JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Part 1--Phantom Blood, Vol. 3

Overview

The third volume closes out the opening chapter of Hirohiko Araki's long-running saga, bringing the rivalry between Jonathan Joestar and his adopted brother-turned-vampire Dio Brando to its climax. Jonathan, trained in the mystical art of Hamon by his mentor Will Anthonio Zeppeli, closes in on Dio, but Dio does not fight alone. A succession of monstrous, loyal servants stand between the two men, and each confrontation costs Jonathan and Zeppeli more than the last.

Araki structures the volume as a gauntlet, escalating from one grotesque adversary to the next until the underlying cost of the fight becomes as important as its outcome. The book leans into gothic horror imagery and stylized, larger-than-life combat, hallmarks that would come to define the series across its many subsequent parts.

As the arc nears its end, the story shifts its focus from spectacle to sacrifice, asking what victory demands of the people who pursue it.

A Gothic Coming-of-Age Story

Though often remembered for its exaggerated poses and over-the-top fight choreography, Phantom Blood is fundamentally a story about inheritance, both physical and moral. Jonathan's arc is one of a sheltered young aristocrat forced to become a warrior through loss and mentorship, and this volume marks the point where that transformation is tested against its highest stakes. Zeppeli's role as teacher, and the way his guidance shapes the final battles, ties the volume to a long literary tradition of mentor figures whose lessons outlast their presence in the story.

The book also cements the series' signature blend of European gothic horror with shonen adventure serialization, a hybrid that helped distinguish Araki's work from contemporaries and established a visual and narrative template that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure would continue to build on for decades. Within Araki's broader body of work, this volume represents the hinge point where the saga's mythology, of stands, bloodlines, and generational conflict, begins to take shape.

Why JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1--Phantom Blood, Vol. 3 Has Been Challenged

The battles that fill this volume are drawn with a level of violence and bodily harm typical of horror-inflected action manga: characters are gravely wounded, killed, or transformed in service of the plot's escalating threat. Reviewers and challengers who have objected to the book point to this graphic combat, along with the story's monstrous, sometimes visceral character designs, as unsuitable for younger or more casual readers browsing library shelves. The concern generally centers less on any single scene than on the sustained intensity of violence across the volume, framed as inappropriate for the age groups likely to encounter it in a school or youth library setting. In the catalog tracked here, that objection has resulted in a challenge recorded in one state and one school district.