Over its first six parts, *JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure* told a spellbinding saga about the Joestar family legacy.

The franchise’s seventh installment,***Steel Ball Run*, moves the globe-trotting story to the United States of the 1890s. Araki has created a separate continuity of events that draws heavily from established JoJo lore.

Think of it less as a reboot and more like a brand-new adventure that lovingly references the franchise’s cornerstone concepts, such as the use of Stands (entities manifested by a user’s life energy) and the overarching ethos of justice and sacrifice that support the saga. These elements are now enriched by *Steel Ball Run*'s themes of rampant colonization and cultural erasure, which only exacerbate when misguided American exceptionalism is thrown into the mix.