This Week in Japan: Steel Ball Run, One Friday at a Time
Three stories, a ranking, and the desk is back. Netflix is releasing JoJo one episode a week like it is 2012. The Sekiro movie turned out to be a trailer for a TV show. And hololive has an anime with 29 leads. No inventory link this week. Nothing connected.
Steel Ball Run, one Friday at a time
Steel Ball Run: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure resumes today, September 25, on Netflix. Stage 1 was a single 47 minute episode that dropped earlier as its own thing. Stages 2 and 3 are 11 episodes, one every Friday. david production, directed by Yasuhiro Kimura and Hideya Takahashi, Kroi on the opening with a track called SPIN. The full run is planned as nine stages.
The interesting part is not the episode count. It is that Netflix, the company that invented the binge, is doing weekly for a JoJo season. Who asked for that? The fans, for years, every time a Netflix anime got dumped in one block and vanished from the conversation in a weekend. Did Netflix listen because it cares about the conversation, or because a Part 7 adaptation is a nine-stage commitment and nobody wants to burn it in one sitting? Same result either way. Real.
The Sekiro movie was the pilot
SEKIRO: NO DEFEAT is now a full TV series. Eight episodes, weekly, January 2027, studio Qzil.la. Kenichi Kutsuna directs, Takuya Satou writes, Takahiro Kishida on character design. Daisuke Namikawa is Wolf, Kenjiro Tsuda is Genichiro. The production's own line is that the project started as an eight episode series and they cut a theatrical version first to put the visuals and sound on a big screen before the full show.
Two weeks ago this was a movie sitting at number nine in the Japanese box office. Now it was an edited preview. That is a strange order to release things in and it is also honest, because they said so. A studio using a theater as a demo room for a TV show is a thing that happens now. Cool.
hololive has an anime and it has 29 leads
Odekake hololive, English title hololive: Let's Head Out!, is a TV anime from Studio KAI with COVER Corporation credited as original work. An omnibus travel story. Twenty-nine hololive talents in it, across generations. Director Shunsuke Machitani, series composition Kodai Minami. Teased September 7, full reveal September 23, no premiere window yet.
Twenty-nine leads is not a cast, it is a roster, and the format tells you that. Omnibus means every episode is a different group going somewhere, which means every fanbase gets its episode, which means the anime is a product catalog with a road trip on top. Is that cynical? Sure. Is it wrong? The talents are the product. The show is honest about what it is. That puts it ahead of most.
The fall ranking
Anime Corner's most anticipated Fall 2026 poll, 7,601 votes: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 at 16.42 percent, The Apothecary Diaries Season 3 at 15.16, Blue Box Season 2 at 6.29, Black Clover Season 2 at 5.47. Steel Ball Run came in ninth at 3.05, which is low for JoJo and probably means people are counting Stage 1 as already out. Suikoden: The Anime, October 3, did not make the top ten. It will be in this section anyway.
On the desk
The desk is back and it is rewatching. Hunter x Hunter and Jujutsu Kaisen, both from the top, with reaction videos running alongside. His words: watching people react to the shows "makes me feel like I'm a little bit more a part of it." Also his words: "I'm rewatching it again for the first time, which is really fun." That is a sentence that only makes sense if you have done it and makes complete sense if you have.
The timing on Hunter x Hunter is not an accident even if it was. The manga came back June 29, ran ten chapters, and went back on hiatus September 7, with a fourth stage play announced for the Chimera Ant arc in the same breath. Ten chapters a year is the pace now. The 2011 anime is 148 episodes and does not stop. Rewatch wins.
He is, quote, extremely excited for the new JJK season. For the record: Season 4 is confirmed as Culling Game Part 2, MAPPA, trailer shown in June at the MAPPA 25th anniversary event, no date announced, nothing at Anime Expo. The gap between seasons has been about two years. Do not hold your breath. Hold the rewatch.
Open loop: which arc he lands on and whether Hunter x Hunter or JJK wins the rewatch. Next week, or when the desk says.