electric Boogaloo: At some point in the story Funny Valentine uses D4C to nab another Diego from another universe to help him. He's basically Part 3's Dio with a different name and appearance. He's also still human, which limits his ability to use The World to stop time.
Oddballs hired by Valentine to murder Johnny and Gyro, ranging from awful to awesome in writing and style.
The Boomboom Family The Boom Boom Family was a family, who were hired as assassins to kill Gyro and Johnny. All three members share the stand Tomb of the Boom. The stand is basicaly a copy paste of Mariah's bast, and it brings nothing new to the table.
Their arc is generaly considered the weakest of Part 7.
Oye Como Va
Porkpie Hat Kid
Ferdinad
Ringo Roadagain His stand is called Real Man's World, which allows him to loop time in a small area, such as his house.
Mr. Blackmore
The Eleven Men
Soundman The most unusual of the Steel Ball Run's competitors, as he's an American Indian who spent the entire trip on his bare feet. AND HE WAS KEEPING UP WITH THE REST.
Closeish to the the Pillar Men but without the apocalyptic potential to end the world. Unlike the Pillar Men, they are all Stand users, and oh boy are these ones fucking creepy, even by usual JoJo standards. Their life-cycle is the definition of What; they start as tiny babies, they latch onto wasps, live in the hive for 17 years, then emerge as fully-formed, normal looking rock humans. Apparently they were the backup plan in case carbon-based life forms failed, as they are composed of Silicon.
The group that Joubin worked with, their main goal was to cash in with the Rokakaka's mysterious healing properties by selling it to those in need. Their main concern was keeping the fruit underground and out of sight.
Youtsuyu Yagiyama
The architect that drew the new Higashikata mansion. He's the first rock human Josuke comes in contact with. He hates the Hisgashikatas and is envious of their wealth and influence.
His stand is named I am a Rock, and its' gimmick is that it draws objects towards you after Youtsuyu has touched you. This sounds like fun and games, but the objects don't stop once they've reached you, they continue through your skin and flesh, if you let them. The stand is a short ranged one, so Yotsuyu has to be close to the target for his stand to work, and he can attract only one type of object at a time, like flowerpots, rocks and etc.
For some reason he likes to compare him fighting Gappy to chess. Gappy then proceeded to drown him by trapping Yotsuyu in fishnets.
Aishou Dainenjiyama
The active dealer of the group, worked as a security guard at the local baseball stadium during the day. Aishou was an extremely paranoid person, due to the trauma caused by his ex-girlfriend cheating on him. His stand was Doobie-wah, which was a long range automatic stand, that locks on to a person's breathing.
The stand then manifests as a twister, and starts chasing the target until it stops breathing.
Oh, and it's size and strength is dependent on the targets breathing, as it grows in size when breathing becomes more erratic and faster, and vice versa. So the only way to defeat it is to either stop breathing or kill the user.
He gets run over by a bus, which is at the same time hilarious and anticlimactic.
Aphex Twins
These guys acted as the tough guys of the group, as they would go and rustle up anyone who rubbed the group the wrong way. The younger twin was obsessed with tribelling with his ball, which is actually a bag where he keeps his stand. The elder twin in turn was the brain of the duo, coming up with strategies for encounters.
Their stands were named Schott Key no.1 and Schott Key no.2. No.1 could transfer stuff from the users right hand to the left, it scraped away things like The Hand, and then shot them forth from the users left hand. No.2 was a small poison-gas emitting stand, the gas could corrode flesh when touched. It was also the one that hid in the ball-shaped bag.
They get their asses handed to themselves by Gappy and Karera.
