STEEL BALL RUN JoJo's Bizarre Adventure ‒ Episode 9
Okay, NOW WE'RE TALKIN'!!! While the premiere of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run was nothing short of everything I hoped and dreamed it would be, I think even the most ardent JoBro will agree that there's a bit of a lull in the story after this opening. Granted, there's still plenty to love in this stretch, like the desperate battle against the Boom Boom family of hillbillies and the establishment of character motivations and the main villain Pres. Funny Valentine, but the past couple episodes haven't featured the moments that made the original manga so popular. With the airing of episode nine, though, we see an even more arrogant and ruthless take on Dio in Diego Brando, gradually transforming into a dinosaur and I love this nonsense so much that I literally can't help but grin as I type out this review.
Beginning with the usually confident-to-the-point-of-cockiness Gyro frustrated that he cannot obtain first place in this leg of the race by winning outright, Gyro and Johnny stumble upon a wounded Diego lying on the ground. In the English dub, Gyro comments, “Little Lord Fauntleroy must have taken a tumble,” and this show immediately became my favorite English dub of the year! Not only is Little Lord Fauntleroy a great way to describe the self-important and hoity-toity Diego, the expression was common enough in America at one point that I recall my grandparents muttering the phrase, AND the book of the same name was published in 1886, four years before the events of Steel Ball Run takes place! This line works on several levels without being anachronistic to this setting, and kudos to VSI Los Angeles and Dubbing Director Patrick Seitz for slotting in an appropriate line that isn't present at all in the Japanese version of the anime or original manga. This line so perfectly encapsulates Gyro's character as a dirtbag rich kid that you can't help but love because he's so much fun and has the capacity to be so cutting towards people who deserve to be taken down a notch, and good dubs should polish up a work in exactly this way!
The excellence of the Steel Ball Run continues when Diego recovers and catches up with Gyro and Johnny. Perfectly portrayed by Damien Haas, who's only other major anime role as far as I can tell not at all similar Laios from Delicious in Dungeon, Diego tries to cozy up to the pair with some jokes and wordplay, but he is too weird, too domineering, and trying way too hard to be clever, to earn any trust from them. This scene also sets up the storytelling escalation that JoJo's is famous by exposing the main characters to a more mundane strangeness, a man seemingly having the best day of his life immediately after nearly dying from a riding accident, before transitioning into the batshit crazy shenanigans of the back half of the episode.
Once the three bunk down for the night, Diego's oddities increase to the point where he begins eating rocks and appears to only be able to see moving objects, before he transforms into a dinosaur. One of my favorite gags from the manga is Gyro having to explain to Johnny what a dinosaur is because this story takes place in cowboy times and that isn't common knowledge, and the anime handles this scene exceedingly well with Gyro rattling off a bunch of dinosaur trivia that's basic knowledge to him thanks to his affluent upbringing.
With some more of Gyro's magic man shenanigans, they manage to shake off Dinosaur Dio, only for a bear corpse they used to hide their scent transforming into a T-rex and further impeding their goal of getting a new Saint Corpse part from a nearby mountain. Even with this being just a set up episode, it's so enthusiastically weird and filled with such delightful and fleshed-out weirdos, that it immediately became my favorite regular length episode of the season. This episode captures every part of what I love about the original manga and somehow, almost miraculously, manages to improve upon one of the most celebrated works in all of illustrative fiction. I once again feel blessed to not only be able to watch this anime as it airs, but write about it and share how it affects me with all of you reading this.
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With JoJo's Bizarre Adventure playing no small part in his bisexual awakening, Lucas DeRuyter is thrilled to be reviewing the latest anime adaptation of a work that is nothing short of foundational to he is in his adult life today. You can catch glimpses of his own bizarre adventures on his Bluesky account and read about how these exploits have informed taste in media and his broader worldview by checking out his portfolio. He and his JoBros catch up at least once a week in ANN's This Week in Anime column, where they have big, but appropriate, reactions to everything going on in this bizarre industry.
STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is currently streaming on Netflix.
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