Steel Ball Run Anime Draws Review Praise for Rewrites and Horse Animation
The review argues the adaptation's craft is strong enough to set a standard for adapting a written work into a televised one, while the controversy around its ending song sits apart from the episode work itself.
Reporting from 1 source: Anime News Network.
A review of episodes one through four of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run praises the voice acting, the horse animation, and rewrites that adapt the manga for television. It singles out the Boom Boom family fight as strong villain-of-the-week writing. The review also calls the ending song, Yuki Chiba's "Shinu ka Ikiru ka / Dead or Alive," bad, and says it breaks the franchise's practice of using licensed tracks from global artists.
The four episodes reviewed cover the story's early stretch, including the fight with the Boom Boom family. The review describes that fight as some of the best villain-of-the-week writing in the series, helped by an English dub that makes each family member feel like a weird hillbilly while grounding them in familial and patriarchal dynamics.
Not everything lands. The review finds the fight with Oyecomova a bit underwhelming compared with earlier fights. It also criticizes the ending song by Yuki Chiba, saying the sampled horse sounds make it hard to listen to on its own and that a Japanese rapper breaks the franchise's tradition of licensed tracks from global artists.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Anime News Network STEEL BALL RUN JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Episodes 1-4