APADFTMOM Day 25: JoJo Week Part 7: Steel Ball Run

Think of all of the JoJo lore we’ve touched on this week. It isn’t much due to my intent to keep my posts as spoiler-free as possible, but there’s still a lot of lore established in the introductions to help begin each section of the story. Up until this point, we could sum up JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure as the legacy of the Joestar family as they battle a man with a personal vendetta against them as well as the rippling effects of his ideals for over a century. Despite being broken up into multiple sections with multiple protagonists, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has had that one overall narrative to help keep things coherent.






Think of all of the JoJo lore we’ve touched on this week, box it up, and put it to the side in your mind. Today we’re jumping from Florida in 2011 to San Diego, California in the year 1890 for the seventh part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and my personal favorite part, titled Steel Ball Run.




Steel Ball Run is the story about the events surrounding the Steel Ball Run race, which is a cross-country race in the United States segmented into stages leading from San Diego to New York City. Among the contestants is Gyro Zeppeli, a mysterious Italian man wielding a set of steel balls that rotate due to a special power known as the Spin. Gyro meets Johnny Joestar, a former jockey turned paraplegic as the result of losing a petty fight. Intrigued by Gyro’s mysterious spinning balls, Johnny touches one and is surprised as his paralyzed legs move once again. Johnny then enters the Steel Ball Run race alongside Gyro to learn the secret of the Spin in hopes that he may be able to return full use of his legs one day.




Before discussing the part in full, it is important to note that Steel Ball Run is not a companion piece taking place in America during the events of Phantom Blood in England. Steel Ball Run is essentially a longer retelling of Phantom Blood in a different universe. Stone Ocean was a major turning point in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by resolving the story in such a definite way that a sequel would be difficult to write. Stone Ocean’s ending could be seen as being meant to not support a direct continuation, and attempting to publish one would not only disrespect that ending but also betray the trust of the fans. However, Hirohiko Araki intended for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to continue so the next installment was penned as a hard reset of the series with a modern twist.




Steel Ball Run’s plot structure follows the traditional JoJo style of introducing a conflict and threading the story through smaller antagonists until the main villain appears and is tied into the conflict so his defeat means victory. Similar beats from Phantom Blood are sprinkled through the series such as Gyro taking Johnny on as an apprentice to teach him a mystical power, but Steel Ball Run is not a direct retelling of the birth of the feud between the Joestar family and Dio Brando. Steel Ball Run exists more as an homage to Phantom Blood while also comparing the current state of the series with its origins.




The characters of Steel Ball Run are placed similarly to their Phantom Blood counterparts throughout the narrative but harbor very different personalities bordering on polar opposites. Whereas Jonathan was an optimistic do-gooder with a heart of gold who was widely respected by those around him, Johnny is a depressive pessimist who was crippled as a result of his arrogance. Johnny begins the series in an emotionally low place and only begins to pick up after meeting Gyro and experiencing the miraculous power of the Spin. Steel Ball Run is very much Johnny’s coming of age story as he matures from a stubborn child with obsessive tendencies into an adult worthy of the Joestar name as the audience knows it.




Gyro is another character who is wildly different from his Phantom Blood counterpart. Will Zeppeli was not given much development as his role was strictly to teach Jonathan the way of the Ripple. Gyro is positioned similarly in Steel Ball Run, although he often shares the spotlight with Johnny and in some cases even overtakes him in terms of prominence. Gyro is a confident man occasionally leaning into cockiness who has a positive outlook on life in spite of how he was raised. He has an eccentric side reminiscent of Will and enjoys humor most people would find odd and unfunny.




The dynamic between Gyro and Johnny is more like that of Joseph and Caesar instead of Jonathan and Will. The two become very close friends who help bring out the best in each other and Gyro is almost solely responsible for Johnny’s character growth. Johnny plays the straight man for Gyro’s strange jokes and seems to genuinely enjoy them. Gyro is also happy to teach Johnny the way of the Spin not just because Johnny wants to learn it but because Gyro likes to help people. Johnny frequently looks to Gyro for guidance both in battle and in life, and the two develop the closest bond between a protagonist and deuteragonist in the series.




Steel Ball Run’s pace is much more urgent than previous installments. While Stardust Crusaders and Golden Wind both involved the main characters constantly on journeys towards their goals, Steel Ball Run’s journey is given a time limit. Gyro and Johnny are constantly in the midst of a race with many other competitors and may get held up with the various conflicts of the story, but there are intermittent scenes focusing on other characters to remind the reader that the race is still continuing regardless of how dire the circumstances are for the protagonists. Some characters are introduced purely as contestants whose sole purposes as characters are to make sure that the race does not fall out of importance. The Steel Ball Run race is not just a backdrop for the story but is an entirely separate story in itself with presented in such a way that the characters all know how historically significant it will be.




The lack of a villain introduced right at the beginning of the series to serve as the Dio of the Steel Ball Run universe is indicative of its intent to distance itself from the first six parts of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Those six parts contain what is widely considered one of the greatest feuds in the history of manga between Dio and the Joestars. Steel Ball Run does introduce a new Dio named Diego Brando, but he is put in the background as a racer and does not harbor that same personal animosity towards Johnny that Dio had towards Jonathan. Steel Ball Run instead opts for the modern approach of developing its villain along with its story, and by doing so it renounces its intent to try and craft a duplicate foundation to the previous beginning that sparked the series-long plot.




Steel Ball Run is very humble in its presentation as a reset of the series. There are very few aspects of this part that try to cling to former glory, and those that do exist are made to be obstacles for the characters and Steel Ball Run in general to make peace with and overcome. The Dio Brando saga is over, and Steel Ball Run is accepting of that. The original story was the kind of phenomenon that only happens when the stars align just right and some authors spend years trying to recapture that magic. Hirohiko Araki chose otherwise and gave his work the same respect that its fans give it.




Steel Ball Run is not Phantom Blood and does not try to be Phantom Blood. Despite being a complete reset of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, this part still continues to look forward. This seems like a very basic idea and it is, but modern media is so nostalgia-based that it comes off as lazy and it’s refreshing when a writer isn’t afraid to venture into new territory instead of falling back on what’s reliable. Steel Ball Run is not (yet?) available in the west, but you know how we feel about most fan translators. I implore you to seek this part out in particular even if you only follow the anime or you’ve never experienced a piece of JoJo media in your life. In my humble opinion, Steel Ball Run is essential reading material.