Jonathan Joestar
Also known as: JoJo, Jonathan
Jonathan Joestar is the first JoJo and the protagonist of Phantom Blood, the opening arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. A 19th-century English nobleman with prodigious Ripple talent, his lifelong rivalry with the vampiric Dio Brando ends in a tragic transatlantic battle that scatters the Joestar bloodline forward across the next eight Parts of the saga.
Story
Phantom Blood
Part 1 · 1880–1889Born in 1868 to George Joestar I in northern England, Jonathan loses his mother Mary in a carriage accident as an infant. His father, mistakenly believing he owes a life-debt to the bandit Dario Brando, agrees to take in Dario's son Dio Brando when the man dies in 1881 — a decision that triggers everything that follows.
Dio's arrival into Jonathan's life is calculated cruelty rather than companionship. He burns Jonathan's dog Danny alive, kisses Erina Pendleton against her will to humiliate Jonathan, and orchestrates a slow poisoning of George Joestar across the back half of the 1880s. Jonathan's first major character beat lands in their childhood: bloodied and outmatched by Dio's street-tested fists, he refuses to stay down — and through sheer obstinacy ends up the more popular boy in the village.
By 1888 Jonathan is studying archaeology at the University of London. He recognises a Mesoamerican stone artefact in the family attic as the cause of his father's mysterious decline and confronts Dio. In their final brawl Dio dons the Stone Mask, transforms into a vampire, and burns the Joestar mansion to the ground; George dies. Jonathan survives the fire with the help of Robert E. O. Speedwagon, a former Ogre Street thug who will follow him for the rest of his short life.
Will Anthonio Zeppeli appears next — a master of Sendō Ripple seeking the heir fated to destroy the Stone Mask. Over a compressed seven weeks of training, Jonathan learns to channel sunlight-frequency energy through his breath. He defeats the undead knights Tarkus and Bruford at Windknight's Lot, inherits Zeppeli's Ripple essence when the mentor dies in his arms, and finally severs Dio's head at the Windknight's Lot manor.
The SS Burnoria
Part 1 · February 1889Believing Dio dead, Jonathan marries Erina Pendleton and boards the SS Burnoria for an American honeymoon. Dio's preserved head, smuggled aboard inside a coffin, ambushes him mid-voyage and transplants itself onto his body. In his dying moments Jonathan locks the engine room and sinks the ship rather than let Dio escape with his body intact.
Erina escapes inside the very coffin Dio had intended to hide in, carrying with her a baby girl orphaned by Dio's attack — that child grows up to be Lisa Lisa, the future Hamon master of Part 2. The Joestar bloodline survives. Jonathan dies at twenty, the shortest-lived JoJo of the entire saga.
Stardust Crusaders cameo
Part 3Jonathan's body resurfaces in 1983, when Joseph Joestar's Stand stigma first awakens. The DIO of Part 3 is, in canon, Dio Brando's brain riding Jonathan's body — which makes Jotaro's 1989 final battle a Joestar family reunion as much as a personal vendetta. After DIO's death the body is later recovered by Enrico Pucci in Part 6 and becomes the substrate for Made in Heaven's universe-reset. The first JoJo never speaks in Parts 3 or 6, but his body remains a load-bearing element across two more arcs of the saga.
Powers & Abilities
Sendō Ripple
HamonThe Ripple — known in-universe as Sendō — is a martial-arts technique that generates sunlight-frequency energy through controlled breathing. It is the only conventional weapon effective against the Stone Mask's vampires and their zombie thralls in Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency.
Jonathan develops one of the most powerful Ripple signatures in the series despite less than two months of formal training. Part of this is Zeppeli's dying transfer of his own Ripple essence; part is Jonathan's exceptional lung capacity and physical conditioning, which the manga emphasises through repeated training montages.
- Sunlight Yellow Overdrive
- Jonathan's apex technique — a barrage of Ripple-charged punches that delivers continuous sunlight energy into a vampire's anatomy. The Overdrive defeats Dio's first form at Windknight's Lot.
- Zoom Punch
- A joint-dislocating strike that extends the reach of the punch by several feet, used to bypass a vampire's defensive range.
- Sendō Wave Kick
- A Ripple-charged side kick. Used early in training to demonstrate how the technique scales beyond fist-based attacks.
Star Platinum (posthumous echo)
StandJonathan never manifests a Stand in his own right; the Stand era begins generations later. However, Araki has retroactively framed Jotaro's Star Platinum as a metaphysical echo of the bond between the original Joestar and his usurper. When Star Platinum: The World learns to stop time in 1989, it inherits the timestop ability from DIO's THE WORLD — itself born from Dio's brain on Jonathan's body — closing a loop that runs from Part 1 Chapter 1 to the last chapter of Part 3.
