Steel Ball Run

• 1. Introduction

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  Steel Ball Run is the seventh main story arc of the Japanese manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. It opens in September 1890, when racing jockeys from all over the world pour into the United States. Their goal is a cross-country horse race from San Diego to New York City. The grand prize is fifty million dollars. Along the route, competitors face assassins, terrorists, outlaws and other violent rivals. So who really benefits from this race, and what is it hiding? How does a man who cannot walk end up competing in it? And how did a story that first appeared with no link to its parent series become a work that critics praise for its art, characters and story?

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• 2. Rider And Executioner

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  Danville, Kentucky is where Johnny Joestar, born Jonathan Joestar, comes from. He is a former horse racer, paralyzed from the waist down. He enters the race because of the Spin, the mystical art of a rival named Gyro Zeppeli. One of Gyro's steel balls once struck Johnny and temporarily restored his ability to move. Johnny wants to understand how that happened and regain the use of his legs for good.

  Gyro Zeppeli was born Julius Caesar Zeppeli. In the Kingdom of Naples he served as a magistrate and executioner before he was disgraced. He races to free a boy on death row, whom he believes was wrongfully convicted.

  The Spin channels rotational energy through steel balls and can produce all manner of effects. Gyro pairs it with an acute knowledge of the human body, precision and quick judgment. That combination makes him a skilled fighter. He eventually develops Ball Breaker, a technique that causes whatever his steel balls strike to age.

  Johnny fights with a Stand, the kind of personal power that characters across the series wield. His Stand, Tusk, shoots his fingernails like bullets. As Johnny begins to grasp the Spin, Tusk evolves through forms called ACTs, each with different capabilities. The same pattern appears with Koichi Hirose's Echoes elsewhere in the series.

  Johnny and Gyro start as rivals. The long ride through the wilderness turns them into friends. Neither man yet knows that the race itself is a cover for something far older than both of them.

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• 3. The President's Scheme

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  Funny Valentine, the 23rd President of the United States and a former soldier, is the real power behind the race. The promoter on the posters is Steven Steel, an eccentric man who is not the mastermind. Steven took the original idea from Lucy, a fourteen-year-old girl who later became his wife. He married her out of gratitude and to save her and her father from the Mafia.

  Valentine has quietly turned the event into a front. Scattered across the country are the pieces of a corpse that is 1900 years old. It is called the Holy Corpse, and the story heavily implies that it is the body of Jesus Christ. Valentine already holds its heart. He intends to reassemble the rest and draw limitless power from it on behalf of his nation.

  Johnny and Gyro stumble into the plot when they come across another piece of the Corpse. It is absorbed into Johnny's body, and the power he gains lets him fend off one of Valentine's subordinates. Later they meet the spiteful and ambitious racer Diego Brando, who takes one of the Corpse's two eyes. Gyro claims the other.

  Parts of the Corpse change hands again and again. In the end, Valentine succeeds in taking the pieces held by Johnny and Gyro. He seizes Diego's eye soon afterward, using his Stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, often shortened to D4C. It can send people and objects between dimensions.

  Lucy, meanwhile, works to uncover and foil him, and the racer Hot Pants later joins her. Valentine discovers Lucy and takes her captive after she fuses with the Corpse and becomes pregnant with its head. As she merges completely with the finished relic, his Stand gains a new form called D4C: Love Train. It opens a gap in space that redirects any attack on Valentine to somewhere else in the world.

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• 4. The Final Stage

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  On a moving train, Diego and Hot Pants join forces against Valentine. The president overpowers them and kills them both. Johnny and Gyro arrive and try to fight a man who now seems invulnerable. Valentine beats them both and kills Gyro.

  Mourning his mentor and friend, Johnny finally sees how to reach the perfect form of the Spin. He strengthens his Stand and overwhelms Valentine. The president pretends to surrender and offers to "bring back" Gyro through D4C's transdimensional powers. Then he draws a gun. Johnny kills him, which avenges Gyro but ends any hope of seeing him again.

  The Holy Corpse separates from Lucy and is stolen by an unknown thief. Johnny chases the thief into the last stage of the race. There he is shocked to find an alternate Diego Brando, pulled from a parallel dimension by Valentine. This Diego wields The World, a Stand that stops time for everyone but its user for around five seconds. He defeats Johnny with Johnny's own attack and takes first place with ease.

