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Apr 4, 2021
This review will have spoilers
I originally had a review here on Steel Ball Run, but I deleted that because it no longer reflected my thoughts on this manga. It went from something that I had a lot of respect for, to my favorite story of all time. This combined with my love for JoJo as a whole has made this story a powerful influence on my ethos and my affiliation with manga as an art form. So my ability to write compelling reviews that are short and comprehensive will never do justice to my personal love for this story. Couple that with my ban on
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covering any of the main characters in depth (because then we would be here for much longer), this review can be considered woefully incomplete. Even with that in mind, I still have a lot to say on this story so lets begin.
Steel Ball Run takes place in an alternate universe to the first 6 parts of JoJo, people tend to fixate on this and frankly it annoys me. Araki was always able to write stories that broke away from the main canon of the Joestar's bloodline conflict with Dio (Part 5, 4, and 2). What makes part 7 special is Araki's strive to split off from his decade long epoch and create a true western like his first published work, Poker Under Arms. This inherent love with the setting of the west is not the progenitor of the amazingly crafted setting that is part 7, but it definitely plays a large role in it's detailed beauty. The integration of stands, the spin, the mummified corpse of Jesus Christ, along with the numerous seemingly unexplained oddities such as the zombie horse gives the world of Steel Ball Run it's unique edge. But what makes the setting go from exceptional to revolutionary is the brisk that our heroes explore it. The race acting as a catalyst for it's exploration makes the flow from place to place not seem forced or unconventional. This along with the attention to detail Araki puts into each place which is conveyed superbly with Araki's distinct art style, it brings to life the twisted reiteration of the country that I call home.
Although the quality of the setting withstanding, I still believe SBR would be a masterpiece just off the strength of it's characters, which I have expressed in forums to be the most important aspect of a story to me. Steel Ball Run does have some stinkers like Sandman, Mountain Tim, The Boom Boom family, Mrs. Robinson, Mike O., Oyecomova, Pork Pie Hat Kouzou, and the call backs that barely get any panels, but I believe that a good character serves it's role in the story while providing me with something interesting to thier personality. Characters like Disco, Dr. Ferdinand, Scarlet Valentine, and Magenta Magenta are not major characters but I believe they don't overstay thier welcome or are connected to our main characters in some way. Other than those incidents which are quickly forgotten after the Ultra Jump switch, Araki did a great job creating interesting characters that don't hog the spot light but also leave an impactful impression on our main characters and us the viewer. Pocoloco is a man with 1 in a million luck and trust in that to win the whole race outside of our main conflict during the story, which ties in the theme of JoJo that being fate. Blackmore has his little mini arc in his grown desire to take the corpse's spine for himself, which ended up hurting him which he then reaffirms his goals and heads after Lucy Steel, this along with having a very memorable design and mannerisms makes him a fan favorite. Steven Steel works with the president to organize the race, but then changes his motives to protect Lucy Steel from the president, this culminates with Lucy Steel's body being given to Gyro as a last ditch effort to defeat Funny Valentine. The relationship with Steven Steel and Lucy Steel is a very good aspect to his character as well as Lucy's. The Axl Ro fight is a corner stone of Johnny's development, as he literally has to overcome his past traumas and emerges an evolved person, which he literally does with his newly evolved Tusk act 3. Hot Pants was a nun that sacrificed his brother to save herself, which caused her to join the race and collect the corpse parts to be absolved of her sins. This motivation is completely separate to the rest of the cast and leads to some pretty interesting interactions between Johnny, Gyro, and Diego. Wikapipo starts off as a villain to Gyro and Johnny, seeking revenge for the widowing and blinding of her sister at the hand of the Zeppeli family. This is completely changed after he finds out that Gyro did the best he could to save his sister and that her blindness actually prevented her execution. This allows Wikapipo to switch sides and help protect Lucy Steel now with new indebted resolve. All these characters alone are not impactful, but the sheer number of them and quality of writing they have given the size of importance they have in the narrative they are in speaks volumes to the strength of Araki's writing. But we haven't even talked about Ringo Roadagain.
