Stardust Crusaders

Stardust Crusaders (スターダストクルセイダース) is the third part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from March 1989 to April 1992. The arc is preceded by Battle Tendency and spans 152 chapters.

Summary
From 1988 to 1989, the story follows Jotaro Kujo and his friends as they journey from Tokyo to Cairo, Egypt, to save the life of his mother, Holy Kujo, by defeating his family's resurrected archenemy, DIO.

Jotaro travels with his grandfather, Joseph Joestar, as well as Muhammad Avdol, Noriaki Kakyoin, Jean Pierre Polnareff, and Iggy. The group fights several of DIO's minions and Stand users along the way.

Publication
Volumes are published in English by VIZ Media, and in Italian by.

English Language Edition
Stardust Crusaders was the first part to be officially released in English. The series is edited by Jason Thompson, author of .

Some names were altered for the English release, presumably for copyright reasons. Additionally, the character Devo was changed entirely.

Minor edits were made to artwork where certain scenes of animal violence were redrawn by Hirohiko Araki for the English release. Japanese volume 15 (English volume 3) featured a single panel of a dog being decapitated which was redrawn from an alternate angle, and Japanese volume 18 (English volume 6) has several redrawn panels where a mutilated dog was changed into a large rat.

Due to a controversy regarding one scene involving DIO apparently reading the in the OVA, Viz Media and Shueisha paused publication for a year, even though the manga did not feature that specific scene. However, Shueisha had Araki (or his assistants) redraw scenes that depicted characters fighting on top of or destroying buildings resembling. Viz resumed publication on April 7, 2009, with Volume 11.

Animation

 * The official TV anime began airing in Japan on April 4, 2014.
 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (OVA), produced by Studio APPP; 1993 and 2001

Video Games

 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Super Famicom), 1993
 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future; Capcom, 1998
 * The cast of Stardust Crusaders has the highest representation in All Star Battle.
 * The Stardust Crusaders plays a major part in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven story mode.

Other

 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Novel)
 *  JoJo's Bizarre Adventure' s Drama CD

Trivia

 * This story was initially titled "Dai San Bu Kūjō Jōtarō: Mirai e no Isan" / "第三部 空条承太郎 ―未来への遺産" / (lit.) "Part 3 Kūjō Jōtarō: Heritage for the Future".
 * Stardust Crusaders contains the most popularly known characters and episodes of the series; introducing  JoJo' s distinctive Stand phenomenon, and the emblematic protagonist Jotaro Kujo.
 * Many characters were not named until the release of additional materials like the artbooks.
 * Araki describes the basis for Part 3 as like a board game, traveling between a series of stops; and further inspiration from the film Around the World in 80 Days.
 * While he began plotting for this part, Araki first pitched it as a modern retelling of Dracula. There was only one person in the room who thought it was a good idea; the rest were utterly confused. His editors told him to have at least one Japanese character/story arc prior to this part, as they felt the story had too many foreign characters and settings for the comic's target audience.
 * Part 3 is the last part to feature any vampires or the Ripple ability.