Tamaki Damo
This man was one of the most awesome rock humans ever introduced into the story. During his appearance he did not only kill off Kira Yoshikage, but also infiltrate the Higashikata household by dating(and banging) Hato and then turn everyone inside the house into silicone-like goop. He got his design and demeanour from "the American Hustle's" protagonist Irwing, even sharing the goofy receding-hairline joke
Damo's stand was Vitamin C, which looked like an octopus jester. It could spread wet fingerprints everywhere where it touched, and those that touched the fingerprints would slowly turn into a silicone-like state. In that state they would have trouble moving, and were extremely soft, so Damo could cut limbs off by using a 1000-Yen bill.
He was killed off in brutal fashion, with Gappy crushing his skull with Soft & Wet.
A small clique of rock humans commanding the smuggling group, all with jobs as doctors of the University's hospital. They seek to improve their Rokakaka based medicine with the new Rokakaka so they can sell them to gain steadily more wealth and power until they can rise above humanity.
Urban Guerilla:
Poor Tom:
Wu Tomoki
Tooru/The Head Doctor: the main Villain of the part, he is unique in that his stand, Wonder of U, has its own identity, that being Satoru Afeku, the Head Doctor. His Stand ability is pretty broken; anyone that tries to pursue his Stand is met with calamity, meaning that if you so much as think about following the Head Doctor then shit will go down. This meant that to beat him, you have to let him come to you.
The Ripple, or "Hamon", as it's sometimes translated as, was a power introduced in Phantom Blood and used up until early Stardust Crusaders. Created by monks in fuckknowswhere-istan, this martial art(?) was created to specifically destroy undead zombies and vampires. The user, quite literally, harnesses the power of the sun via breathing. This can let the user empower their attacks and attain superhuman feats, including walking on water, or climbing slippery surfaces using only their fingertips. And for dramatic effect, the Ripple can transfer to metal and organic materials via a process called "Sendo", making it unstable and acting like a weapon in of itself. Used creatively, ripple-infused weapons can include projectile bubbles, hair, bolos, etc. The last person to uses this was Joseph, who stops training in it after Part 2, and only uses it a couple times in Part 3. When he returns in Part 4, he's such an old man that he's incapable of even that (though to be fair, this was his choice. The Ripple could extend a person's natural lifespan considerably, but one guy still feared growing old, became a vampire, and then died because sunlight. Joseph opts not to do this.) Ripple is also a lot more situational than Stands, especially since Stands can pretty much say fuck you to reality itself.
Spin: The Spin is basically a new version of the Ripple introduced in Part 7. We're not joking when we say it's almost exactly like Hamon except it's far more flashy and when it comes into contact with objects it makes them spin rapidly(duh) by achieving the perfect rotational ratio of the Golden Rectangle (A rectangle that can break into a perfect square and a smaller rectangle with which to repeat this process, potentially ad infinitem). Gyro Zeppili is the most effective with the Spin, using it to charge and launch steel balls at his enemies, though Johnny eventually manages to pull it off using his nails (and Tusk) to create localised fucking multi-dimensional blackholes. Suddenly Johnny's stand power isn't so lame.
Stands are... weird to say the least. Getting their start in Stardust Crusaders, they are literal spiritual manifestations on a user's willpower and strength. The capabilities of Stands can vary absurdly, among the known powers are: stopping time, shooting out crystal projectiles, tossing marbles that are practically mini virus bombs, and punches so powerful they can break diamond. There are some stands that aren't combat oriented, such as spiritual photography, enhanced healing, or reading people's memories, but generally most are. A big part of JoJo (past part 2 and its subsequent influence on anime in general) is that a Stand's ability is often used in unexpectedly creative ways in order to win. For example, Star Platinum is initially assumed to just be capable of incredible strength and fast punches with incredible precision. Whilst it's useful as a fighting beatstick, it also gets used as a microscope, sketch artist, and even a vacuum cleaner for a gas based opposing stand (not counting eventually being able to stop time).