Ringo Roadagain is the best minor antagonist fight I have ever seen. It blends backstory, interesting mechanics, character motivation, character development, and beautiful art work into an unforgettable package. Ringo Roadagain was a child with hemophilia, a weak bedridden individual with a father who was drafted to the Civil War. One night a robber broke into his house and killed his mother and his older sister. The robber aiming to rape a young Ringo, drops his gun in grabbing range of him. Ringo grabs it and aims it at the robber fearing for his life. His hemophilia takes effect and blood gushes from his nose as he lowers his aim. In that stand off, the robber rushes at Ringo with his knife as Ringo aims and fires. Ringo survives with the robber dead, as he regains his consciousness he realizes that his hemophilia has been cured. With this, Ringo Roadagain has entered into the true man's world. Ringo now partakes in constant duels as an aim to improve himself and live by his ideals. But the caveat of the true man's world is that it will lead you to your death. As Gyro defeats Ringo Roadagain, he too is entered into the true man's world, this is a huge turning point in the story of Steel Ball Run as Gyro before this was unsure of himself. Cocky, arrogant, and altruistic, yet still tied to the words his father told him during his life as an executioner. The True Man's World allowed Gyro to go down the path he wanted to and achieve personal fulfillment. This is shown as literally in the next fight, he is able to out pace Diego Brando's dinosaur senses by following the path that he believed in. And in the end, he did pardon that child and live the life to the ideals he believed and pass those same ideals onto Johnny in as he dies from the bullet wound given to him from Valentine instead of moving into Love Train's light.
All the characters I have covered have a connection to at least one of our 5 main characters, and the interaction between them fleshes them out even more into some of the best characters I have ever seen. Unfortunately I will not even attempt to cover them because then we would be here all day. You just have to take my word on this one that the connection present in Ringo Roadagain to Gyro exist in smaller, yet different forms among the rest of the cast, the most obvious being Axl Ro to Johnny. This isn't even covering the relationships that already exist between our main characters, but again your gonna have to take my word on this one.
All in all, Steel Ball Run has some of the best writing in the series, with characters that have almost infinite complexity to them, with art work that captures the setting perfectly. This is a story that I will never forget and I can't wait for it to get animated.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 14, 2021
This review will contain spoilers
If I were to describe Stone Ocean in one word, that would be confused. To be more precise than one word, Stone Ocean feels like it doesn't know where it is going and what it wants while being forced to move in a direction. Though I may have given it a 2, I still found it to be worth reading, as I have finished it. But what good will I have towards this part is showered in complaints and confusion that made the whole 3 days journey I took reading this a very rocky road. But I can't be this vague,
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so I'm gonna try and compile my thoughts into something digestible, and maybe people that disagree with my stance can at least come to an understanding of my viewpoint.
So to start, I feel a story is based in the strength of it's characters. That doesn't mean that a good story needs good characters, but that is the lens of which the narrative is told. The triumph of Giorno in part 5 was only special because we saw all the hardship Buccellati's gang had to go through, as well as the connection made between them along the way. So in my opinion, the cast of Stone Ocean is really bad. Jolyne and friends don't really get to know each other, as much as they are around each other. Hermes is just a girl, and she killed Sports Max so thats the end of that development. I can't name a single thing unique to Emporio as a character other than that he is a child with the ghost room stand. Weather Report is kind of neat with his connection to Pucci and all. Annasui is just a simp for Jolyne, which is more interesting than Emporio and Hermes. Jolyne is not a good MC, as her motivation is very poorly defined, and she just left very little impression on me. The best character in part 6 is probably F.F., a microorganism gaining life and expanding her understanding of the world past Pucci's role for her was really cool, and her death is something I wished happened a little bit later so we would get more time to flesh her out. Jotaro is gone for almost the entire part which sucks, but I guess he's too OP. And Pucci is uh... ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Pucci sucks ass, in both implementation and execution. First he relies on Dio for motivation, which make it the second time Dio is used in some form in the big bad of the series. Now I could be biased in the fact that I have Stardust Crusaders and Phantom Blood as my least favorite JoJo parts, but even if I were to ignore that, it just makes Pucci boring. Diavolo and Kira were both interesting antagonists that challenged the protagonists in an interesting thematic way, which is something I cannot say for Pucci. Secondly, his whole plan is never clear until literally the last fucking chapter. So it starts with Jotaro's stand disc to find what was in Dio diary, then it changes to the green baby, which then becomes going to this Nasa place where gravity gets all weird, and then he resets the universe. It's all handled so messily as plot point sorta just converge until all our main guys are near Pucci and then they fight and its not earned in the slightest. Third, Dio's children are dumb and stupid. I don't think I need to explain this one, but even if you could, I just don't like them. In general, I feel the encounters with Pucci don't have any weight to them like the villain encounters did in other parts. Kira was hidden amongst the crowd of Morioh, keeping everyone alert after his reveal. Diavolo was known to be in the colosseum during Chariot Requiem. Pucci is just in the prison wandering around, theres no weight to his encounters, they just sorta happen, except during the fight with F.F.'s death which was actually pretty decent.