  Trinity Church is where the alternate Diego brings the Corpse. Lucy is waiting there. She annihilates him by forcing him to merge with the severed head of the original Diego.

  The official result is stranger than the fight. Pocoloco, a carefree racer who slept through the start and caught up by sheer luck, is awarded first place. Steven Steel arrives to rescue Johnny. Valentine's death is covered up as a retirement from public life, and worries about the race are calmed by donating the prize money to charitable causes.

  Johnny has regained the ability to walk through the power of his Stand and the Spin. He leaves America to return Gyro's body to his family. On the boat he meets the runner-up, a Japanese racer named Norisuke Higashikata. Johnny later marries Norisuke's daughter Rina, and that marriage leads into Part 8, JoJolion.

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• 5. Rogues On The Route

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  Diego Brando, nicknamed Dio, comes from the United Kingdom. A Stand named Scary Monsters first turned him into a dinosaur, and he later took the power for himself. He uses it more directly than its previous owner, often turning part of his body into a dinosaur or sending miniature dinosaurs after his targets. That earlier owner was Ferdinand, a geologist hired by Valentine to attack the pair in the Rocky Mountains. Ferdinand believes the Earth brings prosperity to those who respect it, and he claims the dinosaurs died out because they did not.

  Hot Pants, a racer from the United States, carries a heavy secret. In her youth she sacrificed her younger brother to escape a grizzly bear, and she became a nun to atone. Her Stand, Cream Starter, is a spray bottle that sprays human flesh as a foam. The foam can fuse with people's bodies.

  Mountain Tim, a cowboy and bounty hunter, joins Johnny and Gyro early while chasing a murderous competitor. Later he returns to rescue Lucy after she infiltrates a government building, driven by his own romantic feelings for her. His Stand, Oh! Lonesome Me, lets him move his body through his lasso.

  Pocoloco entered the race after a fortune-teller predicted great luck in his near future. His Stand, Hey Ya!, can only encourage him and suggest ideas, so he leans on his natural luck. Sandman, whose real name translates to Soundman, belongs to a Native American tribe in the Arizona desert. Despite being ostracized for adopting American ways, he hopes prize money will let him buy back his ancestors' land. His Stand, In a Silent Way, builds three-dimensional constructs out of sounds and applies their effects to whatever they touch.

  The Boomboom Family are criminals hired by a foreign country to assassinate Johnny and Gyro. At the start of the race they kill several competitors, which draws Mountain Tim's attention. The family shares one Stand, Tomb of the Boom, and each member has a different magnetic ability. Benjamin, the father, sinks metal objects into his skin. His son Andre materializes sharp objects from inside anyone he touches. The youngest, L.A., pins enemies down with iron sand and then extracts the iron from their blood.

  Wekapipo is a former royal guard from Naples, exiled for killing his sister's abusive husband in a duel. Like Gyro, he fights with Spin-charged steel balls rather than a Stand. His Wrecking Ball technique releases smaller spheres that leave anyone who touches them unable to see or feel anything on their left side. He is hired alongside Magent Magent, whose Stand, 20th Century Boy, sends any damage he takes into the ground while he squats.

  Ringo, a solitary gunslinger, grew up after his family was murdered by a man he barely managed to kill. That experience pushed him to duel others in pursuit of spiritual growth. His Stand, Mandom, rewinds time by six seconds when he adjusts his watch. Axl RO, a veteran of the American Civil War, attacks near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to cleanse himself of guilt over failing to raise an alarm for his troops. His Stand, Civil War, brings the subjects of its victims' guilt back in physical form.

  Milwaukee has the strangest obstacle of all, a large tree that is both a Stand and its own user. Anyone who drops something near it meets a guardian with the tree's name. The guardian offers a choice between the dropped item and something more valuable, much like the fable of The Honest Woodcutter. Liars meet an immediate end. Honest people face a second trial. If they have not traded, used up or otherwise gotten rid of everything the tree gave them by sunset, they are absorbed into the tree and forced to serve as one of its rotating guardians.

