Character Analysis: Steel Ball Run and Johnny Joestar

Jonathan(Johnny) Joestar, the protagonist and the driving force behind most events that take place in the story, was a sad, pathetic person. Consistently being portrayed as a cold, selfish, and self-loathing person throughout the beginning of the story, Johnny grows as a character and becomes a protagonist worthy of admiration while running the Steel Ball Run race. 

Johnny Joestar grew up in Danville, Kentucky with his parents and older brother. His father, George Joestar, used to be an acclaimed horse trainer, winning the prestigious triple crown seven times. Trying to grasp his days of glory, he has both Johnny and his brother, Nicholas train to become jockeys. Despite finding Johnny to be a prodigal jockey from the first time he rode a horse at five years old, George seemed to consistently favor Nicholas. Nicholas being older and equally prodigious had already brought fame to their family, causing him to be a source of comparison to Johnny by their father. Despite this turmoil caused by their father, Nicholas and Johnny had a very good relationship. This is demonstrated when Johnny once adopted a white mouse which he named Danny, and as a result of feeding him at dinner his father scolded Johnny and asked him to go and drown Danny. Nicholas, watching the saddened Johnny, divulged a plan to him. He suggested that Johnny simply let Danny free while he would present a stuffed mouse as Danny’s corpse, showcasing his kindness towards Johnny. However this wouldn’t be the last time Nicholas interacted with mice. Later, while Nicholas was racing on a new horse, it got startled and dropped and killed him. A bystander claimed the horse got startled by a white mouse, who Johnny believed to be Danny and thus blamed himself for the accident. Despite feeling incredible guilt and remorse, Johnny pushed onwards and became a famous jockey in his late teens. However, his father never truly acknowledged him as he never beat his rival jockey Diego Brando, whom his father believed was inferior to Nicholas. This went as far as his father smashing Johnny’s second place trophy because he did not beat Diego. As if the guilt was not already enough, Johnny’s father says during an argument about Johnny borrowing his brother's shoes that God took the wrong son. This moment ends up being a huge mental scar for Johnny as he already believed that it was his fault Nicholas died. Even though he ended up winning the Kentucky Derby at just 16 years old, his jockey career came crashing down as on one fateful night he was shot while trying to cut in line for a girl. This shot left him paralyzed from the waist down, and caused him to lose his friends, career, and family. Which leaves us with Johnny from the beginning of the story who is emotionally and physically shattered through the loss of his relationships and the loss of his legs. 

When intrigued in the announced Steel Ball Run race, he goes to the starting line and meets a mysterious man who causes his paralysed legs to move by themselves with his spin technique. Johnny, now filled with hope of being able to walk again, sets a goal to join the race and learn from the mysterious Gyro Zeppeli. He claimed, “The Spin... All hope... it's all in the Spin! I want to know more... more about the Steel Balls…” We can see from the beginning of the journey his primary motivation is regaining the ability to walk again with Gyro’s spin technique. During the journey, Johnny and Gyro discover the Holy Corpse of the Saint. Johnny, in his state of self loathing, forgets about using spin to heal himself and instead latches on to the corpse to heal himself. This is shown when he states, “Shit. Just a little more, dammit! I’m sure it’s just a little more! I want to get my hands on that corpse no matter what! I don’t care about living or 

dying or who’s just and who’s evil! I don’t even give a fuck about the corpse being a saint or whatever!! I’m still negative! I want to get up to zero! If I can get the corpse, I can get my negative back to zero!” This shows his ideology of being worse than everyone and this misguided thought of needing the corpse to return to a “human” status. This goal, however valid, is originally acted upon very selfishly. Johnny is shown to have no remorse in killing others for this corpse, with others going as far to comment on this “Dark Determination.” However, through his travels with Gyro and listening to Gyro’s teachings he starts to change. The first showcase of this is during the Sugar Mountain story arc, where Johnny is forced to make a choice between Gyro or a piece of the saint's corpse. Despite clinging onto them until the last moment, he gives away not only the ears of the saint he obtained the Sugar Mountain arc but also the right arm he found at the beginning of the story. Symbolically this moment is Johnny giving up the ability to walk again for his cherished friend, and it shows him changing from his prior selfish self. He realizes that the ability to walk again is never going to match the importance of the one person who cares about him, Gyro. To explain more about Gyro, he is a deuteragonist of sorts and acts as a best friend and mentor to Johnny. He teaches life lessons to Johnny that act also as lessons to understand and master his spin technique. This is most fully explored in the Civil War story arc where Johnny cleanses himself and his past sins without using the spin, not the corpse. Axl Ro’s ability, Civil War, causes manifestations of someone's past guilt to fight them, and this acts as a metaphor for Johnny to fight his mountains of guilt. Here we see how Gyro’s lessons and the spin heal Johnny as he learns to let go of the guilt, as he unlocks a new power of the spin even Gyro hadn’t reached yet and uses it to defeat his past. Here we also see Johnny’s confidence grow as he learns to trust his heart when an apparition of the saint(same as the corpse) tells him to not to shoot if his heart is wavering. Towards the end of the journey, Johnny discovers the true nature of the corpse; an ability that redirects all misfortune from the one that owns it. Upon hearing the US President’s, Funny Valentine’s, plan to use it to redirect all misfortune from America, he displays selflessness and understanding that you shouldn’t hurt others to help yourself. In their final showdown, and in Gyro’s dying breath, Lesson 5 is explained to Johnny. “The shortest route was a detour, it was our detour that was our shortest path.” This helps Johnny to understand the fullest of the spins potential, the infinite spin, and through this he is able to defeat the president and walk again. Through this, we also see a comparison between the shortest route and the corpse as well as the detour and the spin. While appearing to be the shortest route, the corpse was actually the detour and while appearing to be a detour the spin was the shortest path. Which brings me to a lot of the theming in this story. There is this big theme of the detours and paths less traveled are more beneficial than what meets the eye. This is shown not only with this moment of lesson 5 but also in Johnny and Gyro consistently taking detours and going on side quests to retrieve the corpse, while also always being in the top few to clear each section of the race first. 

It is also through this final lesson Gyro helps Johnny grow and become the best version of himself. A person who is confident, selfless, and a person who could love. Despite originally being his main objective, Johnny thinks less and less of regaining the ability to walk as the story continues. Instead, he focuses on stopping the president from achieving their nationalistic goals. Through becoming a better person and healing mentally, he ends up healing physically as he gains the ability to walk again. As he himself claims, “This story is the tale of me starting to walk. Not in the physical sense... but in an adolescence to adulthood sort of way…”