Speaking of which, the prison setting is just way too restrictive. I feel bribing guards and whatever can only happen so many times that your suspension of disbelief is going to be broken at some point. Like in any of the fights, were they at least caught on camera doing shit like jumping around in antigravity, or executing someone by throwing a baseball at them 1000 times, or when survivor turned the whole ultra security section into a battle royale. And the tight corridors is just too controlling when it comes to spacing and really hampers the grasp on any particular enemy.
I feel most of the fights suck in part 6, because it sorta has the part 3 problem of sorta just ending when our heroes find one solution to the problem, instead of having momentum swing back and forth like parts 2 and 5. I liked the ending that was neat, and uh thats it.
I think though the the one reason i was able to stick it out to the end though was the fact that it is JoJos. And not that it's part of a pre-existing saga, more of that it looks and feels like the parts of old. The body horror is absolutely fantastic, the stands are neat, the character designs are gorgeous. It's Jojo, through and through, and thats why I can't give it a 1, because it's still worth reading if you're into Jojo. But yeah I hope this was helpful see yah.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 1, 2021
This manga confuses me, because it plays with interesting ideas but comes to a very milk toast conclusion. Of course reading it was never boring or tiring for me, which is a given noting that its very short, but I expected a lot more from this because small details are all the more important when you're aiming for short media. I definitely recommend it because I can see a lot of people enjoying it, I just wanted to outline my thoughts on it before I move on to something else.
So it starts out with a guy who is told he can sell his lifespan for
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money, so of course he goes to get evaluated and finds out his life is only worth $2807.60 if he sells all but 3 months of his life. This is an interesting premise because it raises philosophical questions about how to live a good life. What makes it worth more or less? Is it better to live a short happy life or a prolonged depressing one? How can a life change for the better with the time limit in mind? This made me really interested because I had doubts about the direction of my own life and how it could change for the better. These hopes disappeared when a girl is tasked with observing him so he doesn't do anything weird.
I have a couple issues with the introduction of this random girl, because it implies a couple of things. Your life will only become better when a hot babe shows up for you to fall in love with, which I was hoping wouldn't happen, but it did. Granted he didn't fall in love with her until the 8-9th chapter, but after that it barrels towards a standard climax where he and she give up all their remaining life to be together for the last 3 days.
So I think we should address the elephant in the room, selling your lifespan. In universe, the price of our lifespan is based off 3 factors, happiness, achievement, and contribution. His life was fated to have less to none of these qualities, which is interesting because I wondered, what if he only acted like he sold his lifespan and went in line with the story. Would he still have a terrible life? Because in the manga, he doesn't actually use the money he is given for selling his life. How do they even calculate the price ahead of time? According to chaos theory, small changes can have huge ramifications on future events, so was there even a choice in the matter of whether he would sell his lifespan or not? Though I accepted this under the pretense, if you live your life knowing it's going to end soon, your life will improve because you will attempt to accomplish what you have been longing to do with the knowledge of the time limit. Of course this doesn't happen because he falls in love with the placeholder girl and thats the story.