The situation is complicated further by the fact that virtually anyone can be a Stand user, so ambushes by enemies are frequent. The first few were introduced were based of the tarot cards (Star Platinum, Magician's Red, etc), but from mid-Part 3 and onward they were named after Egyptian Gods, famous rock musicians and songs. Rolling Stones, Purple Haze, and fucking Metallica are Stands. This made later incarnations of Jojo to be an absolute copyright hell to deal with, since literally every Stand and maybe character can be traced to a band, person, or song. Many names had to be either adjusted or changed completely in localizations.
They also don't have much of a fixed way of manifesting either, with some people being born knowing how to use them (Avdol, Kakyoin), while the Joestars only developed it with DIO receiving his, while others still had to get stabbed with magical arrows made from a meteorite or ending up in a weird mystic area and touching mummified body parts. It is clear that if one person in a family obtains a Stand, their living descendants will then gain their own Stands with descendants who are born later having at least the potential to develop a Stand (e.g. DIO and the Joestars). In some rare cases, sheer willpower is capable of manifesting a Stand (e.g. Tonio Trussardi).
While having a Stand sounds like a pretty cool thing on paper, its not as great as it sounds due to the fact that Stand users are somehow drawn to each other (hence the unusually high number of Stand users in Morioh despite being a pretty small town) and a lot of people who develop Stands aren't exactly of the benevolent sort.
While there are an array of inconsistencies with Stands, JoJo was nice enough to give this list of the rules for Stands.
A Stand protects its user, like a guardian. The name comes from "standing by" the user, sometimes using their powers without direct orders in order to protect the user, and by extension, themselves.
Automatic Stands are those that are able to operate independently of their User, some can act without their User's knowledge or input and can be a detriment to the User if their abilities are also automatic (e.g. Black Sabbath, Superfly, Civil War). In some cases, the Stands think for themselves and can turn against their User if they see fit.
A person can have only one Stand though their Stand may evolve (e.g. Echoes, Tusk).
Not everyone is strong enough to acquire a stand, whether it's by the Golden Arrow or other means (e.g. Holly slowly dying from her own stand, Koichi slowly dying after being hit with a Golden Arrow).
Conversely, any living thing is capable of acquiring a stand, from babies, to animals, to plankton, to trees.
Inanimate objects are also capable of possessing Stands though it is not clear if they are retained from a living user or manifested by themselves.
Stands can be inherited. In a rare cases even shared between multiple living biological relatives.
A Stand is part of its user, and damage is usually reflected between the two. Usually, if a Stand's leg is cut off, its user will lose their leg as well. Certain aspects of some Stands, such as the armor of "Silver Chariot" or "The Fool", are immune to this effect. If the Stand is not exactly humanoid, they may reflect damage to their user's body relative to the area of the Stand that was damaged (e.g. High Priestess, Geb), or are an exception. Additionally, if a Stand can be bound or trapped in some way the User will likewise be unable to move
Some Stands are completely invulnerable or impervious so only damage to their User will affect or otherwise destroy them.
Stands may only be seen by Stand users;although there are exceptions including Stands bound to physical objects or are just corporeal for the sake of their abilities(e.g. Strength; attached once to a boat, Thoth; a physical comic that could change, Yellow Temperance; a blob of flesh that can form itself into disguises, Cheap Trick).
A Stand can only be directly damaged by another Stand or objects affected by thier abilities. A Stand user, however, can still be attacked directly by a stand or conventional attacks.
A Stand's energy or power is inversely proportional to their operating range. The further a Stand is from its user, the weaker it becomes – Long-range Stands and/or Stands' long-range abilities are simpler in mechanism. Two exceptions are Hanged Man, which travels from mirror to mirror, and Red Hot Chili Pepper, an electricity-based stand that can travel anywhere that has power lines or aboard anything with a battery.
Automatic Stands tend to be exceptions to this rule, as some operate without the User's direct input or direction.
When a Stand User dies, their Stand disappears with them unless the ability is activated by their death, retains their soul, or is completely retained within an object(e.g., Notorious B.I.G., Atom Heart Father, Cheap Trick, Limp Bizkit, Anubis).
