Steel Ball Run Paperback Vol. 1 (February 2017)
Interview Archive
Hirohiko Araki's afterword, written in the first volume of the Bunkoban version of Steel Ball Run on February 17, 2017.
Interview
Part 1: The Protagonists
The main characters each have their own family troubles. Johnny has his relationship with his father to deal with, and Gyro has his family's legacy. It's as if their very births were contradictions. And yet, they challenge the race hoping to overcome it. All of the other characters look forward; to bide their time concealing their Stand ability, they must have a certain degree of confidence. But only looking forward is a harsh way to live. And in any case, the only respite for a person who only looks forward is to either drop out or arrive in New York.
Part 2: Stands
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, I set out to use Stand designs to depict things that, while they cannot be seen, exist in this world nonetheless. Anyway, my goal was to draw the existences of all creation and all kinds of physical phenomena. I would try to turn fire into a character, or time into an image, and so on. My previous work, Part 6: Stone Ocean, left me with a sense of satisfaction, or perhaps the sense that I had drawn all there was to draw...? I felt a small sense of accomplishment. So what do I do now?
At the time, there was something in my drawings that I was very interested in, and that was rotation (or, to use the proper term, spiral rotation). When I draw flames, I draw them in a twisting motion, like the twist of a splash of water. The twist of the bending joints of a human body. The twist of a growing lock of hair. I draw the branches of plants and trees twisting as they connect to the trunk. I draw petals as if they were whirlpools. I add shading to rocks and stones as if they were rotating, and so on.
Drawing in such a way led me to believe that all the phenomena in the world could be explained by rotation and spirals. If this were a Stand ability, it might just be the most powerful of all. And if rotation is rebirth, then perhaps the story can return to its origin. I decided to set Steel Ball Run during the same time period as Part 1: the dawn of modern civilization.
Part 3: Research
I am very fond of stories where the characters mature during their travels, and I think there's a certain universality to them. In recent years, a lot of information has been made available on the Internet, so there's no need to actually go on a research trip anymore. But I was curious as to how open the enviroment was, and I wanted to experience the sense of distance it gave off. The environment also provides an underlying feeling of inequality, even envy, and some places really made me think about what it would be like to live there, what I would do if I ran out of milk here, or other things like that. I wanted to feel that, so my first trip was to the deserts in the western part of North America by Cessna and by car. This isn't related to Steel Ball Run, but I was overwhelmed by the aircraft storage area (the boneyard?) in the desert.
I also decided to walk the Kumano Kodō in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture for five days and four nights. I walked the trail because I wanted to see what would happen to me if I walked around 20 kilometers every day. This particular incident might be somewhat related to Steel Ball Run. A beautiful forest landscape becomes darker than you can imagine after 4:00 PM, with dark shadows growing in the mere blink of an eye. One lone elderly traveler told me as they left the dark forest, "If I hadn't met that kid, I would have been totally lost!" (Now where do I find that kid?) My muscles ached terribly after the second day of walking, and my cell phone felt really heavy when I had to wait in places without any signal, so I thought about throwing it out every day. That's the contradiction of a convenient invention.
Part 4: The Enemy
President Valentine, a character that appears in the second half of Steel Ball Run, is the main antagonist, the greatest enemy, the villain. The ultimate evil. But I'd like to point out that this character is primarily a villain from the perspectives of the protagonists, Johnny and Gyro. President Valentine uses the transcontinental Steel Ball Run race to find a treasure that will make his country the greatest in the world. In other words, he intends to win the people's trust and support through sports. President Valentine knows that the future is moving away from the age of the horse and into the age of the machine. He is also keenly aware that democracy is equal to capitalist economic self-empowerment. Moreover, his selfless motives make him both powerful and utterly terrifying as a character.
In other words, our protagonists—Johnny, Gyro, Mr. Steel, and their allies—are outclassed in the justice of their perspective by President Valentine. And yet, in Steel Ball Run, the president attempting to lead society on the right path is the ultimate evil. Within President Valentine exists a contradiction between justice and evil. He is a paradox. What exactly is happiness, then? If happiness is true victory, will the coming era bring victory? Did Johnny and Gyro win after all?
