Dio Brando
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| Dio Brando | |
| (ディオ・ブランドー) | |
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| Namesake | Ronnie James Dio (first name) Marlon Brando (last name) |
|---|---|
| Debut | Vol. 1, Chapter 1. The Coming of Dio |
| Final Appearance | Vol. 28, Chapter 264. Dio's World part 18 |
| Seiyū | Nobuo Tanaka |
| Voice actor(s) | Andrew Chaikin |
| Profile | |
| Age | 122 (Part 3), 21 (Part 1) |
| Date of birth | 1867 |
| Date of Death | 1987 |
| Blood type | ??? |
| Eye color | Red |
| Hair color | Blond |
| Height | ??? cm |
| Weight | ??? kg |
| Stand | The World
(ザ・ワールド za wārudo) |
| Relatives |
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| Techniques |
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Dio Brando is a character from the anime and manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure who was born in England in the 19th century. He is the most popular villain in the JoJo universe.
Contents |
[edit] Appearances
Dio has approximately four known appearances.
- Young form - His appearance in the 1st chapter. He has blond hair and a handsome face. (Most fans who first see him might mistake him to be white hair, because of the lost details of black-and-white illustrations.)
- Shadow form - He does not have a visible face as an effect of the shadowy darkness of his mansion. He has white and flowing hair. He is topless, exposing Jonathan's muscular body (of which his head is sewn in place) and wears green pants with suspenders, gray clogs, black shiny cuffs on both wrists and heart-shaped knee guards. As of JoJo's Venture, his voice is also distorted (an effect created by the writers to add mystery). This form of Dio is also called "J'yaku no Kenshin Dio." (Evil Incarnation of Dio)
- Fuku form - Just like the Shadow form, only his face is seen, his hair is blond, wears a jacket with a tank-top underneath. He now also wears a heart-shaped hairband, and rings for his cuffs.
- Enraged/Bousou form - Dio transforming into his ultimate form, after sucking Joseph Joestar's blood. The description is like his fuku form minus the jacket and the heart-shaped hairband. He now sports a deranged and homicidal look and mannerisms, losing his cool touch, and his hair is now disheveled, mostly oriented upwards.
His Fuku and Bousou form are the most popular appearances of Dio.
[edit] Story
Dio is the son of Dario Brando, an alcoholic and abusive father. Back when the megalomaniacal villain was just a boy, he was brought into the Joestar household after the "mysterious" death of his father, as to repay the debt Jonathan's father owed Dio's father for saving his life. But Dio's personality now causes trouble to Jonathan, even to the point of killing his pet dog, and losing the favor of his father.
Initially, Dio is able earn the trust of the patriarch of the Joestar family through deceit, at Jonathan's expense. However, his plans of taking over the Joestar household got discovered by Jonathan, wherein it is discovered that Dio killed his own father, and will do the same for Jonathan's!
Determined not to be stopped, Dio wears the Stone Mask, and becomes a vampire, to become unstoppable. His seemingly supernatural abilities are explained as the exercise of full potential of human body. He is able to walk on walls, and regenerate his body faster than fire can consumes it. He is able to pressurize liquid in his eyeballs and then create small openings on pupils, eventually create two water jets powerful enough to kill. He is also able to vaporize his body fluid rapidly enough to freeze things he touches.
At the end of Series 1, Dio's body was destroyed, but his severed head managed to kill Jonathan Joestar and together they sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The anime series and video game begin 100 years later, in Series 3, when Dio has returned from the bottom of the sea and developed a Stand, giving him new abilities on top of his vampire powers. (At the bottom of the sea, Dio's severed head reattached itself to Jonathan Joestar's lifeless body, which is why Dio and the members of the Jojo family share the same star birthmark.) For most of Series 3, Dio is off screen and in the shadows, and the question of exactly what "The World" does is a mystery.
In Series 1, Dio's powers were more bio-organic and slimy, and indeed at the beginning of Series 3 he still has the touch -- the "evil implants" which brainwash Polnareff and Kakyoin are generated from Dio's hair when he does the move called "Charisma" in the video game. Eventually it is discovered that "The World" is a sort of brother power to "Star Platinum", which has great strength and can also stop time (although not for as great a duration), making Dio seem to be teleporting or moving at impossible speed. Dio's ambition is to rule the world and drink the blood of the Joestar lineage, which will help him to fully fuse with Jonathan Joestar's body. Once he does this, his powers will gradually increase, until he is able to stop time for as long as he likes.
