In preparation for the new anime season coming soon, I decided to start reading Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure again. After the climactic ending of Stone Ocean, we are unveiled to a whole new story, new Jojos, and new Stands. This time however, it doesn’t take place in the universe we are used to.

In Steel Ball Run, the entire universe has been reset, I think, and the story reverts us to the year of 1890. This is the year of cowboys, horse racing, and corrupt millionaires, sounds somewhat familiar… But anyways, through this part, we are introduced to Johnny Joestar, who I can only assume is the alternate universe version of Jonathan Joestar, and his opponent/companion Gyro Zeppeli, I mean do I really need to explain (he is the alternate universe version of Baron Zeppeli.

My first thought when I started reading was, “when do the stands come in??”. Luckily that was answered very quickly, but not in the way I expected. The beginning of Steel Ball Run focuses on worldbuilding of this new universe, rather than throwing us straight into the action out of the blue, something to be expected since this is our first introduction. But I did start to wonder, how in the world do people even get stands in this new universe? Yet again, another question that was answered faster than I thought and in a way I didn’t expect

But this isn’t something I want to take the joy out of experiencing for yourself. After all, I’m not even 1/4th of the way through the manga, so I even still have much more to learn. Like, what exactly is “spin”, why is there a cross country horse race, or why is the president a stand user??? All those questions will be answered in time.