In the meantime, MC and placeholder girl go on trips, visiting his past relationships, enjoying simple pleasures, remembering past experiences and dropped passions. It all was interesting to look at because I was expecting MC to turn his life around and tie up loose ends without the future in mind. In theory thats how conclusions work, putting to rest unanswered question and exploring passions you always had in mind but never had the time to do. But it wasn't meant to be.
I think I said my piece, it's not the most organized one, noting that I didn't even talk about how the art is garbage, or how I forgot the names of everyone, or how ever place they go is forgettable, and so on and so forth. I think I value more of what the story could have been, rather than what it is, but the score is for what it is, so I guess I should just put this to rest.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 13, 2021
If Monster taught me one thing, it's that when you feel a show is bad and there are a lot more episodes left, just drop the damn thing and move onto something else.
Although that statement doesn't summarize my thoughts on this anime, it represents a relative sense of disgust that plagued the whole shows that went away at some parts but were amplified at others. What boggles my mind though is that this came from studio Madhouse only 2 years away from Death Note. The reason I bring this up is that if Monster used what made Death Note good, it would have been way,
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way better. And yes I know that studios don't equal quality and it's more often than not tied to directors, but it worth comparing regardless due to them both being psychological thrillers thematically tied to the meaning of human life with around the same technical limitations.
So what do I like about Death Note? Well for one, the soundtrack. It's probably one of the best anime soundtracks due to how the songs are able to set the tone of a specific scene almost perfectly, along with the chord progressions that are connected to each character. If you have the time, go look up the soundtrack on YouTube, it makes for great studying music because it captures the mind games present in that show. Monster in comparison is pathetic. There is not one good song in its OST and I can only remember one song off the top of my head (Edit: I was writing this review, the I had to leave to go do something, and I forgot the song I was referencing here, DO YOU GET IT!?!?!). Another thing Death Note does well is the editing and animation. Of course, I could reference the incredible sakuga moments that people cite over and over again, but even in the bland scenes, we are treated to the close ups of their calm faces during tight dialogue scenes between L and Light. The use of color is also great when Light and L are put under red and blue light respectively. Monster has nothing of this sort. Almost every single scene is as bland as the next, and the editing and sound design actually made me laugh at how forced it was at times. I could tell when they had to add a forced THUD or WOOSH whenever they were going to reveal a dead body. But The colors were so drab and the art too mediocre that every death all felt the same to me. Arguably this is the same as Death Note, but their death was most of the time something they never made you feel for. People just died, there was often no emotion. In Monster though, there are some people we are expected to care about, but it didn't sell me on any of them. Though the worst thing about Monster by far is the voice acting. I have seen the dub, by my god does the sub suck ass. I think all you need to hear any of the characters scream and you can tell it's the most forced thing ever. Johan has a pretty decent voice, being relatively high pitched for a male, but that is one in like, 50ish characters. Death Note in comparison has decent voice acting, but you have to give props to Light's laugh, which is maniacal, and sell him as this psychopathic killer 100%. So basically what we learned is that everything that makes a good anime does not exist in Monster. It's not insulting like Berserk 2016, but it is definitely missing the necessary components to bring people into the story, especially for 74 episodes. I have a theory as to why the manga is rated too high on MAL because it's basically the anime, but it's a manga. What I mean by that is that many of the scenes are often 1 to 1 counterpart, which is often celebrated, but here I actually wish the animators went a little more off-script to breathe more life into these dull characters. But with nothing to lose, does the story of Monster hold up, kind of.
I will admit that the first 4 episodes actually are really good, which can be enough to carry people 70 more episodes. I am not one of those people. The conflict between Johan and Tenma was something I wanted to be focused on, but it takes another 20ish more episodes before we even see Johan. At that point, I knew this wasn't going to be a fast-paced thrill ride where each line of dialogue is equally important like Death Note. So it's too slow to be a fast-paced cat and mouse chase spanning the country of Germany, but it's also too interconnected to be view as like an episodic journey with no direct pinpoint. I will be honest that I spaced out at many segments because I was just so damn bored, but when I tuned in I realized that they didn't have one main destination and sorta just picked where they wanted to go in the episode they go there, or occasionally one episode before. What makes SBR such an exhilarating ride is that we know where Johnny and Gyro need to go to win the race and/or collect the corpse parts. Here it almost feels like Urasawa had no idea what he was writing, which is fine if you are writing a slice of life series with no direct end, or a journey with no destination type story, but not when you are creating a murder mystery crime drama. It feels like it wants to play both lanes, but fails both. I should give credit where credit is due, there are some episodes that I really enjoyed, mainly anything with Grimmer, that one episode about Tenma learning to shoot a gun with the guy and the adopted girl, the one where Nina comes in contact with an ex-assassin where they talk about the taste of sugar, and a couple of others. But when you have to go through exposition fill episode after exposition filled episode with characters that try and fail to impress me, I have to wonder what my final verdict should be for the series as a whole.
