Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure Steel Ball Run First Stage Review

Jojo’s Bizzare adventure is an extremely popular manga series that has been adapted into an anime that has gone until part six of the story. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure starting following a new continuity starting in part seven, as the story of the first six parts was completed upon its conclusion. The seventh part of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, titled Steel Ball Run is known to be one of the best parts of the series, so many people have been extremely excited for the part to finally get adapted into an anime, and so far every expectation has been met, or even exceeded. The first episode of the part seven anime adaptation recently released on March 19 on Netflix to a almost perfect score on many rating websites. This first episode adapts the first stage of the Steel Ball Run race, and fans must wait until Fall for the release of the weekly second stage episodes.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure part seven follows the event of the Steel Ball Run race. This race is a horse race from the west coast of the United States in 1890 to the east coast, split up into nine distinct stages. The rules of the race are simple, reach the finish line before anybody else, but things get complicated with the allowance for tricks, shortcuts, and other methods too reach the finish line. The only thing not allowed is the breaking of United States laws, but all racers still have the right to bear arms as following the second amendment. This first episode of the anime starts with introducing our main racers. These characters will be some of the main characters of part seven of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. These characters are Johnny Joestar; who is the Jojo of this part, Gyro Zeppeli; who wields strange magical steel balls, Sandman; who is a Native American participating in the race without a horse, Diego Brando; who seems to play a more antagonistic role, and Pocoloco; who has unnatural luck.

The anime adaptation of the first stage of Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure Steel Ball Run is truly a masterpiece. This first episode alone lives up to all of the hype. This first episode mainly focuses on the events of the race, and watching the first stage of the race unfold is an unparalleled experience. The race has us rooting for our favorite characters as we see them contend with the different obstacles and shortcuts of the race. All of the main characters have chances to show off their abilities and how they get ahead of everybody else. I will showcase some of these specifc events to show how truly bizzare this race is.

The first event is between Gryo Zepelli and Diego Brando; Diego has a technique where he can see the tells the oponents horse has and exploits those tells to gain unatural advantages. Diego catches up to Gyro during the race; who has been front running for most of the race so far, and is able to see a very slight tell in Gyro’s horse and Diego seems to unaturally skip forward whenever Gyro’s horse’s breaths lower his speed ever so slightly for a moment. This almost gets him the lead but Gyro has tricks up his sleeve too. Gyro then uses his steel balls once they reach a bridge to seemingly enhance the muscles of his horse for a moment to destroy the bridge and get diego’s horse stuck for a moment, and this would lead to Gyro regaining his lead and forcing all the other racers to go through a ditch due to the broken bridge. Another moment in the race is showing off Sandman’s unnatural running abilities as he has no horse and is racing on foot. Sandman leaps over a canyon that the horses cannot safely jump across, and this gives him a major lead over most of the other racers, and Sandman will continue throughout the race to take paths that a horse cannot take. The next event is when Pocoloco catches up to the front of the pack and decides to follow Gyro into a forested shortcut. A horse can dodge trees and branches on its own but the racer still needs to bob and weave. Gyro and Pocoloco enter the forest with Johnny following closely behinds. Pocoloco uses his unnatural luck that a fortune teller said he has and decides to close his eyes and then proceeds to dodge all of the branches without even trying. Gyro in this case decides to use his steel balls again and uses them to maniplate some trees to hit Pocoloco, but the doesn’t stop Pocoloco as he is still somehow holdng on to his horse. This leads our lead racers to a steep slope that need to be carefully traversed but as they reach it, Pocoloco’s horse seems to fall as a cloud of dust appears, obsuring our view. It is then revealed that Pocoloco’s horse fell onto a cow skeleton and is now surfing it down the slope, gaining him the lead. The final moment I want to showcase is in the last straightaway of the race, as all five of our main characters have caught up to each other and are neck and neck with each other. Any racer could win at this point but once again, Gyro uses is steel balls to manipulate his clothing into a sort of sail to catch the upwind from the ocean to gain a burst of speed and win the first stage of the race.

This entire episode is accompanied by amazing visuals and music, and the episode being 47 minutes long compared the usual 20 minute episode length of most anime episodes helps us fully immerse ourselves in the Steel Ball Run race. Througout the episode there are also specific sund effects that reference the previous Jojo parts, namely the sound of the steel balls being used sounds amost exactly the smae as Hamon being used in the first two parts of Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure. The sound of Diego skipping ahead is also the same sound of Dio activating his time stop in part three. These references to the past parts make this part even better than it already is. This episode is truly as masterpiece as it fully immerses us in the continued suspense of who will win the first stage until the very end. I cannot rate this anything less than a nine out of ten.