Part 5: Scope
Serialization moved from Weekly Shonen Jump to the monthly publication Ultra Jump. This was partly because my age was making the weekly schedule difficult, but I also felt that the scope of what I could draw increased (due to the number of pages in each chapter). The rhythm of the manga's progression and the scale of the drawings of landscapes and characters just felt right. Steel Ball Run was well-suited for a monthly magazine indeed.――創作にあたっての思い出を書いてみたいと思います。
その①「主人公たち」
主人公たちは、それぞれ家族の問題を抱えています。 「ジョニィ」は父親との関係だし、「ジャイロ」は家系の事。まるで、彼らは『生まれた事』そのものが矛盾であるかのように。
しかし、それを克服したいと願ってレースに挑みます。他のどのキャラも「前向き」で、スタンド能力を隠し待っているなら、それなりの自信もあるって事でしょう。
でも、「前向き」って、かなり厳しい生き方ですよね。とにかく前向きの人がのんびりするには、脱落するか、ニューヨークに到着してからなのです。
その②「スタンド」
「ジョジョの奇妙な冒険」はこれまで、この世の目に見えないけれども『存在するモノ』を「絵」にしようと『スタンド』というデザインで描いて来ました。とにかく、あらゆる物理現象や万物の存在を「絵」にする事を目標にしました。「炎」をキャラ化しようとか、「時間」を絵にしようとか、そういう事です。
それが前作「第６部―ストーンオーシャン」で、満足感というのか、一通り描いてしまったかな…。という、ちょっとした達成感がありました。
ではどうする？
この頃、絵を描く時の事なのですが非常に興味のある事があって、それが「回転」です（正しく言うと「螺旋状の回転」）。炎を描く時、ねじった様に描く、水のパシャッというしぶきをねじる様に飛ばす。人体の関節をねじるように曲げる。髪の毛をねじるように生やす。植物、木々の枝をねじるように幹に接続して描く。花びらをうずまきの様に描く。岩や石のタッチの陰影も回転しているようにつけていく。などです。そんな事をして描いていると、この世の現象は全て、回転や螺旋で説明がつく、などと思い込んでしまいました。
これをスタンド能力としたなら、もしかすると最強な事かもしれない。そして回転とは再生なら、ストーリーも原点に戻れるのかもしれない。
「
その③「取材」
旅を通じて、登場人物たちが成長していくという形式をとった物語が非常に大好きで、普遍性があると思います。
近年はネットで調べれば何でも情報があるので、実際に取材旅行に行かなくて良い訳ですが、「どのくらい広いのか？」とか地形の距離感が観たいのです。それに地形には「羨ましい」とか「不平等」とかいった裏の感じ方があって、そういう場所に住んでみたいなあとか、ここでは牛乳とか切らした時にどうするんだろうと、行ってみて考える場所がある。それを感じたくて、まず北米の西の方の砂漠をセスナとか車で取材しました。「
それと日本の和歌山県にある熊野古道を４泊５日、山の中を歩いてみる事にしました。毎日20kmくらい連続で歩いたら、自分はどうなるのかを試したかったので歩きました。これは「
美しい森の風景も午後４時過ぎると、暗い影の部分がアッという間に増えて想像を超えた闇になる。「あの子供に会わなかったら私、迷ったきり遭難してたわッ！」と独り旅行者のおばさんが暗い森から出て来た（その子はどこの子？）。それと歩き始めて２日目からヒドい筋肉痛で電波の無い所に待ってきた携帯がマジ重く感じて毎日捨てる事を考えた。便利な発明の矛盾です。
その④「敵」
「
ヴァレンタイン大統領は、祖国を新しい時代に向かって世界一の偉大な国にする為に、そしてその為の「宝」を探し出す為に「大陸横断
つまり、私たちの主人公たち―
「ジョニィ」や「ジャイロ」や「スティールさん」たちの考えている事よりも、ヴァレンタイン大統領が考えている事の方が「正論」なのである。
しかしながら、「
「幸福」とはいったいどういう事を言うのだろうか？
真の勝利が「幸福」の事ならば、時代は勝利に向かうのだろうか？
果たして、「ジョニィ」と「ジャイロ」たちは勝利できたのだろうか？
掲載誌は「週刊少年ジャンプ」から月刊「ウルトラジャンプ」へ移った。
年齢面で週刊スケジュールが辛くなったという事もあるのですが、この事は作品にとって描ける「面積」が増えたと感じました（一つのエピソードのページ数の事です）。風景や人物の絵画的スケール感もそうなのですが、マンガ進行のリズムがとにかく、しっくり来たと感じ、「
