JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run (Chosen idea)

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run is a shonen manga series created by mangaka Hirohiko Araki, and is the seventh part in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, with the part also serving as a sort of reboot for the series.

Steel Ball Run consists of 24 volumes holding up to 96 chapter that were released from January 19th 2004 to April 19th 2011.

What is JOJO Steel Ball Run

Steel Ball Run takes place in the United States of America in 1890 within the JoJo universe's second continuity and seventh part of the overarching manga series, with the protagonist of this part being Jonathan "Johnny" Joestar, a paraplegic ex jockey who sets out to join the Steel Ball Run race to pursue Italian jockey Gyro Zeppili, to learn the secrets of a form of energy known as "spin energy" so that he may be able to walk again, as they race across the whole of America to win the $50 million grand prize, the race itself however has an alternative, hidden agenda behind it.

Steel Ball Run also has a Vomic (Voice acted comic) and some members of the cast also appear within some of the recent JoJo games, with two examples being JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Eyes of Heaven (EoH) & All-Star battle R (ASBR), with Johnny Joestar being voiced by Yuki Kaji (ASBR, EoH), Takahiro Mizushima (Vomic) & Gyro Zeppeli being voiced by Shin-ichiro Miki (ASBR, EoH), Kenji Hamada (Vomic).

What are Stands?

Stands first appeared within the start of the third part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, as a power ability scaling replacement to Hamon (Sun Energy), that was used in the first two parts of JoJo.

Stands are described as being the personification of ones fighting spirit that each have a ability and appearance that are unique to them, with some capable of evolving as they're user learns to master their abilities and grow as a person, with others being able to awaken new abilities under specific conditions, I.E. Heaven awakening, Requiem Arrow, Golden Rotation. Imagine them a little bit like a pokemon, but they're giant humanoid punching ghosts.

There are a few rules when it comes to stands, with them being that:

1. Only stand users are able to perceive and see a stand.
2. Only stands can harm another stand.
3. The damage the stand receives will be afflicted onto their user and vice versa.
4. When the user dies, so does the stand and vice versa, though there are a few stands that do not follow this rule, I.E: Wonder of U, Notorious B.I.G. & Limp Bizkit.

Stands when they were first introduced in part 3 of JoJo, were named after Tarot cards, and the Egyptian gods in the second half of part 3, with parts 4 and onward having stands named after music bands, musicians and their songs.

One example I can give is the main antagonists stand within part 7 being called [D4C] which is short for "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", which it's namesake is that of an AD/DC album of the same name. Though due to licensing issues when localising JoJo to the west, they had to alter [D4C's] name to "Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price", there is also one instance where it's name is also changed to a synonym phrase called "Time to perform dishonest acts at a fair and reasonable price", and then there's my favourite of the lot of them being "Dimes 4 Crimes".

Another hilarious example of a stands name being changed is when the stand Limp Bizkit, from part 6, got changed to Flaccid Pancake.

How I will approach this:

For this I would like to talk about the story, characters and themes that are present within this story and voice my overall opinions on this particular part, I do think of interviewing someone who has also read Steel Ball Run and see what their opinions are of this part of the series as well.

This would have some similarities to that of a documentary project, but I'll be adding some parody skits within the video that are in a similar way to Solid JJ's & Skurleton skits which I'll show below as examples.

I have got a close friend of mine, who will be interviewed and has also volunteered to do some voice acting work for the parody skits, I had them write their name within a permission to film document so that I have proof that they have consented and agreed to be filmed for this media project.

I'll also briefly explain what JoJo is as a whole, who are the protagonists are, who Hirohiko Araki is and his ability to literally never age, what are stands, etc so that people have a relative idea of what I'm getting into.

I am probably going to use some fan made music created by Samuel Kim & Friedrich Habetler within my video at specific parts, with them being relevant to part 7. with examples of them below.

Another thing I had found out about Part 7 whilst doing my research on it, is that there is a Fan-made JoJo Steel Ball Run opening created by creators Nico Bellisario & Vettis called Holy Steel, with the vocals being done by Anime singer Shihori様.

I wish to replicate this within my Documentary video by using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate & Premiere Pro.

I can do this by extracting panels of the manga online from MangaDex and putting them through Photoshop to as accurately as I can, use the pen tool to edit out the background and keep just the character or background that I desire and then filling the cut bits of the character by using a content-aware fill setting to fill in the gaps.

I found a video that helped me learn how to do this kind of edit by a creator called Son.

Alternatively I also would like to possibly feature this opening within the video whilst fully crediting them in both my bibliography & within the videos description.

My Works

During my free-time I have been making my own Clips/Edits involving JoJo part 7 which I wish to use within my Project video and will make a great addition to the video.