JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Part 7: Steel Ball Run
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run

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Serving as a soft reset for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Steel Ball Run takes the story in original and daring directions. But does it work? Oh who am I kidding? I'm going to be straight up.
I consider Steel Ball Run to be one of the greatest written works I've ever read.

STORY: 9/10
I will admit Steel Ball Run has a very, very slow start. In fact, Stands aren't even introduced until like 20 chapters in. That's another thing: Steel Ball Run is seinen instead of shounen. That means each chapter ranges from 35 to 60 pages long in comparison to the 20 page long ... chapters of the Jojo Parts before. This may seem daunting at first, but once you get invested in Steel Ball Run it feels like the story was too short, despite being the longest Jojo Part to date. Steel Ball Run also changes the Jojo formula in its fights. Stands are no longer humanoid for the most part, and they function more as superpowers than spirits who fight for you. Each fight is engaging and unique, dealing with psychological warfare more than throwing blind punches. This makes the fights in Steel Ball Run among the best in the series.

Steel Ball Run is also magnificently written with very great story arcs throughout. However, there is a controversial near the very end direction which I won't spoil that will surely throw some people off and make them consider it unnecessary. Eh, I didn't mind it too much, though it does undermine what made a previous Part so good to a degree. Despite that, it still contains one of the greatest and most emotional endings I've ever read.

ART: 10/10
Part 4 may have been the pinnacle of Araki's style, but Steel Ball Run is his pinnacle in his talent. Truly perfect art in all fields. The detail is much more in depth than previous Parts and character designs are on point.

CHARACTERS: 10/10
Steel Ball Run, though its primary cast is a fraction of other Parts, contains some of the best characters in Jojo, and in my opinion some of the best characters of all time. Gyro Zeppeli qualifies for the latter. He's hilarious but he also has a tragic backstory that offers him plenty of motivation while keeping him in mystery. Diego Brando is an interesting spin on Dio Brando from The Phantom Blood and his Stand Scary Monsters is awesome. Lucy and Steven Steel are a great duo. Steven is barely in the story but he's a well written and unique supporting character and while Lucy doesn't really come into play until the finale she is still compelling. Wekapipo is one of the best side protagonists and works well as a foil to Gyro. Steel Ball Run also contains my favorite side villain, Ringo Roadaggin, and though his time spent in the story is brief it is arguably he pinnacle of Jojo.

As for the Jojo and main villain, they're simply the best. Johnny Joestar is a tragic lightning rod of Shakespearean proportions. It's not only impossible to not root for him, it is immoral. He has one of the greatest and most significant character arcs I've ever experienced, and his Stand Tusk is awesome to boot. He is my favorite Jojo bar none, despite being one of the most depraved ones. Johnny is immoral and sinful and honestly can be considered the villain of Steel Ball Run, but he is still a compelling force of nature.

The villain, President Funny Valentine, in contrast, can be considered the hero to an extent, and is one of the most sympathetic villains to grace manga. In fact, it's no secret Funny Valentine is my favorite antagonist ever. He's like a better version of Ozymandias from Watchmen who takes pride in his actions rather than cry in secret. A true patriot, Funny Valentine will stop at nothing to make America great again. As said by the man himself, his "heart and actions are utterly unclouded. They are those of JUSTICE.". His Stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (D4C), has one of the most insane and unique powers of any Stand and makes for a more than satisfying final fight.

ENJOYMENT: 10/10
Steel Ball Run blew me away in every way. It is a literal epic, a poetic work of great magnitude following flawed heroes on a large scale journey that tests their spiritual and emotional strength as well as their physical. It is compelling and powerful and the fights are pretty damn great. Absolutely mind blowing and awe inspiring yet will leave you in an emotional wreck, despite the story still being filled with trademark Araki humor (Thanks mostly to Gyro and his obsession with making up gags). Johnny and Gyro are a perfect tag team; their relationship is strong and real and their chemistry is on point. They are part of what makes the story so damn compelling.

OVERALL: 9.75/10
Steel Ball Run is one of the most intense and pleasing emotional rollorcoasters I've ever experienced. It contains some of my favorite characters in fiction history and is a fantastic new take on the Jojo universe that, dare I say, is utterly superior to all that's come before it. Featuring my favorite fights, my favorite Jojo, my favorite villain, my favorite story, and one of the most emotional endings I've read, it's no secret that I consider Steel Ball Run to be the greatest Jojo Part, and one of the greatest manga ever created, period.

