After an explosive start to the race in episode one during which we met all of the main characters of this series, we now get to see each of the characters react to their own results. Gyro is understandably pleased with himself and we learn here that he is an immigrant from Italy. I suppose at this point pretty much everyone on the American continent still kind of counts as an immigrant with the exception of Sandman, but let’s skip over that for now. Johnny is mostly just impressed with how well Gyro did in using the power of the spin. It helps that Johnny’s goal isn’t to win the race, but only to see how this power works and learn its secrets. So not coming in first isn’t a big deal for him. Pocoloco and Dio seem to be a lot less happy about this result. One blames his luck and the other seems to so far blame himself. Sandman also remarks that the guy handing out food looks the same as the clerk at the start. We know he wasn’t on the train because he was still at the start of the race when Pocoloco woke up from his nap, so I wonder what that is all about. The show wouldn’t bring it up if it wasn’t important. Speaking of bringing things up that are important, we hear that it was not Gyro that won the race but instead Sandman. And with that surprise twist, we get our opening theme.

The song’s called Spin by Kroi, who also did the recent opening for Liar’s Game. It’s a nice tune, but it doesn’t pack the same punch as some of the older JoJo openings. We can learn a few things from this opening though. It seems that Johnny is going to get his own spin ability soon, as he’s seen using something similar to Gyro’s orb. Not only that, but we see a bunch of varieties of these orbs, perhaps alluding to the fact that these are this season’s version of stands? It also looks like Gyro and Johnny will become friends throughout this journey, seen camping together and having a good time while Dio Jr. is doing his best Dio Sr. impression with a menacing pose. Besides this trio of racers, I think the only contestant we see in the opening that seems like he might become important is Pocoloco. Makes sense if his fortuneteller was who we think it is. We also see a small shot of Sandman still being in the race. It wouldn’t make sense for the narrative to introduce one Native American character into this story and not make good use of their story. We see more characters that I don’t know yet, which surely will end up being either villains or friends throughout this season. But too much speculation will just make me look even dumber than I already am, so let’s stick to what we know.

With Gyro getting a penalty for using a weapon – his orb – and being pushed back twenty places, the new top three are Sandman, Dio and Pocoloco, followed closely by Mountain Tim and Johnny himself. Gyro is not happy about being demoted and confronts the organizer of the event, Mr Steel. In a childish bit of revenge he uses his spin power to make all of the champagne bottles pop open. We do get a little lesson from Gyro about how the power of spin works. To avoid muscles noticing what is going on, the spinning power should only be applied to the skin, as demonstrated by the cork touching Johnny’s horse and throwing him off onto the ground without the horse even realizing what happened. While Gyro and Johnny set up an alliance, we learn that some of the participants have been brutally murdered during the first leg of the race without anyone noticing. With this twist added to it, I wonder what the goal of this race truly is. It is called the Steel Ball Run after all. The host is called Steel, and it’s a run across the continent, so it’s pretty clear that the balls/orbs have something to do with this. Also, Mountain Tim gets appointed as deputy sheriff and I immediately know he’s the one who actually caused the murders. I don’t trust this guy one bit. He’s going to use this as an excuse to eliminate some of the better racers. Or I’m very wrong.

The second stage is over 700 miles long and will take roughly 2 weeks. This part of the journey seems to be very different in how you should approach it and Johnny rightfully explains that water will be quite important for them to survive. And despite Johnny’s warnings about the desert being without good access to water, I think Gyro’s split from the group here makes sense. We saw him use his spin powers to dunk a bunch of water on the people back at the finish line of the first leg, which *puts on his literature hat* was foreshadowing of him being able to use his spin powers to somehow get water out of the ground while they are in the desert. Let’s hope at least this prediction is right, because I think my previous prediction is already wrong with this strange guy that chases the duo having a horse with similar prints to the earlier murderer. With Johnny being a logical person and Gyro being all about vibes, I think this is going to be a fun dynamic. But hopefully they’ll live long enough for their dynamic to evolve as this other rider, Robinson, seems to be set on eliminating them here and now with the use of cactus needles. 

I looked into these strange cacti thinking they were definitely made up, and the way they work here seems made up to be sure, but they are actually based on the real jumping cholla, whose needles detach very easily so they can fall onto people and animals passing by. They don’t actually violently jump out into the air destroying your ears in the process. Luckily. It is cool though that the actual location where you can find these cacti is roughly where the characters currently are, making it a very accurate obstacle. Then again, I doubt in reality there’s a guy with weird hair and bugs in his eye socket secretly controlling the direction in which these needles are getting shot out, but here we are. Despite Johnny’s plea for Gyro to just move on so Johnny can catch up later, Gyro isn’t having it. He faces this Robinson headon and everything about this guy feels third rate, like baby’s first villain, which is of course perfectly fine at this stage in the story. The main issue that Gyro faces here is that his Steel Balls – I’m going to enjoy saying this throughout the season – are considered a weapon and thus not allowed. So he needs to take out his enemies without them or make it seem like he didn’t use them. Using the vibrations of his Steel Balls to repeat the same trick back to him, Gyro takes out their attacker with ease.

Am I crazy or does this ending song sound like a Lil Nas X song? They should have just used his Old Town Road instead. And in our after credits section it looks like my earlier prediction might be back on the menu. I think that the murderer isn’t the one with that divet in the horseshoe, but instead it’s simply Gyro and this Mountain Tim knows that already. But we’ll probably see more in a few days when the third episode of JoJo’s Steel Ball Run airs. I will do my best to deliver you a nice recap of it on the day it airs. Until then, thanks for reading!