In Volume 27, Dio mainly battles Kakyoin and Joseph. Kakyoin is able to use his stand make a barrier in which Dio can't escape from without getting hurt. Dio uses The World to stop time and destroy this barrier and punch him through the stomach. Before dying, Kakyoin learns of The World's time-stop power and uses his last strength to give Joseph a message. Joseph is able to tell Jotaro this before he also gets killed by Dio's Stand.
After a long and bloody battle between Dio and Jotaro, which lasted from the end of Volume 27 to the end of Volume 28, Jotaro is able to stop time just before Dio drops a steamroller on him, and wounds Dio's leg. Dio then squirts some out of his leg onto Jotaro's eyes. He then attempts to escape but to no avail. In the end, Jotaro lands a punch which connects with a kick from Dio, and Jotaro's hand breaks but Dio's upper body starts to crumble, and his head the only true part of him, explodes. Jotaro, and some doctors from Speedwagon Foundation, are able to do a blood transfusion between Joseph's body and Dio's bottom half of his body. The transfusion is able to revive Joseph. Not long after that, they lay his remains in the middle of the desert to evaporate with the rising sun.
In Part 6, it is revealed that his re-emergance was planned to create a perfect world when the moon reached a certain degrees and time. He stumbled upon Enrico Pucci not long before Part 3 and "healed" his disfigured foot for him. After piercing Pucci with a Stand arrow, the two spent considerable time together, plotting and scheming. He questioned Pucci's loyalty to him, wondering why he didn't use White Snake to remove The World from him. Pucci had explained that he loved Dio as he had loved God, and thus worshipped him too much to betray him. Ensuring that he wouldn't completely fade, he left one of his bones in Pucci's care. Dio's presence continues to haunt the series, emerging in flashbacks and his disfigured sons. His bone played a vital plot element for the first half of Part 6, an odd green baby inheriting the Stand that came from it.
[edit] Personality
His treacherous, sadistic nature may be partially explained by his abusive upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic father, whom he later killed. He is also ambitious, narcisstic, arrogant and megalomaniac. He will do anything to get what he wants, even if it means trampling people, like he did to Jonathan Joestar when they were young.
He is also said to be a womanizer, charming girls in the process, like Mariah, and the woman that would eventually bear him Giorno.
However, Dio is not all evil. He shows his good side to those that are good to him. He has shown favorable attitudes towards Enrico Pucci, who also showed loyalty in return.
Dio also seems to have a passion for reading, as he is found in the library of his Egypt mansion at times.
Unless provoked or deemed an obstacle, Dio will normally not attack anything or anybody. He will first try persuading people to work for him, then fight them, if they oppose.
[edit] Stand
The World, very similar to Jotaro's Star Platinum, this stand has phenomenal strength, senses and stamina - but faster and more accurate. It can also stop the time (for a longer duration as well); when time is frozen, Dio throws knives at the opponent. He also has at least a measure of Joseph's psychic abilities (specifically, the ability to create a vision on a photograph). World may originally have been the dormant Stand of Jonathan Joestar, which would explain why it has powers of two of the Stands of Jonathan's descendants.
It's implied in Part 6 that he wanted to use his stand to create a perfect world for himself and a handful of subordinates. He enlisted Enrico Pucci as his living "conscience", in case he would go crazy and be "off track".
[edit] In Videogames
[edit] JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Shadow Dio
Even without an active Stand, he can deal a lot of damage with full offensive attacks. He also has a reversal move that helps this playstyle to be more effective, which can be used either for offense or defense.
Throw Knives, while not too fast for up-close attacks, can push enemies further back. The angle of the knives can be varied, and he can throw knives twice.
His eyebeam projectile can be charged to an incredibly powerful and unblockable level.
His Stand attacks are good for surprises, and for juggling. Combined with his own attack, he deals a lot of damage in a short time, more so within The World, when he stops time.
[edit] JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Dio
In contrast to Jotaro, Dio is more effective with his Stand on. His Stand combos are good and effective at dealing large damage to the enemy in a short time. As such, Dio specializes in quick disposition of the enemy.
His Blazing Strikes can be manipulated to hit low, where the enemy must guard low. This makes his attacks unpredictable, keeping opponents on tiptoe. His eyebeams, now with different commands, are now completely unblockable, though the animation is notably slower.
His Road Roller, though weak in JoJo's Venture, now deals bigger damage in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. His Chi no Shoukan (Bloody Summoning) requires the enemy to be hit before he sucks their blood. The scene when he connects with the move is bloody, with a cutscreen of the enemy's face being punctured by Dio's fingers.
