JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run Is Gunning For an Anime, And It's the Part We've All Been Waiting For

2024 brought JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fans incredible news during the year's final inning, and it's incredibly exciting. Steel Ball Run is JoJo's seventh part, centering around a pan-American horse race sharing the same name. The JoJo anime's X announcement of JOJODAY, a JoJo fan event in Japan "connecting the anime's past and future", has made it all but certain that Steel Ball Run's adaptation is just around the corner.

Steel Ball Run has come to be called one of JoJo's best parts, for very good reason. Fans who have read the manga already know why: the part is massive in every sense, full of twists and turns that will throw off even the most diehard JoJo fans. It's also one of JoJo's storytelling pinnacles: it could easily be argued to be one of the most creative efforts on the part of mangaka Hirohiko Araki since the fourth part, Stardust Crusaders. Here's why JoJo fans can't wait for its adaptation.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Takes on a New Frontier in Steel Ball Run

Stone Ocean’s Ending Set the Stage for Jojo’s Best Part in Years

Steel Ball Run changed the game for JoJo, which is saying a lot considering the franchise is already renowned for constantly throwing fans off and keeping things fresh. There's a very strong argument to be made that the preceding part, Stone Ocean, was supposed to end with JoJo's previous protagonist Giorno Giovanna arriving to aid Jolyne, Jotaro, and the others in defeating Pucci. It goes without saying that this isn't what happened, in the end. Long story short: Araki felt that, mechanically and narratively, JoJo had reached its pinnacle with Pucci's stand, and he wanted to start over from scratch.

Steel Ball Run represents a work built upon a new frontier that Araki cobbled together for JoJo—a blank canvas that tantalizes with its danger as much as its possibility. It's fitting, then, that the part literally represents a frontier. Set at the turn of the 20th century, the part follows Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli as they compete in a cross-country horse race called Steel Ball Run. The race, hosted by an oil magnate and with a curious level of oversight by the President, starts in San Francisco and transverses the barely-charted frontier all across America before landing back in New York in the cradle of American familiarity.

This works as a metaphor, too. Starting with the familiar—for example, a protagonist named Johnny Joestar—Steel Ball Run crosses into the frontier, seemingly extracting new concepts from the salt of the earth, isolated and honed by the foundation JoJo's Bizarre Adventure laid in its original universe. Hamon is replaced by a new mechanic called Spin, with an unconventional mechanism at its core. A certain character whose name leads one to expect them to be a villain actually plays a far more complicated role.

The end result is a part that, like Araki wanted, feels astoundingly fresh and familiar at the same time. Once the part crosses the finish line, the big picture is that it feels unmistakably JoJo. Steel Ball Run exemplifies everything there is to love about the series.

Johnny and Gyro Are Highlights of the Entire Franchise

JOJO Doesn’t Have a Better Core Duo

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Johnny and Gyro, of course, play into that familiarity. Their alliance is supposed to parallel the former JoBro pairings of Jonathan and Will A. Zeppeli (and, less directly, Joseph and Caesar). Both as individuals and as a pair, the dynamic they bring to Steel Ball Run is one of the highlights of JoJo taken as an entire franchise.

Johnny is one of JoJo's best protagonists, and many even consider him the best. He once was a virtuoso horse jockey, but an incident after cutting in line for a play left him paralyzed from the waist down. He meets Gyro during a run-in when the latter goes to sign up for the Steel Ball Run, and an (extremely cool, by the way) unlikely interaction brings Johnny to be interested in a power Gyro calls the Spin.

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Gyro, on his own, is an extremely fun character. He gets more screen time and personality than either of his Zeppeli namesakes. Like both of them, he plays a part in teaching Johnny how to harness a power he calls Spin—like Will A. Zeppeli in particular, he's a very strong user of this power. The exact reason for Gyro's mastery of Spin is one of the most compelling parts of his character arc, but it's certainly more involved than either of his namesakes ever received.

While they're well-written as individuals, where Johnny and Gyro really shine is as a pair. Their developing friendship is front-and-center the entire time, and the bond they develop is as charming as their on-screen interactions, which run the gamut from hilarious to heartwrenching. Preceding JoJo parts have had friendships at their forefront, but Johnny and Gyro are so endearing, fascinating, and intelligently written that it's almost unstoppable.

Steel Ball Run Is Already Incredible, But Its Anime Will Be on Another Level

Bringing Steel Ball Run To Life Is Inevitably Going To Be Great

Steel Ball Run is a part where things are perpetually in motion. From the horse race to the underlying mechanics of Spin, everything about Steel Ball Run is a concealed reflection of that fact. What's particularly impressive is that the still panels of manga have garnered such a reputation for a part that is, in effect, hyperactive.

What that means is that what fans love about the part comes from the congealing of everything else. Steel Ball Run's pacing, narrative, themes, and characters are unbelievably strong. One of the benefits of the alternate universe is that the original universe also laid a conceptual groundwork that allows Araki to be super creative. The concepts and mechanics that Steel Ball Run works with are unwieldy and mostly work on an intuitive level, specifically because of that groundwork—but they do work, and they work incredibly well. It's all around one of JoJo's most interesting, dynamic, and thoughtful parts.

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All of that to say, even fans of the series haven't seen anything yet. David Production has shown themselves to be more than capable with their past work on the franchise. If Steel Ball Run represents Araki's mastery of manga as a medium, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's anime represents David Production's mastery of anime as a medium.

From the soundtrack to the flawless animation, the cleverly timed use of color palette swaps to the way every voice actor absolutely locks in to the role they're playing, every JoJo part that worked brilliantly as a manga has worked even better as an anime. This trend is unlikely to stop any time soon—so if Steel Ball Run is one of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's most brilliantly written parts, the anime's vivid intensity in adapting an already incredible story is sure to bring one of the best adaptations of the 2020s.