On many forums I've seen recommendations of Steel Ball Run as an "Absolutely amazing manga", "easily the best Jojos and epitomising everything about that 'style' of comic", and "From the art to story 10/10. Best thing i've ever read". After finishing it, I honestly can't say I see its appeal. The characters were barely fleshed out and quite boring, the fighting frequently was decided on pure "luck", rather than fighting strength or strategy, and the story was painfully plain.

The story - Coming in, I wasn't expecting a narrative masterpiece, but I was expecting a compelling story. I was very disappointed. There really isn't any ... depth to it other than "I want to complete the race first", or "I want to assemble the corpse". The corpse could've been a very interesting part of the story - but besides it being an object that everybody wants, and some small abilities, it was hardly touched upon. There was almost non-stop fighting, and bc of that really wasn't much of a story. It was basically a stereotypical shounen way of handling stories.

Fighting - There were a couple - 3 or 4 fights that were decided by luck, which left a very bad taste in my mouth. Are real-life fights decided by luck? Sure. But the author makes a big point of "luck" being a main reason why the main character wins some fights, which I cannot fathom why. The bad guy does everything right - but because xxxxx happened just at the right time, the main character wins! Once would have been cute. when it happens more than a few times, it starts getting frustrating. I don't know why the author glorifies plot armor, but it made me lose a lot of emotional attachment to fights and characters.
Also frequently in fights, I would notice that powers are VERY inconsistent - while a random character that gets hit by ability X would instantly blow apart, when it hits the main character, they were given almost 10 seconds - to talk it out, figure out a strategy, and then execute it to get to safety. I noticed this happening in almost every single fight. The amount of plot armor in this manga was ridiculous.

Character - After 22 volumes, I had nearly no emotional attachment to a single one of the characters. I think this is due to the manga being absolutely dominated by fighting. When there is no flashback scene or racing going on, the characters are most definitely fighting, leading to close to no exploration of the character's personalities or character. I honestly think the manga absolutely dropped the ball in this regard, there were some painful and not-showing-at-all moments where one character would say a "gag", but besides that there really wasn't any interesting shows of personalities. Most of them felt like cookie cutter good guys that were just on different sides.
Each bad guy was given a brief exposition of why he wasn't really "bad", then was thrust toward the main characters to get beat.

Overall this manga felt like a mediocre shounen. No interesting characters, no emotional attachment, no interesting story, just tons of fighting with chunk of them being decided by plot armor. Wouldn't really recommend.

Steel Ball Run — 2/10

The SBR glazing is honestly insane. I went into this expecting one of the greatest manga ever written, and what I got was a decent Western road-trip story stretched way beyond what it needed to be.

The premise is definitely unique, and I’ll give it credit for that. A cross-country horse race mixed with Stands, bizarre battles, and historical elements is something you don’t see every day. The problem is that having a unique premise doesn’t automatically make the execution amazing. A lot of the story felt predictable to me, and the constant “this is peak fiction” praise made the actual experience ... feel underwhelming.

The art is good, obviously, but I don’t think it fits every moment of the story as well as people claim. There are some incredible panels, but the art can also make certain scenes feel unnecessarily dramatic when the writing itself isn’t doing enough.

As for the characters, this is where I really don’t understand the hype. Johnny is painfully overrated. His flaws are there, but people act like his character development is some untouchable masterpiece when I’ve seen much stronger character writing elsewhere. Gyro is easily the most entertaining character and honestly carries the cast. Funny Valentine is also massively overrated. He has an interesting concept, but calling him one of the greatest villains in manga feels like a massive stretch.

The characters do have strengths and weaknesses, but their reactions to certain situations sometimes feel more like “whatever the plot needs” than genuinely natural behavior. Meanwhile, Subaru from Re:Zero has more emotional depth, development, internal conflict, and believable reactions to failure than most of the SBR cast combined.

I can absolutely see why people enjoy this series. If you love JoJo’s bizarre style, creative Stand battles, Western settings, and Araki’s artwork, you’ll probably have a great time with it. But if you’re mainly looking for deep character writing, I genuinely don’t understand why SBR gets put on such a ridiculous pedestal.

And before someone says “you just didn’t understand the writing” — understanding something and thinking it’s overrated are two completely different things. 💀

2/10. Re:Zero clears SBR in character writing, easily.