How Steel Ball Run Taught me how to Walk Again (Jojo's part 7 Spoilers.)

Anime and Manga don't always have to be serious. Take One Punch Man; we don't love it because of the drama, narrative, or any sort of moral lesson. We love it because it's fucking hilarious, and at least during season 1, it looked fantastic. I've always been able to enjoy just about any genre of drawn/animated stories. That being said, for me at least, nothing can really compare to a series that makes you feel something deeply. I've gotten that with Cowboy Bebop, Ashita no Joe (If anyone's seen this kudos to you,) Berserk, and most of the parts in Jojo's, but especially Stardust Crusaders. Guts, Joe, Spike, Jotaro and the gang... With all of them, there's so much suffering and internal turmoil going on, which goes without mentioning the struggles that they're tasked with overcoming. They all have pasts that led them to think and feel the way that they do in the stories, but often times, you have to really dig at their psyche's and try to figure them out. The idea of inner turmoil and struggle resonate with me powerfully. I'm someone who has and continues to suffer from addiction, mood, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and unpredictable/seemingly uncontrollable behavior that's made my academic, professional, and most painfully my personal life difficult to lead. With any of the protagonists that I've previously mentioned, I've always been able to admire them and relate to them on some level, or through some analogy. After reading Steel Ball Run, though, I've never been so inspired to overcome my own mental struggles and my shortcomings. Watching Johnny become crippled due to an event where he acts supremely selfish and full of himself, and all of the sufferings that he has to endure for years after the fact, you see a character who's in almost every way, shape, and form, imperfect. Even throughout the story, Johnny does a lot of things on the track from the west to New York that don't fit the moral archetype of a hero. Johnny, coupled with the man accompanying him and mentoring him, Gyro Zeppeli, form the most touching friendship that I've ever seen in any medium. Johnny and Gyro have their own goals, but ultimately, Johnny is a loner and Gyro is a loner in his own right, and in a foreign land nonetheless. While they're more or less the same age, initially, Gyro serves as Johnny's mentor during the race. As the race goes on, though, they both begin to teach other different tricks, strategies, and powers that they can use to fend off the many unexpected adversaries that they encounter along the way. The fighting in Steel Ball Run is bar perhaps part 5, the best in the entire series. This isn't what's so interesting, though. What's truly uplifting is how the two men teach each other so much about how to live their lives. While Johnny enters the race for his own selfish ends, Gyro is there for a truly noble cause. Along the way, Gyro's morals and feelings of compassion rub off more and more on Johnny. Inversely, Johnny teaches Gyro, who struggles mightily with the idea of his families contempt for him and his well-veiled lack of self-confidence, to believe in himself and to trust in his visions for how he wants to lead his life. Ultimately, the story culminates with Johnny realizing how much he loves Gyro and values his friendship, but more than that, how he wants to live his life the right way and do the right thing, how he does want to form bonds with others and make them strong. If I were to elaborate more on specific details, I could better convey the emotional weight of the story; for the sake of anyone who decides to read SBR, I'll refrain. Long story short, the metaphor at the end of the story of Johnny learning to "walk again" alludes to the way in which he learns to value all of these different things that he didn't before, and to do his best to cast aside his amorality and overcome his struggles. More than any other story has in the past, this inspired me to do whatever it takes to learn how to live a good life and be a good man. It inspired me to learn how to walk again.