When a Stand is destroyed or dealt enough damage, their user is either knocked unconscious or killed, depending on the level of injury.
In a number of cases, Automatic Stands are exceptions (e.g. Judgement, Superfly, Surface).
Stands allow people to see ghosts (since Stands themselves are spiritual phenomena), a fact that becomes important to the plot of Part 4.
Stand Arrow: Once, about 50,000 years ago, a meteorite crashed in Greenland. Some time in the 70's, an exploration team was sent to bring it in, but suddenly killed each other or died of illness. It was discovered that they were infected by alien virus in the rocks. Some of these rocks were taken by a man centuries before who wishes for the power of gods and fashioned into a set of arrows. These arrows tend to kickstart the process of developing a stand by cutting or piercing someone, but the spiritual strain of the process could prove to be fatal to some. And if you get hit by one while owning a stand? Well, surviving tends to grant you an incredible new power, usually called a Requiem. It's known that about five of these exist: One was given to Enya Geil (an old lady serving Dio), and another found its way to Kira. Yet another was found by Polnareff, which is then handed over to Giorno. The rest are owned by Diavolo.
Corpse Parts: Okay... wat. If you thought all the aforementioned stuff above was strange, you're in for a real treat. So get this; in Steel Ball Run, a major driving part of the plot is that both the heroes and villains are searching for the body parts of what they believe to be the shriveled corpse of some long-dead Saint. Why they want them is that if they absorb the body part into themselves, they get a Stand and various other benefits, making them the JoJolion version of the Golden Arrow. Of course the various characters searching for it want it for various reasons, but those are the main benefits. Oh, by the way, it's later discovered that the Corpse Parts are actually the body parts of Jesus Christ. We ain't talking Communion or some shit; the literal, physical, holes-in-the-hands body of Jesus. Somehow his body made it to North America centuries ago and an earthquake split it into nine separate pieces and spread it throughout the U.S.
It gets even more bizarre when you remember that Joshua ben Joseph was Jesus' given name, which means that his name abbreviates into JoJo.
These grotesque, fanged stone masks only appear in the first and second parts, but are vitally important to the story as a whole. Initially believed to come from the Aztecs, they are actually creations of the Pillar Men; intended to allow for the Pillar Men to overcome their weaknesses and become true gods. When placed on the face and smeared with blood, they drive spikes into a wearer's brain, transforming them into a vampire. Dio Brando became a vampire through the power of one of these masks.
However, when powered with the Red Stone of Aja, a gem that can amplify the powers of the sun, not only rendered Pillar Men such as Kars immune to sunlight and Ripple, but also gains the ability to shapeshift into whatever he wants, such as gaining wings or turning feathers into fucking piranhas.
Vampires: Human beings transformed by the Stone Masks who for the most part are same the average depiction of the bloodsuckers, though there are some notable differences. While they do have fangs, they are able to and more commonly drink blood through their fingers which is likely much more effective. Their abilities include super strength, enthralling victims, zombification, regeneration and slowed or reversed aging through absorbing blood. Vampires are also capable of raising the dead by dripping their blood onto the corpses, those revived by this gain super strength along with vampiric abilities. As with normal vampires, they are completely destroyed by sunlight and are additionally weak to the Ripple and the same goes for their undead minions.
If you're wondering why some people keep referencing "Duwang" or "ABAJ", it is a reference to an extremely poorly translated version of JoJo part 4, infamously known as the "Duwang" translation. The translation was a group of Chinese students final project for his English class - "Duwang" is a Chinese reading of the Kanji that make up the name "Morioh." Due to the poor quality of the translation, the students in fact failed the subject. Despite this, for the longest time it was the only available English translation, leaving a lasting impact on JoJo fans with Josuke & Co. being colloquially known as the "Duwang Gang". The Engrish phrases used are so unintentionally hilarious that the dialogue was eventually ported over into fansubs for the anime version, and before that they were continuously referenced in more quality translations.
