The Joestar Bloodline: Nine Generations of JoJo
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure follows the Joestar family across generations, each protagonist a "JoJo" marked by a star-shaped birthmark and an unbreakable will. Understanding the bloodline — and its eternal rivalry with the Brando and Kira lines — is the key to understanding the whole saga.
What Makes a JoJo
Every protagonist of the series is a member of the Joestar family whose name can be shortened to the nickname "JoJo" — Jonathan Joestar, Joseph Joestar, Jotaro Kujo, Josuke Higashikata, Giorno Giovanna, Jolyne Cujoh, Johnny Joestar, and the Josuke of JoJolion. Most bear a star-shaped birthmark on the left shoulder, a physical mark of the bloodline.
More than the birthmark, what unites the Joestars is their spirit: a stubborn courage, a strong sense of justice, and the family’s signature battle cry and gestures. This inherited resolve is the real engine of the series, passed down even as the powers change from Hamon to Stands to the Spin.
The First Generations: Hamon Era
Jonathan Joestar begins the saga in Phantom Blood as a Victorian gentleman who masters Hamon to stop his adopted brother Dio Brando, who becomes a vampire using the Stone Mask. Their conflict ends in tragedy but seeds a rivalry that spans a century.
Joseph Joestar, Jonathan’s grandson, headlines Battle Tendency as a brash trickster who uses Hamon and cunning to defeat the ancient Pillar Men. Joseph survives into later Parts, becoming a beloved recurring figure and the bridge between the Hamon era and the Stand era.
The Stand Era: Parts 3 to 6
Jotaro Kujo, Joseph’s grandson, leads Stardust Crusaders on a journey to Egypt to defeat the revived DIO, wielding the time-stopping Stand Star Platinum. His victory frees the family from Dio’s century-long curse — or so it seems.
The Stand era continues with Josuke Higashikata in Diamond is Unbreakable, Giorno Giovanna — Dio’s own son who inherits the Joestar spirit — in Golden Wind, and Jolyne Cujoh, Jotaro’s daughter, in Stone Ocean. DIO’s influence lingers to the very end of this continuity through his follower Enrico Pucci.
The New Universe: Parts 7 Onward
Steel Ball Run reboots the timeline into a new universe. Johnny Joestar is a paralysed ex-jockey who joins the Steel Ball Run race across America and learns the Spin from Gyro Zeppeli, awakening the Stand Tusk. His rival is Funny Valentine, a president wielding the reality-warping D4C.
JoJolion and The JOJOLands continue this reborn continuity in the town of Morioh and the islands of Hawaii, following new Higashikata and Joestar heirs. The bloodline endures, its rivalry with the Brando and Kira families echoing across every version of the world.
The Rival Lines
The Joestars’ great rival is the Brando line. Dio Brando and his alternate-universe counterpart Diego Brando oppose the family across multiple Parts, and Dio’s The World mirrors Jotaro’s Star Platinum almost exactly — a sign of how tightly the two lines are bound.
Later Parts introduce the Kira and Higashikata names as recurring threads. Yoshikage Kira haunts both Diamond is Unbreakable and JoJolion, showing that in JoJo, family names carry weight across generations and even across rewritten universes.