‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run’ Anime “Restructuring” Early Chapters, But Not “Too Drastically”
After four years waiting at the starting line, David Production’s is finally off to the races with Steel Ball Run, the next and seventh overall entry in their animated adaptation of Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – and according to director Yasuhiro Kimura, Johnny and Gyro’s jump to TV necessitates some slight changes being made to their early adventure.
The highly anticipated Western-themed Stand off (pun intended) was unveiled to eager fans on September 23rd – notably the same day as the in-universe announcement of Steel Ball Run‘s eponymous horse race – via the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure New Announcements Event global livestream event on September 23rd, as hosted by Steven Steel voice actor Kenta Miyake (Muhammad Avdol in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders)
Marking the beginning of JJBA‘s dive into its alternate timeline, Part 7 takes place in in 1890s America and centers around the titular Steel Ball Run, the North American continent’s first cross country horseback race, which challenges riders to travel a 600km route from San Diego, California to New York, for a first place prize of $50 Million USD.
Among the race’s various entrants is the series’ newest protagonist, Johnny “JoJo” Joestar (CV: Shogo Sakata – Yuusuke Tani in You and I Are Polar Opposites), a British-born jockey prodigy whose dreams came to an end after he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down, and his newfound mentor Gyro (CV: Youhei Azakami – Guel Jeturk in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury), a cowboy whose mastery of the rare ‘Spin’ technique allows him to accomplish a number of superhuman feats, including the offensive manipulation of his personal weapon, a steel ball, and the restoration of sensation to Johnny’s legs – this last feat of which inspires Johnny to enter the race alongside Gyro in order to study his techniques.
Produced by Warner Bros Japan and animated by studio David Productions, Steel Ball Run will be helmed by co-directors Yashuiro Kimura and Toshiyuki Katou, who previously directed Part 5: Golden Wind and Part 4: Diamond Is Unbreakable respectively, and feature script work from Part 5: Golden Wind writer Hideya Takahashi and Yasuko Kobayashi, who previously contributed her talents to every JJBA anime entry since Part 3: Stardust Crusaders.
Notably, while details regarding Steel Ball Run‘s episode count or creative direction remain tight-lipped, a recent interview Kimura, as published in the recently released JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Anime Key Animation Collection Animation Artworks Archive 2 series production art book, the anime’s take on Johnny and Gyro’s wild ride will play out in a slightly different fashion than in Araki’s original manga.
Per a translation of the interview provided by the JJBA fan wiki’s official Twitter account @jojo_wiki, Kimura revealed that rather than kicking off with the introduction of Sandman and his reasons for joining the race, Steel Ball Run will instead open on Johnny and Gyro in order to keep viewers locked in to the series’ identity:
“I wasn’t able to read it in real time during its serialization, so during New Year’s break while working on Part 5 I finally sat down and read it. I remember enjoying it so much that I read it all in one go, but when I first started reading, I remember wondering, ‘Is this really JoJo?'”
“That question has weighed heavily on us during this adaptation. As the story progresses, it does transition into the familiar JoJo-style Stand battles, but at the beginning there’s hardly any hint of that. It’s clear that Araki-sensei originally wanted to draw a ‘race story.’ After all, the first character to appear isn’t Gyro or Johnny, but Sandman.
“As a fan just reading the manga, I didn’t think twice about it. But approaching this as the newest JoJo anime season, we realized the early chapters would need restructuring. Actually working on it, the story composition has been quite a challenge. We have to reproduce the same exhilaration the original gave readers, so we can’t change it too drastically.”
Warner Bros. Japan has confirmed that Steel Ball Run will fire its starting gun exclusively on Netflix sometime in 2026.
Interestingly, a look into Netflix’s metadata by @jojo_wiki revealed that the anime currently holds a premiere date of March 18th, 2026 at 11 PM PST / 2 AM EST.
However, the site does note that “this does not necessarily have to be the real release date and could just be a placeholder.”
