Steel Ball Run Liveblog Ch. 94-95
You know some major shit went down when the only spoiler-free image I can lead off with is the page with no characters on it, and just the words "THE END."
All right, so last time Johnny thought he'd saved the day by killing the President.................... Valentine, in the year 1890, just want to make that clear, ha ha... when it turned out that Valentine unleashed a second Diego Brando upon the Steel Ball Run race. And this Diego doesn't use the Stand Scary Monsters. No, he uses a special guy we like to call ZA WARUDO.
Basically, Valentine knew he couldn't survive against Johnny Joestar so he figured the next best thing would be to recruit someone to complete his plan in his place, and that turned out to be a Diego from another universe.
So this version of Diego is just as skilled at horse racing as the original, plus Valentine filled him in on Johnny's powers and the secret bunker Valentine built to store the Saint Corpse. Also, this version of Diego has, you know, the best Stand ever. The World, in case you didn't know, has the power to stop time for a few seconds, allowing Diego to throw knives and other nasty tricks.
Since the secret bunker is at the finish line for the final stage of the race, both Johnny and Diego have to complete the course, even though neither of them really give a shit about the Steel Ball Run any longer. Diego might still want the prize money, but he knows the Saint Corpse is a greater prize, and Johnny never cared about the race in the first place. He only entered because Gyro seemed to have some secret knowledge of how Johnny could walk again. Well now Gyro's dead and Johnny can walk again, so he has even less reason to care about the race than before.
You might think the World vs. Tusk would be a mismatch, just because Dio Brando used The World so effectively in Part 3, and the only way Jotaro could stop him was to discover his Stand had the same time-stopping ability. But Araki makes this Part 7 battle work. Tusk Act IV might not be able to stop time, but it can move during stopped time, apparently due to its power to breach dimensional barriers. Also, if Johnny hits Diego even once with his inifinite rotation attack, Diego is instantly defeated.
Diego's main advantage is that Valentine warned him about this ahead of time, and Diego has a plan to counter the infinite rotation attack if it should come. And The World can still stop time before Johnny can get into range. It's too risky for The World to punch Johnny like it did to all the good guys back in Part 3. But Diego still has some tricks up his sleeve.
The climactic showdown happens on the Brooklyn Bridge, less than a kilometer from the finish line. Johnny tries to get at the very edge of Tusk's range, hoping that this will be far enough away that The World won't be able to reach him during a timestop. He fires, and Diego stops time, then approaches Johnny. While the World flanks Johnny's left, Diego pulls a gun to shoot him from the right.
Interestingly, Diego tries to just pull the trigger, but nothing happens. I think he knew the bullet wouldn't come out of the gun, but he expected the hammer to ignite the gunpowder, and it didn't work, so he has to do it with his hands and put it back in the gun.
I'm a little confused as to how this doesn't just kill Johnny immediately. I think the World didn't even hit him, he was just there to distract Johnny so Diego's gun would hit him. And it looks like Johnny gets shot in the neck, so you'd think that would be game over, except Johnny fires a bunch of nail bullets in response.
The spectators have no idea what just happened. From their point of view Johnny suddenly fell off his horse, and Diego dismounts to approach him. I guess no one saw Diego teleport off his horse with a loaded gun, but oh well.
Diego points out that he's gotten Johnny off his horse, which means he can't use his Infinite Rotation attack now. It's like that was the sole purpose of that attack, which is fine strategy indeed, but I feel like Diego is overlooking the part where he shot Johnny in the neck. It's like he knows that won't kill him.
And maybe it can't. We've seen Johnny get shot a few times. Valentine, Diego, and Wekapipo all shot him back in Philadelphia, and he just sort of shrugged it off. Valentine shot him again at the end of their conflict in New Jersey. And of course, Johnny shot himself in Gettysburg when he discovered Tusk Act III.
So it's possible that when Johnny gained the Act III power, he got a lot harder to kill. Act II let him move the holes from whatever he shot his nail bullets at, and Act III let him travel in and out of those holes. So maybe when you shoot Johnny he can just move the bullet wounds to somewhere less fatal.
