Johnny Joestar
Also known as: JoJo, Johnny
Johnny Joestar is the seventh JoJo and the protagonist of Steel Ball Run — the first JoJo of an alternate-universe continuity introduced after Stone Ocean reset the original timeline. A former champion jockey paralysed from the waist down at seventeen, Johnny enters the 1890 transcontinental Steel Ball Run race not for the prize money but to chase the Saint's Corpse — a holy relic the race's hidden patron President Funny Valentine is also pursuing. Partnered with the Italian Spin master Gyro Zeppeli, Johnny becomes the franchise's first JoJo whose central narrative concerns a disability rather than a battle for inheritance.
Story
Before the Race
Part 7 · 1873–1890Johnny is born into the Joestar family of Danville, Kentucky in 1873 — an alternate-universe Joestar with no genealogical link to the original Jonathan, Joseph, or Jotaro of Parts 1-6. He is the second son; the family's hopes rest on his older brother Nicholas, a fellow jockey who dies in a riding accident when Johnny is twelve. The father's grief turns into resentment of Johnny — the wrong son survived — and Johnny leaves home as a teenage prodigy on the racing circuit.
At seventeen he is at the top of the American jockey rankings when an incident at a racetrack confrontation results in a gunshot to his lower spine. The shot leaves him paraplegic. The next two years are a slow collapse: lost endorsements, lost friends, lost identity, and a return to Danville where his father refuses to acknowledge him. By 1890 Johnny is a wheelchair-bound former celebrity drifting through cheap hotels along the racetrack circuit, watching racehorses he can no longer ride.
Steel Ball Run
Part 7 · April 1890 – November 1890The Steel Ball Run — a 6,000 mile transcontinental horse race from San Diego to New York City, with the largest prize purse in American sport — is announced in April 1890 as a publicity event for President Funny Valentine's administration. Johnny enrolls at the San Diego starting line out of obsession rather than hope. There he meets Gyro Zeppeli, an Italian executioner using the race to deliver a pardon to a condemned boy in Naples, and a master of a martial-arts technique called the Spin that uses golden-ratio rotation to weaponise small iron balls.
When Gyro's first iron ball strikes Johnny's lower spine in the opening hours of the race, Johnny experiences a momentary return of feeling in his legs. The reveal sets up Steel Ball Run's central pursuit: the Saint's Corpse — a holy relic rumoured to be scattered across the American West, holding miraculous powers including the restoration of the body — is the race's true objective for several factions. Funny Valentine wants the Corpse for nationalist American superpower; Johnny wants to walk; Gyro is alongside Johnny for reasons that take most of the race to surface.
Across seven months and 6,000 miles the race resolves into a multi-faction war over the relic. Johnny's Stand Tusk evolves through four stages — ACT 1 through ACT 4 — culminating in a Spin-amplified ability to fire infinity-rotation projectiles that traverse spacetime. Gyro dies in the final New York leg, executed by Valentine's bodyguard Diego Brando — an alternate-universe Dio who is the race's secondary antagonist. Johnny acquires the Corpse, walks briefly, and is then ambushed in his Kentucky home in the epilogue by a Valentine-aligned remnant who steals the Corpse before Johnny can fully recover the use of his legs.
The arc closes with Johnny back in a wheelchair, the Corpse lost, but Valentine dead and the race's hidden purpose ended. The manga frames it as a tragedy with a clean political resolution: Johnny does not get what he wanted, but the world is spared the version of the Saint's Corpse that Funny Valentine would have weaponised.
Powers & Abilities
Tusk
StandTusk is a humanoid Stand whose ability evolves through four discrete stages — ACT 1, ACT 2, ACT 3, and ACT 4 — across Steel Ball Run. Each act adds a new layer of capability while keeping the previous tier intact. The Stand is unique among the franchise's named Stands in that its evolution is the central long-form mechanical arc of the entire Part rather than a single late-act upgrade.
Tusk ACT 1: fires Johnny's fingernails as low-velocity projectiles. ACT 2: nail bullets spin with Spin energy and bore through targets like drills, regenerating in Johnny's nail beds within seconds. ACT 3: nail bullets fired in golden-ratio rotation open small wormholes between source and destination, letting Johnny attack targets shielded by physical obstacles. ACT 4: nail bullets carry the Infinity Spin — perpetual rotation that propagates as long as the target has rotational symmetry. ACT 4 is the only Stand in the original-and-Steel-Ball-Run continuities widely regarded as the equal of Gold Experience Requiem in raw combat output.
