Little Thing I Did . Been Thinking About 4taro A Lot Lately

one thing i love about tumblr is that u become friends with people without even knowing their name/their face/their voice...........like....i love u because of your dumb little thoughts thank u for existing

there’s something so fucking magical about bookstores and libraries

★ // LET'S SUMMON THE STEEL BALL RUN ANIME TOGETHER!

I had a crazy idea, and since it’s so wacky, you know I gotta do it. What’s my silly idea, you ask?

I’M MAKING A SUMMONING CIRCLE TO SUMMON THE STEEL BALL RUN ANIME INTO EXISTENCE!

That’s not all there is to it, though. In fact, I need YOUR help to make this magic as powerful as it can be. For the first time ever, I am asking for audience participation and collaboration for johnnyshrine, wow!!

How can you help me make the greatest summoning circle ever? By making your own offerings, of course! Prayer works best when people come together! I am collecting black and white images you guys submit to add to the summoning circle! These images can be whatever you’d like: drawings of your favorite SBR characters, memes, occult or silly objects you'd use for Steel Ball Run themed magic, words talking about how much the story means to you - you decide! Full info and requirements can be found on the Google form below if you’re interested in participating! Credit will be given to everyone who participates unless you choose to remain anonymous. The full summoning circle will be posted as johnnyshrine offering #101 on April 11th, the day before JOJO Day. Hopefully our efforts will pay off and we’ll get to see the anime become real!  I’ve never done something like this before and I have no idea what to expect, but I figure this is a fun way to connect the community. I look forward to everyone’s submissions! :D

[ PARTICIPATE HERE! ]

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT IS APRIL 10TH, 2025 AT 11:59 pm PST.

I literally love Jobin not enough people talk about him. He’s so weird and silly. What kind of cartoon ass villain feeds people fried chicken by throwing it on the ground like they’re birds??? Also the entire beetles thing I feel like he’s gotten a bit too excited and eaten a beetle at least once. It’s manfreak Monday I’m going to make it everyone’s problem. Might doodle him later. I want to put him in a jar and study his behaviour. Bacterium.

I got a one week break from uni and I feel so FUCKING REFRESHED. I FUCKING NEEDED THIS.

So anyways I actually had free time that I didn't just spend on sleeping!

So yeah!!

Currently still being Ghiaccio pilled for some reason yay

And why did no one tell me uni was so fucking tiring like god fucking damn

WHAT IS THIS?? A CROSSOVER EPISODE??

DAISUKE, IS THAT JOJO REFERENCE!?

For me the key to understanding SBR was to read it as a narrative instead of a jojo part. I feel like with the rest of jojo you can almost read each part as less as a narrative and more as a series of fights with a loosely connected story. When I first read Part 7, I was reading it through the same lens I do other parts; namely, the story occurs around the fights. What I mean is that I feel with most of the previous parts, the story was a vehicle for the fights, not the other way around.

It’s easy to say SBR is a fresh start / reboot but I think I just so strongly associated it with the rest of jjba that it took forever to me feel like I actually ‘got it’. With other jojo parts I feel most everything is surface-level (I don’t mean this in the bad way, just that, like the rest of the series, it’s very ‘in your face’). But Part 7 is unique to me in that it’s a narrative where I can keep digging and finding new things.

All this to say that it took me several re-reads to feel like I actually caught on to some of the subtext and other things going on. For example, while there’s blatant references to religion throughout SBR, I hadn’t realized how ingrained it was in the story proper until I went back and did the religious analysis of the text, which in turn better informed my understanding of the characters. So much flies over your head the first time you read it. For another example, it took a lot of time and revisiting the text for me to even begin understanding the True Man’s World, and I hadn’t even thought to seriously consider the cultural context of SBR’s setting until someone else pointed out how Ringo’s ideas would have tied in with Jeffersonian rhetoric about American Individualism. Maybe that was my problem: I wasn’t taking SBR on its own terms, and frankly I think I might have dismissed a lot of what Araki was trying to say with this piece by considering as Part 7 instead of Steel Ball Run.

Parts 1-6 are very enjoyable for what they are, but to be quite honest I don’t think they had a larger message besides fate and possibly abuse of power. They had themes, obviously - family and legacy as an overarching one; love comes to mind for Part 1, friendship for Part 2, the journey / friendship for Part 3, etc - but I don’t think Araki had something he was trying to say with them. He wrote Parts 1-6 because he had ideas he wanted to express, and most of those were action-oriented stand battles. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an observation. The story functioned around the stand battles.

In contrast, with SBR I feel the fights are part of the story, and help inform the greater whole. Lucy’s whole character, as a non-combatant who does important things to keep the plot moving, reflects this change in approach. Sugar Mountain is dedicated to highlighting Gyro and Johnny’s evolving relationship. Compare Bohemian Rhapsody with Diego & Hot Pants vs Valentine. As a narrative SBR demands consideration of values and reflection on what we hold important. It encourages you to think deeply and pull it apart to see what it’s trying to say.

Again, this isn’t to dismiss any of the other Parts, and in no way is this an attack on them. Furthermore, SBR is longer and was afforded a monthly publishing timescale; perhaps there’s an argument for Araki simply having more time to do things. However, I also think the comment from Araki about feeling as though he’d hit his creative limit with Part 6 is reflective on his mindset at the time of writing Stone Ocean. Steel Ball Run was his chance to start fresh as a more experienced writer with a message he wanted to share.

This post is mostly just a reflection for how I want to approach other works in the future.

(*400dB Crunch noise*)

guys the consequences of inaction are noooootttt enough to motivate meeee

He's a feral child and I love him for that