My scores are absolutely rediculous for this manga, I'm sorry, I guess you have to deal with it.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run is the seventh arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and in my humble opinion 'The best manga of all time' (Coming from a non JoJo fan by the way). Araki surprised me, with how much he matured over the previous parts he's written. Characters have become more layered, the art style more identical and makes you recognise it's Araki's, The story has become less cliche and characters become more wounded, making a quite 'mature' story. This series is also some kind of reboot of the series, including many characters seen in the previous parts. But enough blabbing, let's go to the criteria.

I'll start off with the characters. Definetly, hands down, the best written characters in the the JoJo series, characters that reappear in Part 7, are much more layered and realistic. I can now fully understand them and sympthasize more with them then I did back in the previous parts. Backstories and such of the characters can become quite brutal at times too in this part, tackling quite intense themes which of nothing I will spoil. The villains are very well done too, it seems Araki stopped using the 'bad guys are bad' cliche and made them human, just being a person with opposite motives than the main characters, which I find absolutely stunning writing.

The story is very interesting too, at the start it had quite a serious atmosphere surrounding it and I was completely pulled in, although being a friggin horse race and having in general no interest to them at all. But ofcourse, the series isn't called 'Jojo's BIZZARE adventure' for no reason. There are some quite weird moments in the series which made me laugh my ass off. The series takes these bizarre moments very seriously and gives the series a more comedic undertone at times. These bizarre moments though, do not distract the storyline. But actually progress the story. I'm not going to say anything more about the story, just see for yourself.

The art is dazzling too, although the main cast looking like friggin models from a magazine, their designs are unique, I had some problems distributing the characters' faces from each other sometimes which is why I gave it a 9. But other than that, the art is flawless, and makes me completely understand what's going on. It also really got that 'bizarre' feel and really supports the bizarre moments in this arc. Backgrounds look photorealistic, while still remaining this 'Araki' feel to them. Araki demonstrates that he now understands the human figure and always, ALWAYS, makes the all the characters stand in this fabulous way, no stiffness at all!

My enjoyment is definetly a 10, I had no regret of reading this manga, and is the first manga I bingeread the fuck out of till the half of it (since I am in school and such I couldn't read till the end yet). There were no moments where I got bored, although maybe flabbergasted. Seriously, give this JoJo arc a try. It's a fresh reboot of the JoJo series, and makes it even more interesting then it already was.

Overall I give this arc a 10 out of 10, a masterpiece, and Araki should be glad of what he's created; Bravo!

EDIT:
The review I had written was made before I even reached the halfpoint of the series, I thoroughly enjoyed Gyro and Johnny's adventures to get the Corpse Parts, but I do think the finale was flawed. Firstly the fight between Lucky Valentine and Johnny is rediculously long, Araki drags the fight out too long and when it finally ends.. He suddenly throws a DIO from an other dimension in, that is very similar to the DIO of part 3. It kind of took me out of the serious atmosphere and caused me to not take it seriously anymore.

I changed the enjoyment to a 9 as I lost my adoration of the series at the final fight against DIO and I changed the story to a 8 due to the story dragging on a bit too long on some parts.

I do still think that Steel Ball Run is one of the best JoJo arcs out there, but it's definitely not the best manga i've ever read.