Steel Ball Run’ Anime to Stream Worldwide on Netflix

The upcoming season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime, Steel Ball Run, is set to stream worldwide on Netflix. The announcement came alongside a press release to celebrate the streaming platform’s tenth anniversary in Japan, Deadline reported.

The anime series, based on Hirohiko Araki’s manga, follows the Joestar family’s bloodline across generations as they face a variety of eccentric foes, including the time-rewinding Dio Brando. This series’ core gimmick features heroes and villains alike utilizing powerful ghosts called Stands, each of which are named after contemporary pop culture bands, and all of which posess unique elemental abilities. It’s a lot, and true to its name, it is bizarre.

It is also wildly poopular. Since its premiere in 1987, it has sold more than 120 million copies total as a series in manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump. The manga’s art has been exhibited in the Louvre, and there have even been collabs with major fashion brands like Gucci.

Steel Ball Run, set in 1890s America, follows two horseback racers: Johnny Joestar, a paraplegic ex-jockey, and his newfound friend, Gyro Zeppeli, an enigmatic former Neapolitan executioner with the power to manipulate steel balls. After Zeppeli briefly restores Johnny’s ability to walk, he steels himself to join Zeppeli in a cross-country horse race from San Diego to New York to compete for a $50 million prize.

Said race is less Wacky Races and more akin to the 1975 cult classic film, Death Race 2000, as it sees other jockeys kitted out with special Stand powers of their own, adding to the grueling and dangerous nature of their already harrowing race.

The anime’s staff includes the following:

“Steel Ball Run is a story that depicts characters running through a grand race, staking their own beliefs,” director Yasuhiro Kimura said in a statement provided to Deadline. “My heart is pounding with excitement to be entrusted with directing this anime adaptation. The entire staff shares this feeling and is pouring their passion into daily production. I look forward to sharing our enthusiasm for this work with all of you and hope we can ride this journey together.”

As of now, Steel Ball Run doesn’t have a release date, but animation studio David Production will unveil more information on a global livestream on September 23.

Here’s the Teaser Art for STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, based on the manga by Hirohiko Araki!

Coming soon, only on Netflix! pic.twitter.com/Oz7VAN0JxB

— Netflix Anime (@NetflixAnime) September 12, 2025

Steel Ball Run is the seventh arc in Araki’s ongoing manga series, which was serialized from 2004 to 2011 by Shueisha. The series heralded a new continuity for the manga, which continued in its subsequent arcs, JoJolion and its current arc, JoJoLands. Among diehard fans, Steel Ball Run stands out as a universal favorite in the JoJo saga.

While JJBA being on Netflix isn’t entirely new, it may cause flashbacks for anime fans still upset by its treatment of the anime’s previous arc, Stone Ocean.

Before the series exclusively made its way to Netflix, fans treated the weekly episodic release of the series’ fifth arc, Golden Wind, as an online day of celebration dubbed “JoJo Fridays.” On JoJo Fridays, fans shared new fan art and engaged in virtual water cooler conversations about each episode’s villain of the week, their bizarre, pop music song-referential superpowers, and theorized how the show’s heroes would eek out victories.

By contrast, Netflix’s batch release of Stone Ocean‘s episodes, which the streamer failed to advertise, meant some fans didn’t know the show had more episodes to watch. Stone Ocean‘s three-part batched episode releases were basically shadow-dropped as far as fans were concerned, ending JoJo Fridays and leading some to miss the show’s conclusion.

Netflix could now go with a weekly release treatment, as they did with popular shows like Dan Da Dan, but fans will have to wait and see what happens to Steel Ball Run.

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