The Race Is On: Steel Ball Run Enters the Next Stage of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Steel Ball Run: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure promotional artwork.

There are anime premieres that introduce a story, and then there are premieres that feel like somebody just opened a door.

The 47-minute 1st STAGE of Steel Ball Run felt much more like the latter.

After years of waiting for Hirohiko Araki’s seventh JoJo story to make the transition from manga to animation, we finally got Johnny Joestar, Gyro Zeppeli, Diego Brando, thousands of horses and riders, and an audacious cross-country race through 1890 America.

It was enough to establish the world.

It was nowhere near enough JoJo.

And I mean that as a compliment.

First, A Quick Ride Back Through the 1st STAGE

Steel Ball Run begins with an almost absurd proposition: competitors from around the world are assembling in San Diego for a horseback race across the United States. Thousands enter. The prize is enormous. The distance is intimidating.

But almost immediately, the race itself becomes only part of what we are watching.

At the center of everything is Johnny Joestar, a former champion jockey who lost the use of his legs and now watches the world from horseback and wheelchair with the knowledge that his former life has disappeared.

Then he sees Gyro Zeppeli.

Gyro isn’t merely another racer. He carries a pair of steel balls and demonstrates a strange rotational technique called the Spin. When Johnny comes into contact with that power, something happens that he cannot ignore.

For a moment, Johnny’s body responds.

That possibility becomes more important to him than the money. Johnny needs to understand what Gyro did, and the only practical way to stay close enough to learn the answer is to enter the race himself.

That simple motivation gives the 1st STAGE its emotional center. Johnny isn’t chasing Gyro because destiny told him to save the world. He follows because Gyro may possess knowledge capable of changing Johnny’s world.

Then Somebody Fires the Starting Gun

Once the race begins, Steel Ball Run gets to show off the scale of its premise.

Riders explode across the landscape. Strategies begin developing almost immediately. Gyro demonstrates that his confidence isn’t simply swagger, while Johnny’s background as a jockey gives him knowledge that makes him far more than an observer following the mysterious man with the steel balls.

And surrounding them are competitors who already feel like they could only exist inside JoJo.

There’s Diego Brando, an elite British jockey whose name alone should make longtime fans sit forward in their seats. There’s Sandman, who intends to cross the country on foot. And there’s Pocoloco, whose extraordinary run of good fortune makes him immediately impossible to overlook.

The first leg establishes an important point: Johnny and Gyro may be our focus, but the Steel Ball Run isn’t populated with background characters waiting politely for them to finish their story.

Everybody is racing for something.

Watch the 1st STAGE Trailer

The 1st STAGE Was Really the Invitation

As a fan, what I appreciated most about the opening wasn’t simply finally seeing these characters animated. It was the restraint.

Steel Ball Run doesn’t immediately explain everything.

We learn enough about the Spin to become curious about it. We learn enough about Johnny to understand why he desperately wants that knowledge. We see enough of Gyro to realize that there is much more behind the man’s jokes, bravado and steel balls than he is currently telling Johnny.

And then there’s the race itself.

The first episode essentially says: here are the horses, here are the riders, here are a few rules, and here is an entire continent.

Go.

For JoJo, that’s an incredible playground.

Now Steel Ball Run Gets Bizarre

The next leg is where the premise begins changing.

Johnny and Gyro now face a roughly 750-mile desert crossing. The physical challenge alone would be enough: heat, distance, navigation, horses pushed toward their limits and competitors willing to do practically anything to remain in contention.

But this is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

There is something in the desert.

The area is known as the Devil’s Palm, and the official previews make it clear that the Steel Ball Run is moving beyond the boundaries of an extremely dangerous sporting competition. Strange incidents begin occurring. Murder enters the equation. Hidden motives start intersecting with the race.

Johnny and Gyro are about to discover that crossing America may be only the surface of what they have gotten themselves involved in.

Watch the 2nd STAGE Official Trailer

Three Names Anime-Only Fans Should Know

Netflix and the official JoJo campaign have revealed three major characters entering the picture as the next stages unfold: Mountain Tim, Hot Pants and Funny Valentine.

I’m deliberately not going much farther than that.

Part of what makes Steel Ball Run so much fun is discovering what people actually represent after Araki introduces them. Giving away their eventual importance would rob anime-only viewers of some of the best parts of the ride.

And That’s Exactly Where I Want the Anime to Stop Explaining

One of the easiest ways to ruin Steel Ball Run for somebody who hasn’t read the manga would be to explain why all of this matters.

