Netflix’s Steel Ball Run Misstep

As Season 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen neared its conclusion, another hyped animanga was stealing the spotlight. On March 19, 2026, Episode 1 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run was released. Many fans of JJBA widely consider this part of the show to be overall the most enjoyable in the entire series, and Heaven’s Door had finally opened for them. After the manga concluded this part in April of 2011, many fans were desperately awaiting animation for it, and on March 19th, it finally came. Or so we thought. The first episode came with a length of 47 minutes, and everyone enjoyed it. There was not a single complaint from people besides review bombers, since everyone considered the episode a “Golden Experience”. However, on March 26th, 2026, JJBA fans were patiently waiting for the next episode, but it never came. Fans were in a haze and bombarded Netflix with questions until a supposed official release schedule came.

The word on the street was that Netflix released the first episode and would resume with their releases in the fall of 2026, and Netflix then got themselves some Bad Company. JJBA fans across the world relentlessly attacked Netflix on several social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, constantly asking, “Where is SBR?” “Where is SBR Ep 2?” It got to the point where, on Netflix’s official TikTok page, the top comments on their posts were all about Steel Ball Run and the fans that they angered. Netflix stayed resilient about it for a while, since they were taking advantage of the media attention that they were getting, and the revenue from the activity on their TikToks increased significantly since the drama occurred. The online hate Netflix was getting eventually created echoes on other platforms, where someone who worked on the production for the anime spoke out about it, saying they were not expecting this release schedule from Netflix, and they found it quite bizarre themselves.

After it got to the point where the producers were unhappy with them, they made an official announcement and also released a trailer for Episode 2. They confirmed that in the fall, there would be weekly releases following Episode 2, for 11 episodes at the minimum. However, the sheer heart attack that fans gave Netflix was not simply out of arrogance or out of stubbornness; it was because Netflix had actually done this type of thing before. For Part 6, Stone Ocean, Netflix was also the official platform that the anime would be released on, and they took the release schedule and planned to release episodes in batches of 11 or 12 with widely separated timeframes for each batch, causing the popularity of Part 6: Stone Ocean to fade.

This ruined Part 6 for a lot of people, since they forgot about it within the long gaps Netflix set between releases. This was the primary reason behind the backlash from JoJo’s fans. However, the relentless attack on Netflix eventually died down, and now that there was confirmation of Episode 2 and a weekly release format, the outrage faded.