STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s first episode (known as the “1st STAGE”) premiered a few days ago, bringing us back into the world created by Hirohiko Araki and adapted by the team at David Production. Leading that team is director Yasuhiro Kimura, who answered our questions ahead of the series premiere in part one of this interview series.
Now that the 1st STAGE has caught the attention of the whole world, here is the second part where Anime Trending and director Kimura got to dive deep into the episode, all without having to worry about spoilers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and flow.
Taking STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to the American West
Now we’ve seen the episode, first, I want to say that it was great. It was a very tightly crafted, enthralling 47-minute piece that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. What made you decide to finish the story there and not give us a soul-crushing cliffhanger? What made you go for the full stage in one episode?
Yasuhiro Kimura: The 1st STAGE is incredibly tight. Given its length, I felt we couldn’t end it with a cliffhanger. On top of that, the staff and I decided that we didn’t want one. As a team, we think the idea of a cliffhanger is a bit stressful for the viewer. Even though people will be able to binge-watch the series, there are those who also like to watch each episode calmly and having to constantly get to the next episode can be frustrating.
For the first half of the episode, there’s a cliffhanger into the second half, but it was decided from the start that we weren’t going to make it a rule to do one for the final part, leading into the next episode.
So everyone can watch the 1st STAGE in one full episode and feel comfortable while doing so!
In our pre-release interview, you talked about the series’ inspirations, but let’s talk about the setting. Were there any difficulties the team faced in adapting the American West setting and combining it with the eccentricities of JoJo’s?
Yasuhiro Kimura: I don’t think any place in the world can deal with JoJo’s. It’s just so bizarre that everywhere and anywhere can be a JoJo’s setting.
It was just hard to find research materials on the 1890s in Japan for the setting, not just about the West, but what life was like for normal people in that time period. Like, what people wore, what their lives were like, how they built structures — basically everything. For example, how widespread were electrical appliances? And there aren’t any experts in Japan.
There are probably a bunch of experts in America on that era, as there are tons of films about it, just as Japan has period dramas from that time and many paintings depicting the setting. I’m sure there are fans in Japan, but they’re not easy to find. It was incredibly difficult.
This is why I went to Professor Nishikawa, who specializes in American presidents and has a book about America for some reason. He became the researcher for the series and helped us understand what kinds of clothes people wore back then, what customs were like, the types of buildings, and more.
Horses have a reputation for being notoriously difficult to animate well, and yet in the episode, they look fantastic. What kind of research did you and the team conduct to animate the horses?
Yasuhiro Kimura: I actually went horseback riding! I was surprised by their height and the triangular shape of their backs. The view from my seat while riding made me think, “How could someone ride this across America?”
When it comes to production, we estimated how many animation cuts would feature horse riding throughout the series, and the total came to thousands upon thousands. That would be too expensive and a tremendous amount of work. Every time I looked at a horse galloping while studying its movements, it seemed to get more complicated.
It would be impossible to do by human hands. Drawing horses is already considered to be difficult, and while there are people out there who could draw the animal, they wouldn’t be able to draw that many cuts. Maybe we’d get around a hundred over the series, but not the thousands we needed. As a result, we combined 3D CGI and hand-drawn animation.
My job was to create a production pipeline that combined these two aspects without diminishing the quality of the horses’ galloping. I ended up inventing a totally new running style for STEEL BALL RUN. It’s not realistic, and it’s a little deformed, but I think it still looks like a horse, and people will think it’s cool.
STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Horsing Around
There’s this one scene where Pocoloco and his horse jump over a ravine, and the animation of the horse is very interesting. Where did the inspiration for the pose come from? It seemed very JoJo’s!
Yasuhiro Kimura: While the inspiration for the scene came from the manga, one key difference was movement. We couldn’t see the distance between the two cliffs, so we tried to make the shot more dynamic to make it seem like the horse is moving through the air. There’s also the difference in the aspect ratio — the manga is vertical, and the anime is horizontal!
The different riding styles of all the jockeys are incredibly impressive, especially Diego’s incredibly fluid movement with Silver Bullet. What research went into bringing each of those styles to life?
Yasuhiro Kimura: It’s all about the riding style, isn’t it? When you think about it, there are only two styles: waist-up or waist-down. For Diego specifically, he’s riding the horse waist-up, which is also known as “Monkey Crouch.” According to our research, this wasn’t a popular technique in the US in the 1890s, but in the original manga, this is how he rode, so we kept it that way. During the final push, Gyro switches to this style as well.
Also, apparently, a horse’s top speed is 50 km/h (31 mph), and I thought this would look slow to the viewer, so we drew the horses as if they were actually going 300 km/h (185 mph). I watched the film Gran Turismo before making the episode and watched a bunch of F1, so when the horses run, they go “boom!” just like cars do.
Which was your favorite pair of jockey and horse, or lack of horse, to work on? Which was the hardest?
Yasuhiro Kimura: Well, I think all of them equally, but the hardest to animate was Gyro. He’s got too many moving parts: the hair, the clothes, and the steel balls. He takes a long time to animate.
Last thing on production, I really enjoyed the distinct Western-inspired title card with accompanying music at the start of the episode. How do you feel about the Western-inspired opening?
Yasuhiro Kimura: That’s Kato-san’s passion for Westerns coming through, right? It was cool, wasn’t it? That dry feel was great. I can’t really speak more about it.
Editor’s note: Kato is the series director of STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Finally, we have to ask, do you know when we’ll be seeing more episodes?
Yasuhiro Kimura: I want to see it soon, too! When will it be? I don’t know.
It takes a lot of time to make just one episode, but production is going smoothly, and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished episode as much as you are!
STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s first episode is streaming now on Netflix, with no date set for the next episode as of publication. Special thanks to Warner Bros. Japan for their assistance in organizing this interview.
