DISCLAIMER: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a currently ongoing series with (at the moment of writing), 7 complete parts and one ongoing one. It's important to first make the distinction that this is NOT one ongoing story split into parts, but rather 8 stories in the same universe following the Joestar bloodline, that share similar elements, plot points, and even motivations in some cases.
Due to that, this and my other JoJo reviews will follow an unique JoJo rating system, since in my opinion it cannot be easily compared to other manga, done in a beginner-friendly way so as to illustrate whether or not it is worth it to get invested in the series, and how it compares to other parts of it.
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Stardust Crusaders is THE most known JoJo part, and honestly, that's not because of the story.
This is also the first real "adventure" in the JoJo series, as the characters have to travel to Egypt in order to stop Dio, who yes, is still alive, somehow, and still powerful.
It's one of the first manga to create what is now generic shonen story beats, à la Monster of the Week format, and the progress feels similar to moving in a board game.

Beat a stand user -> Move a few spots -> Beat another stand user -> Move a few spots

And so on until they reach Dio. It can get tiring very fast if you're not invested in the characters or the fights, which are 90% of it. And speaking of fights...

Stardust Crusaders introduces the concept of stands, a manifestation of the user's psyche as what is essentially a punching ghost with an added ability. Magician Red punches and has fire, Emerald Splash punches and shoots green energy, and so on.
The meat of Stardust is watching how the main cast use their stand abilities to defeat other stand users, and unfortunately since this is the first time the concept was used, Araki was still trying to figure out what to do with them, and as a result, some of the fights are good, a lot of the fights are boring and end up being "who can punch first" or "who can punch harder".


Most of the stand abilities aren't too crazy, but some are really annoying and sometimes seem to make no sense at all, at which point they get punched into oblivion, usually by Jotaro and his Star Platinum.
But most infuriatingly, this is the start of a meme known as "Araki Forgot", in which Araki simply forgot that some stands can do certain things, or forgot previously established plot points, the most notable one being that in Phantom Blood, Dio was somewhere. Now he says he was ACTUALLY somewhere else, and this really only serves to bring him back as a villain, albeit much less charismatic, and without much screen time outside of the last few volumes.


The art is a gigantic step up from Phantom Blood, and one of the most iconic art styles in manga, ever. It's still frequently referenced in anime, 30 YEARS LATER, and for very good reason. Nothing ever looks stale or confusing, and the stand designs are all mostly awesome to look at.
The "stand user of the week" villains have mostly unique designs, which is really hard to accomplish for a long series like this (larger than previous parts), but I can't say the same for their personality.

The main cast is alright. Jotaro is closer to Kenshiro than Jonathan and Joseph were, with his stoic attitude and constant punching of things via his Star Platinum, but without any of their emotions other than "I'm angry". The rest of the main cast is okay, even if underused, which is reminiscent of how Z fighters would lose until Goku came in to defeat the villain.
It also features an old Joseph Joestar, which is still a trickster but VASTLY underused.

The main villain is once again, Dio Brando, this time not only is he a charismatic vampire, he's also a charismatic vampire with a STAND. Chances are you already know what it does, but I won't spoil it if you don't. The final fight with him is similarly iconic and still referenced to this day, in multiple other manga and anime, again, for good reason. You probably already know why and you probably already saw dialogue of it somewhere.



So if you like shonen battle manga and you don't mind a seemingly emotionless protagonist that only wants to punch things with his punching ghost as hard as he can, this is a pretty solid read. You might get bored around the halfway point but it's thankfully not a manga with a lot of dialogue, so you can still just enjoy the awesome fighting. And if you liked this, then you'll probably like the following parts.

It's a very iconic entry into the shonen genre, but if you're already used to the genre, you will probably notice 90% of the most common tropes might affect your enjoyment of this manga, which is due to the fact that it largely STARTED those tropes. So whether you can accept that or not vary from person to person, but I would say it's at least worth a try.