Well I finally finished Steel Ball Run and what a fun trip on Mr. Valentine’s Wild Ride. This is the first manga that I have ever read for more than five seconds so I don’t know what is considered the norm for this genre. But I do love JoJo’s so I can at least appreciate it from that angle. Overall this was a pretty fun story with lots of good moments, but it also makes me realize that a lot of what I appreciate about JoJo, and what most people appreciate about it, has come about due to the excellent anime adaptation done by David Production.
The story is fantastical enough to be a JoJo tier story. A horse race across the United States. Of course it is revealed that it is so much more than that. And that it is actually about trying to gather up the pieces of Christ’s body. Referred to as “the saint.” The Japanese don’t really understand Christianity, like, at all. At least on a popular level. So, no one is shocked or surprised that Christ’s body exists in the first place. But again it’s JoJo so you just roll with these things. It was funny to me and so I got lots of laughs out of it, even though that probably wasn’t the intent at all. There were some JoJo tier twists that weren’t foreshadowed at all, but Araki impressed me a few times as well. I really liked how Dio was defeated for instance that was a good twist. It starts slow but the story really starts to pick up around Volume 10, and it rides out pretty well to the end with just a few boring parts. I didn’t like Araki’s use of constant flashbacks though. Wish that he could have told the story more succinctly without them.
The characters are good. The standouts are President Valentine and Lucy Steel for me. The two main characters Gyro Zeppeli and Johnny Joestar are good too, but they have a lot of boring stuff happen to them. I remember reading about Lucy Steel and President Valentine and being really interested and then it just switching over to them and I was like, “oh yeah these guys exist.” But like everything else they get better as the story progresses. I still think Johnny is a great Joestar, because he has to deal with this physical impairment. Unusual for characters no matter the genre. I also appreciated that he and Gyro entered the race for more selfish reasons, but by the end they didn’t even care about winning, they just wanted to stop Valentine. That’s some good hero building.
The stands. This is probably my biggest criticism of the story. Stands are really important in JoJo’s and I think Araki as he writes more, feels as though he has to create more interesting ones. They felt overly complex and there were times when a whole fight would pass by and I had no idea what the stand’s powers actually were. I did appreciate that the big bad’s stand didn’t control time. That has been a running theme (don’t know about part 6) and I think it has been overdone, so I’m glad Araki didn’t do that here. The whole golden rotation thing made no sense to me. And I think it serves as an example of how David Productions actually does a good job adapting these things in anime form for dumb dumbs like me. Couldn’t understand the manga, I’m sure I will understand the anime when/if it is ever released.
Lastly, the art was good. I don’t know how to judge it in terms of other manga or even JoJo manga, but I have read a fair bit of comics and this art was really good. The character designs are peak Araki and peak JoJo. It’s fun and I enjoyed how over the top everything was. Par for the course, which is a cut above most things.
All in all, I’m glad that I read it. I can’t say I’m necessarily inclined to read Stone Ocean or JoJolion or any of the other parts, but I did enjoy it. I think if you’re a JoJo fan and you want to read it, you don’t lose anything by it and it’s a good way to kill the time while waiting for them to announce Stone Ocean.