Anyway, Johnny's not done just yet, because when he fired all those wild shots with his nail bullets, he wasn't aiming recklessly. He can't do the Infinite Rotation attack now, but he did earlier when his nail bullets hit the bridge, and since it's... y'know, infinite... it's still in play. Diego is aware of this, and he anticipates the attack to pursue him from the surfaces of the bridge.
Diego knows this is unstoppable, but he has a plan, and he's prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to prevail. When Tusk makes contact with the World's leg, Diego has the World attack its own leg, chopping it off before the spin can affect the rest of its body. This fucks up Diego's own leg, since damage to Stands is reflected upon their users. However, Diego can now knock the spin-affected leg of the World towards Johnny, which means he ends up taking the attack himself.
All of this was suggested by President Valentine when he first approached Diego to take over his scheme. Valentine knew Johnny's power was unbeatable, and yet Johnny had to be neutralized as a threat, so the only possible solution would be to turn Johnny's power against himself.
With that, Diego gets back on his horse and rides away, his right foot dangling gruesomely by a thread.
So Johnny's screwed now. He can't move or do much of anything, just like Valentine when he was in this same predicament. The one thing in Johnny's favor is that he could attack himself again to cancel out the effects, but he can't do it without a horse, and he can't get on his horse in this condition.
Meanwhile, Diego crosses the finish line and wins the race. He just keeps running to the church where the secret bunker is.
Valentine explained this part to him as well. The bunker was built to store the assembled Corpse, and once installed, a mechanism will lower it deep into an underground chamber, where it will be inaccessible to anyone for eighty years. Why eight years? Was Araki thinking about doing something with the Saint Coprse in 1981?
As the "owner" of the Saint Corpse, Diego would reap its blessings, but also the United States in general would receive its favor as well. Again, Valentine had hoped to enjoy this victory himself, but if he couldn't survive to see this, then at least he could ensure that someone else would.
This whole thing looks a little too science-fictiony for an 1890's facility, but oh well. It doesn't really matter anyway, since Diego has beaten or outlived everyone else involved in the hunt for the Saint Corpse. There's no one left to stop him, unless you count....
Lucy Steel! How did she get here?
Simple: Stephen Steel knew about this facilty, and he guessed its true purpose when he found out about Valentine's plans for the Saint Corpse. Diego realizes that Stephen Steel knows too much.
We then get the single worst looking panel in all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Every time I see Lucy's overinflated boobs in this image, I feel like this was some sort of vandalism of the page. Like a mischevious fan edited this panel in Photoshop to give Lucy a weird, shelf-like bosom. Even if Diego was holding her upside down, this still wouldn't make any sense. Lucy's fourteen years old.
Anyway, she came here in case Johnny failed. She's been here all morning, waiting for Diego to show up.
Diego finds this laughable, since Lucy doesn't exactly have a Stand power or anything else to threaten him with. What she does have is a mysterious bundle, and Diego eventually grows curious enough to investigate it.
We flash back to the previous day, after Johnny went running off to chase after the thief who stole the Saint Corpse. Lucy then went further up the railroad track to find something. Her plan was to take the train to New York, beat the racers to Trinity Church, and be there when the thief arrived to secure his prize. And Lucy planned to be ready...
Turns out the bundle contains the head of the Diego from this universe, the one who died fighting Valentine back in Chapter 76. Lucy cut off the head and brought it along, having learned from Valentine that when people meet their alternate-universe selves, they annihilate one another.
Diego knows this too, as Valentine had assured him that his own duplicate was already dead and no threat to him. Diego probably never imagined that someone would bring parts of the dead Diego to him like this. And now that it's happened, he has no idea what to do. He stops time in a panic, but that only delays the inevitable. And he can't run very far because of his injured leg.
Diego tries to attack Lucy in desperation, but it's too late. The heads converge, and Dio dies, along with the World.
So one question that just occurred to me: How did Lucy know to do this? When Johnny left the Steels, they only knew the Saint Corpse had been stolen, and Johnny recognized the hoofprints as belonging to one of the other racers. He didn't suspect Diego because he was dead.
After he left, Lucy noticed the tracks came out of the ground, near where Valentine's body had disappeared, so she realized that the enemy had come from another universe, but how could she be sure it was Diego and not, say, Evil Pocoloco or something?