Relationships
Family
Allies
Cultural Impact
The First JoJo
Jonathan establishes the Joestar template that every subsequent JoJo inherits in some form: the broad-chested, noble protagonist who carries a star-shaped birthmark on the left shoulder and answers to a doubled-syllable nickname. Joseph (Part 2), Jotaro (Part 3), Josuke (Part 4), Giorno (Part 5), Jolyne (Part 6), Johnny (Part 7), Josuke 8 (Part 8) and Jodio (Part 9) all share at least one of these traits, even when the rest is inverted or interrogated.
Phantom Blood was the lowest-selling Part of the original Shōnen Jump run. In retrospective interviews Araki has discussed what he learned from Jonathan's structural simplicity — leading directly to the trickster Joseph of Part 2 and to the more flawed JoJos of every following arc. Without Jonathan's earnest template the rest of the series would have lacked a tonal baseline to riff on.
The Joestar Birthmark
The five-pointed star on Jonathan's left shoulder is the family signature carried by every blood descendant — and, in a story twist that pays off in Part 3, by the resurrected DIO who wears Jonathan's body. The birthmark functions as a visual shorthand for the saga's central conceit: that fate, vengeance and identity travel down a bloodline like a memory the body itself refuses to forget.
Appearances
- Manga debut
- Chapter 1 (1986)
- Manga final
- Chapter 44
- Anime debut
- Episode 1 (2012)
- Anime episodes
- Episodes 1-9
Trivia
- The name Jonathan carries the Hebrew meaning gift of God; Joestar was constructed by Araki to read as Joe + Star, anchoring the family birthmark motif from Chapter 1.
- Jonathan is the shortest-lived JoJo, dying at 20. Every subsequent JoJo lives past 25; Joseph reaches his late 80s as the franchise's longest-lived protagonist.
- His Japanese anime voice actor Tarusuke Shingaki later returned to play Father Pucci in Stone Ocean — placing the original JoJo's voice on the back of Jonathan's posthumous antagonist.
- Phantom Blood's 2007 anime film adaptation was poorly received and is widely reported to have been pulled from distribution at Araki's request, leaving David Production's 2012 series as the canonical anime entry for Part 1.
- Jonathan's 195 cm height and 105 kg weight make him physically the largest male JoJo. Only Steel Ball Run's Funny Valentine, a non-JoJo Joestar by marriage, is comparably built among major characters in the bloodline.
- The DIO of Stardust Crusaders is canonically Dio Brando's brain on Jonathan Joestar's body — meaning Jotaro's victory over DIO in 1989 doubles as the first Joestar revenge from beyond the grave.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Jonathan Joestar?
Jonathan Joestar is the first JoJo and the protagonist of Phantom Blood, the opening arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (serialised in Shōnen Jump from 1986). He is an English noble who masters the Sendō Ripple — a martial-arts breathing technique — to confront the vampiric Dio Brando.
Is Jonathan Joestar a Stand user?
No. Jonathan never manifests a Stand during his lifetime. The Stand phenomenon doesn't surface in the JoJo universe until 1983 in Part 3, nearly a century after his death. Jonathan instead uses Sendō Ripple (Hamon), the breathing-based martial art unique to Parts 1 and 2.
How does Jonathan Joestar die?
Jonathan dies on the SS Burnoria honeymoon voyage in February 1889. Dio's preserved head, smuggled aboard in a coffin, ambushes him and transplants itself onto his body. In his last moments Jonathan jams the ship's engines and sinks the vessel with him aboard, sending Erina away in a lifeboat with the baby Lisa Lisa.
What happens to Jonathan Joestar's body?
Dio's brain on Jonathan's neck survives at the bottom of the Atlantic for nearly a century before resurfacing as DIO in 1983. After DIO's death in 1989 the body is later recovered by Father Pucci in Stone Ocean (Part 6), where it becomes the substrate for the Made in Heaven universe-reset attempt.
Why is Jonathan called JoJo?
The nickname JoJo originated with Robert E. O. Speedwagon, who coined it from the doubled syllable of Jonathan Joestar's first and family names. The pattern stuck — every protagonist in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has had a JoJo-derivable name since, and Jonathan's star birthmark became the shared visual identifier of the bloodline.
Which Part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is Jonathan in?
Jonathan is the protagonist of Part 1, Phantom Blood, which runs across 44 manga chapters and 9 anime episodes. His body re-appears in Part 3 (Stardust Crusaders) as the host of DIO and in Part 6 (Stone Ocean) as the vessel for Made in Heaven, but he never speaks again after his death in 1889.