His main problem is that his super moves are not possible to be integrated into combos in such a way that they will chain together. However, his super moves have a degree of invincibility, which enables him to dominate in close-quarter battles, even though predictable. To be able to use him well, Dio players must have the reflexes to perform their super moves at the right moment.
His The World - Time Stop is deadly at 10 levels of power. He can deploy a lot of knives and perform Road Roller before the power gague goes below level 1. If the enemy is big in size, the more the enemy will take damage from the knives. It is a gamble though to successfully perform The World against a human player, but the damage it inflicts is worth the effort.
[edit] Trivia
- Dio means "God" in Italian.
- Dio sucks blood through tentacles in his fingers, and not through his mouth. Yet, he's illustrated with fangs, although they're never used.
- Dio used Jonathan's body for his own, when his body got burned. He did this by attacking Jonathan in the middle of the sea, sinking their vessel into the ocean. Moreover, he managed to survive with just his head because of his vampire powers from the stone mask.
- Dio's ability to use the Stand The World is because of him using Jonathan's body, which has the dormant powers of The World, only activated when Enya shot Dio with the Bow and Arrow artifact, which awakens dormant Stand abilities.
- Dio was able to impregnate four different women after his awakening, all bearing him sons. The most famous of his sons is Giorno.
[edit] In popular culture
- In the video game Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow , the villian known as "Zephyr" is clearly a homage to Dio. With the ability to toss sets of knives , as well as freezing time with a shout of Toki o Tomare!!!.
[edit] A note on WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The eerie cry of "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" (ウリイイイイイイ uriiiiii, pronounced ree and not like the bread) is a shriek given off by the vampires throughout JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. While all vampires in the series are prone to doing so, this noise is most commonly associated with Dio Brando.
A resurgence of popular interest in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure occurred when "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" began making the rounds as an Internet phenomenon, sparked by a Flash movie which features stick figures performing the signature attacks of five different characters. Dio Brando's features his use of The World (often pronounced intentionally as "Za Warudo", to mimic how Dio pronounces it in the manga) to freeze time, a barrage of throwing knives, and finishes with a steamroller dropping on his opponent, atop which he leans back and exclaims "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!". While amusing to fans of the series, this proved hilariously random to those unfamiliar with JoJo. This Internet phenomenon has spread mostly from the Futaba Channel imageboards.
It is of interesting note that a debate has sprung up regarding the proper spelling of "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY", specifically how many Y's it should contain. While many argue that the 20-Y "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" is the only "correct" spelling (assumedly since this is the amount of Y's featured in the Flash movie), those who have read JoJo's Bizarre Adventure will note that not only is there no set amount of letters in the manga, but "WRYYYYYY" is actually a less common portrayal of the vampire cry, which is spelled as "URIIII", "UREYYYYYYYY" or "URYYYYY" far more frequently. A six-Y "WRYYYYYY" returns over 10,000 entries on Google, which is far more than any other spelling. Strictly speaking, however, there is no one "correct" spelling as WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY is onomatopoetic and the amount of Y's should be used to show the length of the cry; however, it has been widely accepted that there should only be one W and one R.
The recent English publication of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (which begins at the start of the third arc) uses the spelling "WREEEEEEEEEE", which reinforces the proper pronunciation (at the cost of obscuring the connection to the Internet fad)
However, the game Jump Super Stars for Nintendo DS also features Dio Brando, and his 3-panel "Koma" (tile) in-game features the speech bubble "WRYYYYYYYYYY---っ".
In addition, it is interesting to note that in Part Five of the manga, during the chapters concerning Green Day and Oasis, Giorno Giovanna's stand (Giorno is the son of Dio Brando) Gold Experience also cries "WRYYYYYYY" with an indefinite amount of Y's (the Y's continue beyond the page). This implies that the battlecry may be hereditary, since Giorno is not a vampire.
| JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki | |
|---|---|
| Jojo universe | |
| Series: | Phantom Blood | Battle Tendency | Stardust Crusaders | Diamond is Unbreakable | Golden Wind | Stone Ocean | STEEL BALL RUN |
| Jojos: | Jonathan Joestar | Joseph Joestar | Jotaro Kujo | Josuke Higashikata | Giorno Giovanna | Jolyne Kujo | Johnny Joestar |
| Antagonists: | Dio Brando | Pillar Men | Kira Yoshikage | Diavolo | Enrico Pucci |
| Characters: | Minor Characters of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure |
| Miscellaneous: | Videogames | Muda (battle cry) | Stands | Manga chapters | Items | Timeline | Deaths |