Well, maybe it was obvious. The only other riders with any knowledge of the Saint Corpse were Gyro and Hot Pants, and both of them had acted honorably towards Lucy. And she knew Valentine didn't trust any of his own associates with the secret, so maybe Diego was the only logical choice. And she was right, so maybe it's not so hard to connect the dots.
So where's Stephen Steel been during all of this? Well, he went to help Johnny. He rides up and pulls Johnny onto his own horse, which will allow Johnny to use the Inifnite Rotation on himself and undo his affliction. This immediately disqualifies Johnny from the Steel Ball Run race, by the way. The rules clearly state that you have to ride the whole way on one horse, so getting on this other horse is a no-no.
But again, Johnny never cared about winning the race or even defeating Diego. He just wanted to put an end to this whole affair, and while he didn't quite succeed on his own, his rescue of the Steels did bring him some valuable allies when he needed them the most. Maybe the real prize of the Steel Ball Run was the friends we made along the way.
Well, no, the real prize of the Steel Ball Run race was like 50 or 60 million dollars. They bumped up the amount somewhere near the end. And despite Diego's apparent victory, he was later disqualified when they couldn't find him after the race. His horse was discovered on the side of the road, and I sort of wonder if anyone ever found the other Silver Bullet, the one the original Diego Brando rode into battle against Valentine the day before. The existence of two identical horses would surely raise some suspicions.
Anyway, with Diego and Johnny disqualified, who the hell won the race? Pocoloco, of course. Despite all the twists and turns in his performance, he really did have one-in-five-billion luck on his side after all. All he had to do was stay in the game and wait for all the big shots in this story to eliminate one another.
The first time I read Part 7, I found it strange how Pocoloco started out like a major part of the cast, only to fade into the background over the course of the story. I expected him to be part of the good guy team, like how Hot Pants was sort of an ally at times. Or maybe he could have become an enemy like Sandman. But instead he just quietly won the race.
I think Pocoloco's presence in the story doesn't really fit the typical character arc because he was more of an illustration of the concept of "flow" and "luck" in Part 7. Valentine was trying to use the Saint Corpse to control the distribution of good fortune in the world, directing good things towards himself and the United States, while sending misfortune and calamity to everywhere else. He was trying to disrupt the natural course of probability, and that's what made him evil. He wanted to rig the game.
By contrast, Pocoloco didn't have to do anything to become incredibly lucky. It just happened, and he decided to make the most of it. That's how luck is supposed to work. You can't earn it or achieve it. It's random chance. Someone had to be the luckiest man in the world, and it might as well be Pocoloco.
So perhaps it's fitting that Pocoloco triumphed while Valentine failed. Maybe it was Pocoloco's luck that kept their paths from crossing. Valentine might have been able to use Love Train to steal his luck, or maybe Pocoloco's luck was too strong for that, which is why he never ran afoul of Valentine in the first place. Pocoloco was so lucky that he managed to steer clear of any involvement in the Saint Corpse, so he could just run the race normally while the competition all got themselves eliminated.
Second place goes to Norisuke Higashikata, who would use his winnings to go into the fruit parlor business, which would continue to prosper 120 years later in JoJolion.
Sloop John B won the prize for finishing the Final Stage before the rest, so he got a hefty cash prize for that. I was watching a Hamon Beat video discussing every contestant in the SBR, and he was kind of hard on Sloop John B because he had such a low score on points. Basically he comes off as a crappy jockey, who only placed as well as he did because so many other racers dropped out or died.
But in his defense, that's the point of the race. It's not just who racks up the most points, or logs the best time. Baba Yaga was in the running for a while, then his horse got injured near the end and he had to drop out. Both Diegos had a clear shot at winning, but they took their eyes off the (steel) ball (run) and got killed over the Saint Corpse.
Sloop John B survived to the very end. Only 39 racers finished the race and he was one of them.
Wait, I'm sorry, I had Sloop John B mixed up with Nellyville, who finished fifth with a really low score. Well, same thing. He finished the race, and 98% of the competition can't say the same. Same deal for Georgie Porgie, who had pretty much the same performance. Yeah, Gyro might have scored more points but he's dead, so there you go.
