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‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’ Fans Aren’t Rocking With the ‘Steel Ball Run’ Anime Outro Song

Yuki Chiba's "Dead Or Alive" prompted fans posting edits on social media with tracks they would've would've to listen to as the ending theme of the Netflix anime series.
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To the outside observer, being a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime fan in 2026 feels like a pendulum swing between haves and have-nots. You get a banger of a premiere episode, then get absolute radio silence on when the next episodes will drop on Netflix. After months of that radio silence, where fans spammed memes under every social media post from Netflix, begging anyone to address the elephant in the room, fans got more good news than they bargained for when Netflix announced that JoJo Fridays, the coveted weekly release schedule, would return this month following the release of its second episode. 

Now, finally, after the long-awaited release of Steel Ball Run‘s “Second Stage,” the latest monkey’s paw to vice-grip the fandom is an innocuous yet deadly serious one: they aren’t vibing with the show’s outro song. In fact, they dislike it so much that they’re posting edits on X/Twitter featuring songs they’d prefer. Yare yare daze.

Opening and ending theme songs are important for any anime. But with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom, music is sacrosanct. Much of that comes from creator Hirohiko Araki imbuing his love of music into the show’s DNA. Whether it’s character names or their superpowered Stands (the ghosts they wield in battle), everything in JJBA has a musical reference. As each arc (or part) of the show progresses over the years, following a new member of the Joestar family brings a progressively more contemporary set of song references, including but not limited to Dio, Limp Bizkit, and Dua Lipa. Up until now, the anime has done its best to counterweight the show’s copyright-infringing references within an episode by inventively coming up with an off-brand-sounding English translation and by having the anime’s outros feature an eclectic mix of rock and pop classics and deep cuts.

Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency had “Roundabout” by Yes; Stardust Crusaders had “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles and “Last Train Home” by Pat Metheny Group; Diamond is Unbreakable had “I Want You” by Savage Garden; Golden Wind had “Freek’n You” by Jodeci; and Stone Ocean had “Distant Dreamer” by Duffy—all songs you could picture Araki listening to while penning the manga.

Going into episode two, folks had high hopes that Steel Ball Run would continue the series’ legacy by featuring a new Western song as its new outro. Much to the fandom’s chagrin, after finishing the episode shortly after it dropped at midnight, the series broke that tradition. Instead of picking from the assortment of songs fans theorized would’ve made the perfect outro since the conclusion of Stone Ocean in 2021, they got “Dead or Alive,” a new original song by Japanese rapper Yuki Chiba. As far as fans are concerned, today is the second funniest day they’ve experienced since they were left high and dry on when new episodes would drop after Steel Ball Run‘s premiere back in March.

Objectively speaking, no one in the fandom has a problem with Steel Ball Run‘s outro cinematic. It’s very pretty, and was almost certainly inspired by the intro to fellow Netflix show Arcane. In fact, fans are pretty damn sure the BPM of Imagine Dragons’ “Enemy” was what the show had in mind when they created “Dead or Alive,” given how uncannily the two cinematics sync up as lights dance around statues of their respective ensembles.

But as far as the song itself goes, it’s a little sparse in the listenability department when compared to its predecessors. Namely, fans got a big laugh out of its chorus, with Chiba simply chanting the song’s name at them, and the intermittent horseshoe clops on the beat. Once characters start dying, that needle drop will make for as hilarious a tonal shift as Jodeci’s “Freak’n You” did in Golden Wind. While some fans joked about having to start their bombardment of meme posting again, others took a more artistic approach to their sonic disappointment by posting edits of Steel Ball Run’s outro to songs that were at the top of everyone’s fan theories. Key among them were “A Horse With No Name” by America, “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, “Pony” by Ginuwine, “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac, and “Wild Wild West” by Will Smith.

This isn’t the first time fans have edited a song they initially didn’t vibe with. Pepperidge Farm remembers when Coda’s “Fighting Gold” dropped as Golden Wind‘s opening; fans quickly edited Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” over the track. Hopefully, after a few spins, fans will gel with the track the same way they did with Diamond Is Unbreakable‘s second opening, “Chase” by Batta. Worst comes to worst, they can always skip the outro and cue up a new episode.

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