JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run’s Director Already Confirmed Its Biggest Challenge

The anime adaptation of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run might have spent a long time in the works, but it was nonetheless still something incredibly exciting for the fans who have been waiting for years now. While the seventh part of the manga has the potential to be the best in the entire franchise thus far, given how brilliant the storytelling and action is, there still are some challenges with the anime, and the director of the series has already revealed what it is and how he and the team plan to overcome the problem to bring out the best possible result.

Set in an alternate 1890, the Steel Ball Run is a gruelling cross-country horse race from San Diego to New York, launched by philanthropist Stephen Steel to revive America’s frontier spirit. With a $50 million prize, the event draws competitors worldwide. Johnny Joestar, a bitter paraplegic ex-jockey, discovers hope in Gyro Zeppeli, a mysterious racer whose spinning steel balls let Johnny briefly walk. Joining the race to learn Gyro’s secret, Johnny soon realises there’s more at stake, including a deadly conspiracy tied to a sacred corpse and the U.S. President.

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Part 7’s Horses Prove a Difficult Task to Animate

This might sound surprising, but it makes quite a lot of sense. Since the entire plot revolves around a cross-country race, horses are pivotal to the story and the environment, and the way Araki drew them was absolutely stunning and a highlight of part 7. However, doing thousands of frames of the many horses and in different motions will be incredibly difficult and time-consuming, and the fact that horses are harder to draw than humans due to size and more will present other problems. It might have been possible in manga format, but adapting them in animation is not as straightforward as it.

Toshiyuki Kato, the director, was shocked and puzzled by how hard it would be to animate the horses, describing it as an impossibility, when he first read the manga. However, he reveals there is a lot of trial and error involved in bringing the horses to life, and they are going for the best possible result. Speaking at Anime Expo’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure panel in 2025, for which ComicBook’s team was in attendance, Kato stated, “All things said, horses will be the most difficult.”

Kato continued further to say, “I’ve been thinking that from when I read the original manga, and I had thought, ‘This is quite an impossibility.’” The past six JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure parts have featured incredibly difficult sequences to animate, and the team outdid themselves with truly beautiful animation, but it’s clear that the team never underestimates the challenges ahead, going on from Part 6 to Part 7. Kato finished by confirming this, saying, “But it actually has been adapted into TV animation. So we had a lot of trial and error to adapt it into animation in the best form possible in the current day. I believe that’s where we set our goals when we started this series.”

CGI Horses Are Still a Very Real Possibility

The JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime has frequently used CGI in the animation, such as the opening songs, which look gorgeous and fluid, in certain scenes, and Stands, whose quality varies from time to time. Given how time-consuming 2-D animation of the horses is, CGI can be employed to assist in the process.

While this might be worrying, the staff has consistently shown their expertise when it comes to 3-D animation, and if they have the proper time, the horses can end up looking great. All this is conjecture, and there will be no way to know the path the team ends up taking until a trailer is revealed and fans can see a glimpse of the long-awaited trek of Johnny and Gyro across the country.