given how batshit and hard to read some scenes are, plus context clues dead on the internet, fans remember Araki for being extremely forgetful as he often seems to forget key details in his writing, and one will often see characters not use their established abilities even though the situation is perfect for them (though often a miss understanding of the characters, the situation, or the powers themselves). Most notable example of this is Jotaros Star Finger, which gets used maybe three times in the entire series despite its effectiveness (at least its almost always a part of his arsenal in vidya, though he only used it twice in the series were both times was when his arms were restained and were never confirmed they were more effective, but man we wished he used it more). There are several examples like that and the anime adaptation generally remains so faithful to the source material that it generally does not make attempts to fix these (perceived) issues. As there is often plainly spelled reason for why a certain ability was not used when fans think it should be used that way, fans have a tendency to just say Araki Forgot as that is generally what really happened.
A continuous recurring motif and driving force in each part is an observable force in the stories, with its mechanics being fleshed out with each entry. Also called gravity and is synonymous with that fundamental force. Gravity is not dictated by a higher sentient power. Still, it has a natural flow. It has a preference for particular outcomes, favoring the side of justice to win in the end, or the repeating of tropes like the Zeppeli companion will always die to give a Jostar thier final powerboost. Like predictable cosmic laws, it can be read and benefited from, with fortune reading, feng shui, or a good business running sense letting you read the flow of fate, and the corpses of saints/sinners will attract blessings/curses. Relating to the chain of Causality, A person can't really change thier fate; few only have the high insight to realize they have one, and a rarer few have experienced "heaven," glimpsing past the illusion of free will. Unless, like a powerful current, they interact with a stronger force of gravity, overriding a predetermined outcome. You only can change fate if your fated to change it. Like a more subtle grim reaper from Final Destination (one of araki's favorite movies), If something is predicted with certainty, circumstances will contrive to make it happen and continue to make it happen until it lands if you somehow have enough cleverness and luck to keep on dodging it. If you are lucky, it's caused by an enemy Stand and will turn off when you retire them. Otherwise, it would be best to hold off on this inevitability long enough until it resolves as something beneficial. Unfortunately for the main cast, predictions thought no longer in effect will jump out of the bushes and kill them in the final act (spoilers).
Manga: Obviously, if you want JoJo in its original, true form, you can find yourself some copies or just read it online (most Parts aren't physically available in English). JOJONIUM is a series of updated re-releases of Parts 1-3 that includes additional new artwork and commentary from Araki and is available in English. There are also spin-offs (including those not made by Araki) and artbooks.
1993 OVA: An OVA for Stardust Crusaders that came out in 1993 simply titled "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure", which started with the Crusaders already in Egypt. In 2000, more episodes were released which detailed the beginning of Part 3 and the eventual departure from Japan. It re-imagines Stardust Crusaders to be more gritty than the manga with added gore and violence along with scenes being completely altered. The OVA skips more than half of Part 3, as it only includes the fights with Kakyoin, Polnareff, Forever, Hol Horse & J. Geil, Enya, N'Doul, D'Arby, Vanilla Ice and DIO with all but three of these receiving major changes. The fights with N'Doul and D'Arby are faithfully recreated; additionally, the final battle against DIO is notably altered and extended as the fight is far more destructive with scenes such as DIO knocking Jotaro through a bus and throwing a fishing boat at him. This is also the source of the trend of replacing "The World" with "ZA WARUDO" due to DIO's voice-actor's excited exclamation whenever he announces The World's time-stop. Regardless of the all the changes, the OVA is worth watching for its great animation and the fact that it was the only animated JoJo adaptation for almost 20 years. Being the first JoJo media with English voice-acting, one may find extra enjoyment in the frankly bizarreEnglish dub.
Don't expect to find this on any streaming service, as it was pulled from shelves years ago after it was found out that DIO was reading the Quran in one scene. Blame early-to-mid-2000's Islamaphobia.