- ACT 1 — Nail Volley
- Fingernail projectiles at low velocity. Damage roughly equivalent to a small-calibre bullet; Johnny can fire from any of his ten fingers and regenerate the nails in roughly thirty seconds.
- ACT 2 — Drill Bullets
- Nail bullets with Spin imparted, drilling through targets and continuing through to a second strike. Used in combat against Sandman and Sugar Mountain's followers.
- ACT 3 — Wormhole Bullets
- Nail bullets in golden-ratio rotation open temporary wormholes between the gun-finger and the target's position. Lets Johnny fire around corners, through walls, and at protected opponents — an ability that, alongside Gold Experience Requiem and Heaven's Door, broke Araki's normal Stand-power ceiling.
- ACT 4 — Infinity Rotation
- Nail bullets carrying perpetual Spin that propagates indefinitely through any rotational-symmetry target. Used only twice across the entire Steel Ball Run arc — once against Diego Brando, once against Funny Valentine. The mechanic is so absolute that, like Gold Experience Requiem, the manga retires it from active use after the final battle.
The Spin
SpinThe Spin is the alternate-universe Part 7 power system that replaces Hamon (Parts 1-2) and Stands (Parts 3-6 only) as the franchise's foundational metaphysics. Spin is a martial-arts technique that imparts perfect golden-ratio rotation to a small iron ball — when correctly executed, the rotation transfers through any contact and can produce effects ranging from healing tissue to disintegrating bone to opening wormholes.
Johnny is taught Spin by Gyro Zeppeli — a member of the Italian Zeppeli family whose head executioners have practised the technique since pre-Renaissance times. Johnny's Spin proficiency is partially what makes Tusk's ACT-evolution possible: Tusk and Spin together form a single fused power system in the arc's combat scenes, with Johnny's nail bullets becoming weapons only when imparted with rotation.
Relationships
Allies
Cultural Impact
The Disabled JoJo
Johnny is the franchise's only JoJo whose central narrative concerns a disability. Across the entire Steel Ball Run arc he is paraplegic; he travels by horse using Spin to compensate for his paralysed legs, fights from a saddle, and orchestrates Stand ambushes from positions a standing protagonist could never reach. The arc never trivialises the disability — Johnny's recovery is contingent on the Saint's Corpse, his wheelchair is functionally present in early chapters, and the epilogue returns him to paraplegia after the Corpse is stolen.
Araki has discussed the choice in interviews as a deliberate departure from the franchise's prior-six-Part pattern of physically dominant JoJo protagonists. The post-reset continuity needed a different baseline — Johnny's disability is the structural argument that the new universe's JoJos would be defined by something other than inherited Joestar physical advantage.
The Spin & the Golden Ratio
Steel Ball Run's metaphysics introduce the Spin — a martial-arts power system based on imparting golden-ratio rotation to small iron balls. The Spin replaces Hamon (Parts 1-2) and shares the page with Stand abilities (Parts 3-6). Mechanically the Spin is a Stand-adjacent technique that does not require a Stand to wield, opening the post-reset continuity to power systems Stands alone couldn't support — and producing some of the franchise's most visually distinctive combat scenes.
Gyro Zeppeli's instruction of Johnny in the Spin is one of the franchise's most affectionate mentor-student arcs. The technique's golden-ratio mathematical grounding has been read by long-form JoJo critics as Araki's most explicit philosophical statement about the relationship between the natural world and the saga's supernatural systems — Hamon comes from breathing, Stands come from will, and the Spin comes from rotation as a fundamental geometric property of reality.
The Universe Reset, Continued
Steel Ball Run is the franchise's first alternate-universe continuity, beginning publication in 2004 — one year after Stone Ocean's 2003 universe-reset finale. Johnny is the first JoJo of the new continuity and the only one whose Joestar lineage is not biologically continuous with the original eight Parts. The decision to restart the franchise with a new continuity rather than continue the Joestar family tree forward has been read as Araki's response to the structural exhaustion of inheritance-based narrative after six Parts.
Subsequent post-reset Parts — JoJolion (Josuke 8) and The JOJOLands (Jodio) — extend the same alternate-universe continuity Steel Ball Run establishes. Johnny is the structural anchor of the post-reset saga in the same way Jonathan Joestar was the anchor of the original.
