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A stunningly beautiful piece of work.
Many people unfortunately miss this movie and start with the series straightaway which imo makes the series appear overwhelmingly dense. I'd advise everyone to please start with this movie. It's only 1 hr long but it's a spectacular entry point into the series. You can go in blind and enjoy it for what it is but it also does a wonderful job of establishing the tones and conflicts of the series and genuinely feels like the beginning of a masterful story. The only little detail I felt could have been better was the political ... aspect - both the early dialogue between the Fleet Admiral and the Noble as well as the many machinations of the F.A. felt much too open and direct, could definitely have used a little subtlety here and there. However everything else was top-notch.

I have a simple heuristic regarding JoJo - a good part is followed by a bad part. Considering how much I liked Part 4 (my favourite, just above Battle Tendency), I had braced myself, but this one still fell flat. In my review of Part 4, I said how a simple change of genre and deletion of the "save-the-world" trope fixed everything that was wrong with Part 3 for me. That was a very creative solution but also a roundabout way of going around things. In Part 5, Araki is more direct because this is a very simple rehash of Part 3. Now, I think ... this is genuinely a much better version all things considered but it still isn't good enough for me.
Primarily, I did not like the characters. First, the design just didn't work for me and as the series went on, I could not get invested in any of them which is a shame because quite a few of them actually got full character arcs (a rarity with Araki). Note that the design here is much different from previous JoJo parts, Part 4 seems to be somewhere in between the art style of 1-3 and 5-?. I liked the previous art style better and I'm sad that Araki does not draw the poses with the same flamboyance and frequency anymore (peaked in Part 2). On top of that, the character designs here come across as plain weird to me, I cannot take a stupid-looking character seriously. Can we stop with the open chest thingy please? One of the reasons I'm still looking forward to Part 6 despite vaguely knowing its negative perception is because
a) The mc is a girl so goodbye open chest thingy
b) The character designs overall look much better - much less weird while still being trademark JoJo level wacky
Secondly, the protagonist Gio was the plainest JoJo we've had since Jonathan. It's incredible how he has Dio's blood but that part of him is never explored. Sticking to remnants of previous parts that are left hanging - where did Kouichi go? It's difficult to see how he would have fit into the whole mafia business but then why have him here at all? It just reeks of Araki wanting some connections to previous parts in what is a pretty blatant spin-off. The villain was good, at least the whole multiple-personality business was.
Lastly, the final fight was not good. Final fights have been the high points of the previous parts but here it fell flat for me.

What's truly bizarre about JoJo is how a bad part is followed by a good part, but the good part is actually just the bad part done right. Part 2 was the correct implementation of the ideas introduced in Part 1 (which was poor) but it is followed by Part 3 which might as well be an entirely new series.
Anyway, my complaints about Part 3 were about its lack of tension and any sense of progress. Araki takes the same formula of Part 3 but makes it work by ditching the overarching "save the world" plot in favour of a slice-of-life packaging and it just...works.
Kira ... is also a quality villain with the ingredients to be great but unfortunately his character was not properly explored (like many cool aspects in the JoJo series).

Not a fan of this at all. The reason why the rating is not any lower is only because of the final 2 fights which were great but everything else sucked. The Around the World in 80 Days is a cool concept but the formula is so repetitive that you actually forget about the globetrotting. Some of the stuff that I thought was particularly poor were:
1) No tension. It's the story of a Jotaro and his grandfather (Joesph from part 2) in a race against time to save Holly, Jotaro's mother. The idea is emotional but the story lacks any tension whatsoever.
2) Stand of the ... week concept. Here's the formula: Get to a new place -> Meet an enemy stand -> Fight and defeat him -> Move to a new place and repeat
The worst part for me is that in spite of the numerous battles there is neither any character development nor does any character get stronger, learn new stuff like how the mc in the previous 2 parts learned Hammon through fighting

It is what it needs to be. Yes, the plot and narrative are simple, but it's also only meant to be a prologue. The character of Dio still comes through unbelievably well. I think people should do their research on what sort of stories were in fashion when Part 1 was in publishing before they form an opinion. It's the same reason why you cannot compare Dragonball to your big 3, they simply belong in different eras and Part 1 definitely has a closer belonging to the DB era.

Plot: Predictable
Characters: Dio is a class apart, Jonathan is an archetype but that is also the author's ... intention
Art: The most unique art in shonen manga? I think yes