Don’t.

The questions are part of the experience.

What exactly is happening in the Devil’s Palm? Why is the Spin capable of affecting Johnny? Why are people surrounding this race operating with agendas that seem to have very little to do with prize money? What does the President of the United States have to do with any of this?

Those questions are where I want an anime-only viewer to be right now.

Why Steel Ball Run Occupies Such an Interesting Place in JoJo

For anyone coming directly from Stone Ocean, Steel Ball Run represents a major transition.

This isn’t simply the next adventure chronologically following Jolyne Cujoh.

Araki uses Steel Ball Run to enter a new continuity, which gives him the freedom to take familiar names, visual ideas and pieces of JoJo history and reinterpret them.

That’s why seeing the names Joestar, Zeppeli and Brando together again feels simultaneously familiar and completely new.

Longtime viewers know those names carry history.

But that history no longer guarantees that we know what’s coming.

That makes Part 7 an unusual entry point in the franchise: it rewards people who know JoJo while establishing a world whose central story doesn’t require Johnny to retrace the lives of Jonathan, Joseph, Jotaro, Josuke, Giorno or Jolyne.

JoJo Has Always Survived By Reinventing JoJo

That reinvention may be the franchise’s greatest strength.

Think about how strange its progression already is.

JoJo has been gothic horror, globe-spanning adventure, supernatural small-town mystery, gangster saga and prison story. Its heroes have fought vampires, serial killers, assassins and increasingly unexplainable manifestations of human ability.

Now we’re watching a Western.

Not a Western-inspired episode.

A full cross-country horseback epic set in nineteenth-century America.

And somehow the minute Gyro Zeppeli starts spinning a steel ball, you know exactly what franchise you’re watching.

The Relationship I’m Most Interested in Isn’t a Stand Battle

As spectacular as the supernatural elements may become, the thing I’m most anxious to watch develop is Johnny and Gyro.

Their relationship starts from an unusual place.

Johnny needs something from Gyro.

Gyro doesn’t particularly need Johnny.

Yet the race forces them into each other’s orbit, and both men possess skills the other can respect. Johnny understands horses and racing at an elite level. Gyro possesses the Spin and a purpose he hasn’t fully revealed.

That gives their partnership room to grow rather than simply declaring them friends because the story needs two protagonists.

If the anime gives that relationship the time it deserves, the journey between stages may become every bit as important as the battles waiting inside them.

The Animation Has a Massive Job Ahead

There is also a technical reason I’ve been anxious to see Steel Ball Run animated.

Horses.

Lots of horses.

The race can’t simply function as a backdrop. Riders have to feel fast. Distances have to feel enormous. Horses need weight. Terrain needs to matter. Exhaustion needs to matter.

And then all of that has to coexist with the visual insanity audiences expect from JoJo.

David Production has the additional challenge of translating Araki’s increasingly elaborate Part 7 artwork into movement while preserving the distinctive visual identity established across the earlier anime adaptations.

The 1st STAGE gave us the first real test.

Now the desert gives the production team considerably more room to show what this version of JoJo can become.

JoJo Fridays Are Back

There may be one more reason this next stretch feels particularly exciting.

We get to watch it weekly.

The 2nd and 3rd STAGES are being released across eleven episodes, with a new installment arriving each Friday.

That’s how I want to experience this story.

JoJo benefits from having a little space between episodes. It’s a series built for the conversation that happens after the credits: trying to understand an ability, debating what a character is really doing, laughing about something ridiculous Gyro said and wondering what Araki could possibly introduce next.

Instead of consuming the entire race over a weekend, we get to travel with it.

Friday by Friday.

Now I Want to See How Far This Ride Goes

The 1st STAGE did what it needed to do.

It introduced Johnny. It introduced Gyro. It put Diego on horseback. It established the scale of the Steel Ball Run and demonstrated enough of the Spin to make Johnny — and the audience — want answers.

Most importantly, it got everyone across the starting line.

Now comes the part I’ve been waiting for.

I want to see Johnny and Gyro’s partnership develop. I want to see how this anime handles the increasingly strange mechanics of this world. I want to see the Devil’s Palm. I want to understand the competitors who are clearly racing for something besides money.

And yes, I want to see the Stands.

But more than anything, I want to watch the moment Steel Ball Run stops feeling like the beginning of another JoJo adventure and starts establishing an identity completely its own.

The 1st STAGE introduced the race.

Now the bizarre adventure begins.