Appearances
- Manga debut
- Steel Ball Run Chapter 1 (2004)
- Manga final
- Steel Ball Run Chapter 95 (2011)
- Anime debut
- No anime adaptation as of 2025 — confirmed in production
- Anime episodes
- Pending
Trivia
- Johnny is the first JoJo whose given name is canonically just "Jonathan" — making him a literal name-twin of the original first JoJo across the two continuities. The doubled JoJo nickname applies in the same way: born Jonathan, called JoJo, racing under the nickname Johnny.
- Steel Ball Run was originally published outside Shōnen Jump — Araki moved the franchise to the seinen-targeted Ultra Jump in 2004 to give Part 7 room for a more mature tonal range than Shōnen Jump allowed. The migration shifted JoJo's serialisation rhythm from weekly to monthly and remains the franchise's home magazine through The JOJOLands.
- The 6,000-mile cross-country race plot is loosely based on the real 1908 New York to Paris Race and the 1903 Tom Hayes Transcontinental — Araki has cited both as period references for the race's logistics and route, though Steel Ball Run's geography is heavily fictionalised for narrative purposes.
- Tusk ACT 4's Infinity Spin technique is one of three Stand abilities the manga retires after a single climactic use (alongside Gold Experience Requiem and Heaven's Door's locked-book state). The ability is so absolute that any further appearance would undermine the rest of the franchise's stakes.
- Diego Brando — the alternate-universe Dio — is Johnny's principal rival across most of the race rather than the final antagonist. The structural shift from "Dio is the final boss" (Parts 1-3) to "Dio is a co-runner" (Part 7) has been read as Araki re-examining the Joestar-Brando opposition in a continuity where the lineages have no shared history.
- Johnny's character design borrows from Edwardian-era jockey portraits and from the actor Steve McQueen — the hat-and-boots silhouette, the mid-shot poses with the wheelchair, and the racing leathers are all deliberate period references rather than ahistorical genre conventions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Johnny Joestar?
Johnny Joestar is the seventh JoJo and the protagonist of Steel Ball Run, the first Part of the alternate-universe post-reset continuity introduced after Stone Ocean. A former champion jockey paralysed from the waist down at seventeen, he enters the 1890 Steel Ball Run race chasing the Saint's Corpse — a holy relic rumoured to restore the body.
What is Johnny Joestar's Stand?
Johnny's Stand is Tusk, a humanoid Stand that evolves through four discrete stages — ACT 1 through ACT 4 — across Steel Ball Run. ACT 1 fires fingernail projectiles; ACT 4 carries the Infinity Spin, perpetual rotation that propagates indefinitely through any rotational-symmetry target. Tusk ACT 4 is one of the most powerful Stands in any JoJo continuity.
Is Johnny Joestar related to Jonathan Joestar?
Not biologically. Johnny is an alternate-universe Joestar with no genealogical link to the original Jonathan Joestar, Joseph Joestar, or any of the Parts 1-6 Joestars. The naming overlap is deliberate — Steel Ball Run begins after Stone Ocean's universe-reset, and Johnny is the first JoJo of the rebooted continuity.
Why is Johnny Joestar in a wheelchair?
Johnny is shot in the lower spine during a racetrack confrontation at age seventeen, leaving him paraplegic. He travels through Steel Ball Run on horseback using Spin to compensate for his paralysed legs. The Saint's Corpse can briefly restore his ability to walk during the final race chapters, but the Corpse is stolen in the epilogue and Johnny ends the arc back in his wheelchair.
What is The Spin?
The Spin is the alternate-universe Part 7 power system — a martial-arts technique that imparts perfect golden-ratio rotation to small iron balls. When correctly executed, the rotation transfers through any contact and produces effects ranging from healing to wormhole-opening. The Spin replaces Hamon as the franchise's non-Stand power system and shares the page with Stand abilities in the post-reset continuity.
Does Steel Ball Run have an anime?
An anime adaptation of Steel Ball Run was confirmed in production by David Production and Warner Bros. Japan in 2024, but no release date has been announced as of 2025. The Part 7 manga ran from 2004 to 2011 in Ultra Jump and remains one of the longest gaps between manga completion and animation premiere in the franchise.