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.
One of the most notable things regarding this screening was that the version of the film that viewers 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.
Joint Press Conference
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, the 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. This event was attended by the press, as well as 50 members of the general public that were chosen by lottery.
Video footage of this event has been recovered, allowing us to see the interviews with the speakers, as well as the teaser trailer being shown for the first time.
JoJo's Bizarre Film Festival
On February 24th, 2007, the JoJo fan group Passione Tokyo hosted an event for fans of the series to gather and partake in a series of activities, one of which including going to a "sponsored" screening of the film. Interestingly, the head of the group, DOR, encouraged audience members to shout lines from the manga that were cut from the film.