So what happens to the Saint Corpse? Well, Stephen decides that it's best to just leave it in this bunker, now that only he, Lucy, and Johnny know about it. With Diego and Valentine dead, there's no longer anyone who "owns" the corpse, so it shouldn't have any more undue effect on the distribution of good fortune.
He observes that Diego, in the end, was not "qualified" to own the Corpse. This seems to catch Lucy's interest.
Her reaction on this page has long fascinated me. At first I thought she had somehow deceived Stephen. The chamber was open when she confronted Diego, and here it's locked, so I thought maybe she hid the Corpse without telling him, or did something else with it. But that was contradicted by events shown in Part 8. In 1901, Johnny comes back to New York to steal the Saint Corpse, and Lucy chases him to Japan to retrieve it and put it back where it belongs.
Now that I look it over again, I think Lucy has suddenly realized that she is qualified to become the owner of the Corpse. She survived Valentine, and killed Diego, who defeated Johnny, so maybe that proves something after all? I'm not sure the Corpse works that way, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Lucy apparently just finds the idea amusing. If she is worthy to own the Saint Corpse, she's willing to walk away from it, which might be the thing that makes her the worthiest of all.
As for Johnny, he boards a ship heading east. The customs officials are the same guys we saw officiating the race, but that was just a temp job for them. They object to Johnny bringing Gyro's corpse aboard the ship, but Johnny insists upon taking his friend back to Naples for a proper burial in his homeland. And he does spinny stuff to the casket so there's nothing they can do about it.
Also on board is fellow SBR racer Norisuke Higashikata, and his daughter, Rina. At least, I'm pretty sure that's Rina. The lore in Part 8 establishes that Johnny fell in love with her during this voyage, and their descendants became the protagonists of Parts 8 and 9. Norsiuke's son fathered the Higashikata family in Part 8, and hopefully they don't show up in Part 9 because I kind of hate them all. I'm pretty sure they can't legally appear in JoJoLands because Haato didn't have a passport to travel to Hawaii.
Johnny reflects on his journey across North America and recalls praying a lot along the way. Praying for good weather, favorable river crossings, and so on. He decides to pray again for a safe trip to Naples.
Pray to whom, Johnny? Pray to whoooom? Ah, never mind.
Johnny says that several years later, another coup takes place in Naples, and this time it's successful. The monarchy is abolished, and that kid Marco whom Gyro was trying to save ends up getting set free after all. Then he dies of a cold. Whoops.
The Zeppeli family then moved to some other country. I'm not sure what to make of this, but oh well.
And that's it. Part 7 is over.
Looking back, I think this is a solid Part, but it can't touch Parts 2, or 3, which are my favorites. If anything, I think reading JoJo comics these past few years has renewed my appreciation for Part 1. I should probably revise my ranking system at some point.
I can respect the sheer scope of Part 7. It was the longest Part before JoJolion surpassed it. And even if Part 8 was longer, it was all set in the same town, while Part 7 spanned the breadth of the United States. Johnny Joestar is from my home state of Kentucky, which I appreciate. The scenery is breathtaking and the western aesthetic is unique and appealing.
But I find the treatment of Lucy Steel throughout the story to be rather disgusting. Araki can't seem to decide if she's an innocent child or a sex symbol, and I really don't like watching the story waver between the two. And the noncommittal use of Jesus Christ is just baffling to me. It just feels like a waste of good lore. It'd be like having Superman guest star in a story and he just takes a nap through the whole thing and no one mentions him being there. What's the point?
I've occasionally questioned my appreciation for the early JoJo Parts, but having gone through Parts 4, 6, and 7 recently, I can see there were significant problems that I just can't overlook. Some of the Stand battles are just ridiculously bad, to the point of being nonsensical. And it feels like the final battles of the later Parts keep trying to steer clear of the iconic Jotaro/Dio battle, only to end up becoming needlessly convoluted. They're entertaining, and often good, but they feel less satisfying overall.
I think Part 8 might have jumped up to 3rd or 4th place in my rankings, just because it went down a lot smoother when I finally read the whole thing in one month. Maybe the Part 7 anime might improve my opinion of the whole thing.
But yeah, that's pretty much it for now. One of these years I'll check out Part 9, but I think that's gonna be a long ways off...