JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has been an absolute obsession of mine for almost a year now. In May of 2025 I sat down and began my watch of the anime by David Productions. Though I had to take a couple breaks around parts four, five and six, I pushed onwards and it was an amazing roundabout journey that left me sobbing as the credits for the final episode of part six rolled.

While on my watch, my best friend Hannah who introduced me to the franchise kept mentioning how David Productions was working on animating part seven: Steel Ball Run, which revolves around a cross-country horse race in 1890. My interest in reading the Steel Ball Run manga grew after finishing the anime of parts one through six. So, I did, I found a way and read all 95 chapters of the manga. I was so entranced by it that I’d read for hours on end. When I finally reached the end, I was even more excited for the anime and knew this had the potential to be the most amazing part yet.

Then in December of 2025, Netflix released the official trailer, though it was in Japanese, a language I don’t understand, the excitement was immeasurable. I immediately told Hannah about it and we both geeked out over it. Everything went quiet again until February 19, 2026 when the official English dub trailer was released. Watching this trailer was one of the most exciting moments of my life thus far. I usually watch the dub of an anime first so I can go back and enjoy the original subtitled version without worrying that I don’t understand what’s going on in the moment, so the dub casting can really make or break my viewing experience. The casting was excellent and I couldn’t wait to see them in action the next month.

Finally on March 19, 2026 the first episode of Steel Ball Run came racing onto Netflix, and I watched it as soon as I got up that morning. The anime starts off a bit different from the manga it’s based off of, but quickly recreates a panel from the source material in a way that doesn’t feel too intrusive and actually flows very nicely. Recreating panels seems to be a popular thing, at least in this first episode. One panel recreation that was done very well was a close-up of Gyro Zeppeli as he challenges a thief to a duel. Overall, the anime really looks as if David Productions simply made a moving version of the original manga, just adding color to the original black and white pages.

The characters were also phenomenal. It was clear from the very start of the episode that David Productions understood each character and knew how make you love them, or in the case of some, love to hate them. A particular character that I didn’t latch onto as much in the manga was Pocoloco, a character with incredible luck who entered the titular Steel Ball Run race on a whim. He even sleeps in on the starting day of the race, missing the official start time, but quickly gaining on the other contestants and coming in second place during the first stage. His charm throughout this first episode was immense and I actually found myself more interested in him and his journey than that of Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli the actual main characters of the part.

This first episode was an amazing re-introduction to Steel Ball Run for me and has me feeling even more excited for the rest of the season to come. From what I can tell, there’s no official release schedule, but with the episode currently sitting at number two anime on Netflix, chances are we’ll be seeing Steel Ball Run continue throughout the rest of the year. If you’re a fan of anime, definitely check out episode one of Steel Ball Run, you don’t have to have seen the first six parts of the series to understand it, however, be ready for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom to welcome you with extreme judgement for skipping parts.