Though I feel the main crux of what irks me is the characters, after all, I did mention how some fail to hit, but mostly it's the sheer number of them that I find odd. I guess you can focus more on Germany and the people that fill it, which could be interpreted as the main theme of showing Tenma how different everyone is, and how they are all equal in death, but I wished they gave up a couple to flesh out our main cast a little bit more. Tenma literally feels like a blank slate, altruistic, but mainly uninteresting. We literally get like 1 episode to explain why this JAPANESE MAN is in GERMANY, ONE. You could call him a complement to the supporting cast, but that's debatable. I found Eva to be somewhat intriguing, but mostly annoying and was only redeemed by the existence of Martin. Dieter was extremely missed potential in the second half of the story, where he is basically sidelined and spends the rest of his time with Reichwein and Nina. But by far the worst handled characters were Nina and Johan. I can say they have some merit, in that they play with the main theme in an interesting way, but the way it's delivered is just appalling. I literally had to watch a YouTube video to even get what Johan was doing. You see he is someone playing a game with fate, cause he like is a nihilistic guy with no aspiration in the world or something. But unlike the other in 511 kinderhiem, he never found purpose in hedonistic pleasure because he has none or something. The point is, the story never gives us Johan's character straight. It's all through interpretation and allusions to Franz Bonapart's literature. That's is the literal worst way to make a character, because it makes the viewer ask why. Not why what happens in the story happens, but why Johan is doing what he is doing. That is the opposite of compelling or interesting. What would have been more interesting would Johan's motives be stated outright at the end of episode 4, and then we are more interested in the how of Johan's actions. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and we are left with an arguably uninteresting, but most definitely an uncompelling antagonist. Nina is tangentially similar in that she is focused on finding her past and figuring out who she is in comparison to Johan. This is again, the show in the laziest way possible with flashy editing and echoey sound effect that brings me out of the show completely. There are a couple of other characters I could mention, but I don't like the "Tenma can't be a murderer" line, it used way too often by way too many characters, who try to paint Tenma as the reincarnation of Jesus, which he kind of is in the narrative but that's not the point. In the end, the characters are a mixed, if not a negatively skewed bag.
Though if there is one thing that Monster actually does really well, it's fleshing out Germany in a believable fashion. I love every place they go being crafted somewhat differently, it's just a shame that all the buildings basically have the same color. The use of German foods and German traditions really makes it feel like a believable place, which most of the side characters fit into. It almost feels like Tenma is just going on a German tour across the country, meeting different people talking about what is important in their admittingly simple lives. It almost gears it towards a slice of life series on German cultures until Urasawa decides that Johan exists and either kills one of them, or the police arrive. Even with that point, you still can't say that much about it.
But the final nail in the coffin was the ending, which hinges on a plot point about Johan's mother established literally that episode that leaves it on a crappy cliffhanger that leaves no impressionable imprint. This especially hurts noting that the previous couple episodes were actually really good, even if Johan's reasoning for being there went against the way he was established in the 1st half of the series.
In conclusion, Monster is a slow, boring series that puts a lot of emphasis on broad concepts that have no thematic weight due to how they are delivered, or intrigue because it is coming from an already enigmatic figure. If the series cleaned up its act by playing its themes a little more straight, sticking either to a more chill or fast-paced script, and play to Madhouse's strengths, it could have been a 7, or even an 8/10 for me, but as it is, its a bad anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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