Special Events
From getting to see an early version of the movie prior to its theatrical release to premiering its teaser trailer at a event dedicated to the Phantom Blood PlayStation 2 video game, the film had multiple events that helped to promote it.
Joint Preview Event
In conjunction with 12 Shueisha magazines, there was a joint preview event held in Tokyo and Osaka on February 12th, 2007 that allowed attendees to watch the movie early and meet some of the cast. Around 560 people were chosen via lottery to attend this event, and potential attendees could register for this lottery by submitting an application ticket that could be found in the 12 magazines, which among them included Ultra Jump and Weekly Shonen Jump. The deadline to submit these application tickets was February 5th, 2007.
According to the film's official blog, Jun Itoda (Wang Chan) and Kazuhiro Ozawa (Dario Brando) took the stage as guest speakers.
From the viewer testimonies we found, there were at least two people that had recorded their experiences with this preview screening. One of the most notable things regarding this screening was that the version of the film that they watched appeared to be incomplete - there were multiple audio and visual errors, and the end of the film appeared as if it had stopped and burned up at the end.
PlayStation 2 Game Event
For JoJo's 20th anniversary, not only was the Phantom Blood film on its way, but Bandai Namco had produced a video game based on Phantom Blood for the PlayStation 2. Hosted on September 13th, 2006, film was also promoted here, with the guest speakers including Junichi Hayama (the film's director), Hikaru Midorikawa (Dio Brando), Jun Itoda (Wang Chan), Kazuhiro Ozawa (Dario Brando), Hirohiko Araki (author of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure), and the Editor-in-Chief of Ultra Jump at the time, Kensuke Ito.
While no video footage of this event has been found online, pictures show us that attendees got to play the game early, and even got to see the film's teaser trailer, giving people a look at the final film for the first time.
