STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure returns to Netflix on Friday, September 25. The official JoJo site confirms that the 2nd and 3rd STAGE will run for eleven episodes in total, with a new episode arriving every Friday.

The 1st STAGE premiered March 19 as a single 47-minute episode. The next stretch moves into a regular weekly schedule as the transcontinental race expands beyond its opening sprint.

The second stage is where the horse race starts becoming something stranger

Johnny and Gyro now face a desert crossing of roughly 750 miles. Their route passes through the Devil’s Palm, a feared region where increasingly ominous incidents make it clear that surviving the landscape may be as important as beating the other riders.

The $50 million prize remains the public purpose of the Steel Ball Run, but the new footage pushes the story further into the hidden motives surrounding the competition.

That structure is particularly well suited to this part of JoJo. Every stage can introduce a new environment, threat and set of rivalries while the simple geographic objective remains intact: keep moving across America.

Mountain Tim, Hot Pants and Funny Valentine join the field

The latest trailer formally introduces three major characters. Tomoaki Maeno voices Mountain Tim, a cowboy drawn into the aftermath of a mysterious murder connected to the race.

Yoko Hikasa plays Hot Pants, a formidable competitor already fighting near the front of the Steel Ball Run. The official character profile keeps the rider's real name, age and past deliberately mysterious.

Tomokazu Sugita voices Funny Valentine, the president of the United States. Valentine publicly supports the transcontinental race, although the official description makes it very clear that his interest in the event comes with hidden intentions.

At that point, winning the race is only one of the problems on the board.

Johnny and Gyro remain the center of a radically different JoJo setting

Shogo Sakata returns as Johnny Joestar, the former racing prodigy who lost the use of his legs and found a new reason to move forward after encountering Gyro's mysterious technique.

Yohei Azakami voices Gyro Zeppeli, the outlaw rider whose reasons for entering the competition extend well beyond the prize money.

Kaito Ishikawa plays Diego Brando, Rie Takahashi is Lucy Steel, Kenta Miyake voices Steven Steel, Masaaki Mizunaka plays Sand Man and Kenichiro Matsuda returns as Pocoloco.

David Production keeps JoJo's anime continuity intact

Animation remains with david production, the studio behind the television adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure since Phantom Blood.

Yasuhiro Kimura and Hideya Takahashi direct, with Toshiyuki Kato serving as series director. Yasuko Kobayashi handles series composition, Daisuke Tsumagari leads character design and longtime JoJo composer Yugo Kanno provides the music.

That continuity gives Steel Ball Run a familiar production backbone even as Part 7 rebuilds the JoJo world around a new American setting, a new Joestar and an entirely different kind of journey.

JoJo Fridays are officially back

Netflix and the production team used a very direct message when the weekly schedule was announced at Anime Expo: “JOJO FRIDAY IS BACK.”

After the standalone March premiere, the next eleven episodes cover both the 2nd and 3rd STAGE. The full Steel Ball Run contains nine stages, so September 25 is nowhere near the end of the route.

It is simply the point where Johnny and Gyro's horse race starts looking much more like a JoJo adventure.