2007 Movie: Animated adaptation of Phantom Blood by the same studio that made the 1993 OVA, unavailable as it hasn't been released in any form to the public since its theater showing, though first 15 minutes and several trailers can be found on YouTube. Judging from them, film is a hell of mess that tries to stuff 44 chapters each at least 20 pages long into an hour and a half movie.
TV Series: The TV anime by David Production that started in 2012, which is responsible for the current Jojo resurgence of popularity. The anime is noted for its stellar music and voice performances that are perpetually referenced by fans to the point of making the series even more popular. It has near obsessive capturing of moments as they tend to recreate even the smallest scenes and barely edits the iconic poses JoJo is known for. Cover Pages, musical inspirations, and previous and later works by Araki are referenced as bonuses to long-time fans and to add extra flair. Unlike the 1993 OVA, it displays the colorful and bizarre nature of JoJo to its fullest with very few discrepancies, giving the series the adaptation it deserves.
2017 OVAs: 4 episode adaptation of the Rohan starring spin-off made by David Production. Pretty much has the same pros and cons as the anime series.
2017 Movie: Live-action adaptation of Diamond Is Unbreakable, which notably alters the story to fit it into one movie and shift the focus from overall JoJo plot to a Josuke one. Overall not bad, though effects aren't that great.
2020 Series: 6 episodes live-action adaptation of Rohan starring spin-offs and novels. They follow the footsteps of the movie in quite altering the plot of the stories to make them less dependent on the overall JoJo lore.
JoJo's Venture/JJBA: Heritage for the Future: Originally an arcade fighting game, it was subsequently re-released for the Dreamcast and PS1 in 1998. This was pretty much the first contact many Westerners had with JoJo. Based on Part 3 and plays a lot like Street Fighter because it was made by Capcom, who at the time were also working on Street Fighter 3. The game was available on the PSN and Xbox markets in the form of an HD release which lacked a good amount of content (such as Super Story Mode) and is no longer available.
PS2 Vidyas: There are two other Vidya made around 2005, one detailing the events of Part 1 (Which was supposed to tie into the movie that never released), it's a level-based brawler that's kind of clunky. The other game (Golden Whirlwind) details Part 5 and is a lot more polished, though it ironically came out years before the Phantom Blood game. It skips a number of fights and is more of a fighting game in the fact that you mainly fight one-on-one, so scenes are recreated more faithfully with the fights that were skipped being available in extras as voiced comics. Golden Whirlwind contains nod to Heritage for the Future as they both developed by Capcom.
All-Star Battle: Another JoJo fighting vidya from 2013, but this time pulls characters from all eight arcs. Nothing really notable except that it's the most absolutely fucking fabulous game ever. For the international release, they managed to get very clever with avoiding copyright on the names of various characters , Stands, and attacks (e.g. Polnareff is Eiffel, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is "Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price", Vanilla Ice is Cool Ice and so on). To top it all off a number of characters have musical references in their theme songs some more clear than others; to name obvious, a bit of Back in Black in Esidisi's theme and Kira has Queen all over and even more in his EoH Theme.
Was re-released in 2022 as All-Star Battle R, introducing even more characters from various parts (most lifted from EoH) since we've now since seen not only anime adaptations for everything up to Stone Ocean come out but also the completion of Jojolion where the original released when Jojolion just started.
Eyes of Heaven: Another JoJo vidya, this time an arena fighting game with a few more characters that weren't in All-Star Battle. Notable for its absolutely hilarious story mode involving time-travel and the other JoJo's meeting each other. The essential cause of this was Funny Valentine's dimension hopping had him to run into a version of DIO who can will whatever he wants into reality using his Stand, The World Over Heaven, and now he wants the Corpse Parts to become even more powerful and defeat the Joestars permanently. The ending basically rewrites part 3 and onward to be a bit less grimdark, in that Jotaro's entire party survives at the end, while Jotaro becomes a better father to Jolyne as he brings her with him at start of part 4. Dawww.
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