Steel Ball Run is finally here, and Fridays are a holiday now

Too early? It's been twenty years. I read Steel Ball Run when it started in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2004 and followed it to Ultra Jump when it moved there in 2005. Gyro has been the best JoJo partner since before some of our members could read.

The move to a seinen magazine matters, by the way. You can feel it in the pacing: slower, stranger and more patient than the earlier parts.

As an anime-only, I'm glad it's patient. The race gives every episode a real sense of place. Also, Gyro's horse being named Valkyrie is the most Gyro thing possible.

Let's talk about the look. Daisuke Tsumagari is on character design, and he's leaning into late-era Araki: long limbs, fashion-plate poses, heavy lips and lashes. Steel Ball Run is where Araki's art started looking like Renaissance painting, and the anime is finally trying to match that instead of smoothing it out.

The horses are the real test. Animating galloping horses for whole episodes is brutal work, and David Production commits to it.

The horses deserve their own Stand names, honestly.

Music check! The opening is "Spin" by Kroi, a perfect title for a story built around Gyro's steel balls. The ending, "Shinu ka Ikiru ka" by Yuki Chiba, has been divisive online, but I like it more every week. It sounds like riding home at night after a bad day.

Yugo Kanno is back on the score, too, so the battle music still hits.

Kroi's opening lives in my head rent-free. The ending is growing on me. Slowly. Like a horse at a trot.

JoJo endings were always a gamble. Not everything can be "Roundabout".

Hype ranking so far, anime-only safe:

1. Gyro explaining the Spin like it's a sacred family secret
2. Johnny hauling himself onto a horse with nothing but his arms
3. The race start: hundreds of riders and one wild-eyed Diego Brando
4. Gyro's laugh. You know the one.

This part is a sports anime and a horror anime at the same time, and I'm here for both.

Johnny's arms-only climb made me tear up a little. He wants it so badly.

Manga spoiler (light): this race was never really about the money. Anime-only friends, pay attention to whoever seems very interested in the race from very high up. That's all I'll say.

@Ronin Your restraint is admirable. I'm vibrating trying not to talk about a certain Stand named after an AC/DC song.

INK. Behave.

Voice cast appreciation: Shogo Sakata gives Johnny a brittle stubbornness I love, and Yōhei Azakami makes Gyro sound like he's about to laugh at you and teach you something at the same time. In English, Daman Mills and Kaiji Tang make a great pair too.

Which version is everyone watching?

Fan Forge prompt for the week: design a Stand named after a song, the way Steel Ball Run names Johnny's Tusk after the Fleetwood Mac track. Give it one rule and one weakness. Post it in #fan-forge and tag me.

Bonus points if your Stand only works on horseback.

Friday check-in before episode 6: what did episode 5 do to you? And manga readers, which upcoming fight are you most nervous the anime will get wrong? Spoilers tagged, please. Gyro would want it that way.