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• 6. Moving Magazines

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  Between the 19th of January and the 16th of October 2004, readers of Shueisha's weekly Weekly Shonen Jump met this story under the plain title Steel Ball Run. The first 23 chapters ran there, seemingly with no connection to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. That changed on the 19th of March 2005, when the series moved to Ultra Jump, a monthly magazine in the seinen category aimed at older readers. There it was officially announced as the seventh arc, though one that seems to sit in a continuity separate from all earlier arcs.

  The new continuity did not end with this story. It also serves as the setting for the arcs that follow, including The JoJoLands. The serialization ran in Ultra Jump until the 19th of April 2011.

  Araki has said the move suited him. The monthly schedule meant longer chapters, and he felt less restricted in what he could draw. He no longer had to write stories that built momentum toward next week's chapter. He could also draw at his own pace.

  In total the story filled 95 chapters, collected into 24 tankobon volumes numbered 81 to 104 within the whole series. Starting over the volume count followed the example set by the previous part, Stone Ocean. Viz Media has licensed the manga for English release in North America, and the first volume appeared in May 2025.

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• 7. Araki's Method

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  Araki gave the manga a stated theme, "seeking for satisfaction". As in other parts of the series, he also built it around "an affirmation that humanity is wonderful". He explained this as humanity's ability to grow and overcome hardship through its own strength and spirit. Characters win their fights through their own actions, without leaning on machines or gods.

  A race across the whole country demanded research on a matching scale. Araki split it into three trips. The first went from the West Coast to the deserts. The second covered the Great Plains, the Mississippi River and Chicago. The third ended in New York. He said he could never have grasped the vast scale without going in person. The scenery of the Midwest struck him as endless and unchanging. He realized that if an enemy approached across such open land, there would be nowhere to hide, and he found that feeling useful when drawing.

  Johnny was designed, like earlier protagonists, to embody the story and setting of his part. Araki also wanted him to stand out from his predecessors in appearance, clothing and silhouette. His disability was not planned from the start. It grew out of the series' focus on protagonists who develop by overcoming hardship. Araki wanted a character forced to rely on other people and on horses during the race, with room to grow in mind and body.

  Valentine came from Araki's growing sense that good and evil are not always easy to tell apart. He had become more interested in why people do bad things. Araki noted that Valentine's patriotism and goals seem just and might even match those of leaders in the real world. What makes him evil, and unfit to be a protagonist, is that he exploits powerless people to reach them.

  The idea of a fighting president came from a film. Araki watched Independence Day and liked the notion of a president who fights.

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• 8. Reception And Screen

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  Kono Manga ga Sugoi! recommended Steel Ball Run as a starting point for readers new to the franchise, since it works almost like a reboot. The same review praised the landscapes the heroes cross as "beautiful". Erkael of Manga-News ranked it among the best in the series and said it never disappoints. They described its speed and intensity as making the reader feel part of the race. As the story opens up to follow several characters whose paths sometimes cross, the world feels "rich and dense".

  Erkael found the absence of Stands early on surprising but refreshing, because Gyro relies on steel balls. It reminded them of the Hamon abilities in the first part, Phantom Blood. They still enjoyed the later turn toward Stand abilities, calling them "original and surprising".

  Anime News Network called the manga an interesting take on the battle genre because it portrays a hero with a disability in a positive light. It saw this arc and JoJolion as marking a big shift in the evolution of Araki's art. That shift followed an earlier change from muscle men to thinner characters and fashion. K. Thor Jensen of Geek.com singled out the bond between Johnny and Gyro as one of the best platonic friendships in comics, citing the sacrifices they make for each other and how they help each other with their abilities.

  The 12th of April 2025 brought news of an anime. At the JoJoday event celebrating the franchise, an adaptation by David Production was announced with key art and a promotional video. At Anime Expo on the 4th of July 2025, the main staff were revealed. Golden Wind co-directors Yasuhiro Kimura and Hideya Takahashi return, with series director Toshiyuki Kato. Yasuko Kobayashi oversees series composition, Daisuke Tsumagari designs characters, Yugo Kanno composes the music and Yoshikazu Iwanami directs sound. More details followed in a livestream on the 23rd of September.

  Netflix began streaming the "1st Stage" of the series worldwide on the 19th of March 2026. That label suggests the race is only part of the way to the finish.

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