For Me The Key To Understanding SBR Was To Read It As A Narrative Instead Of A Jojo Part. I Feel Like

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.