If there is one thing that people who have not even seen JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure know about the show, it’s the Roundabout meme, where the slow guitar windup of the song “Roundabout” by Yes scales up only to freeze frame with a “to be continued” on the bottom right. This is patterned after the end theme of the first season, and every subsequent season has ended with a different strange licensed song. Well, for Steel Ball Run they went in a different direction, and it sucks ass.
The original.
Before we get into the song, let’s just go over the weird choices that were made in previous seasons:
- “Roundabout” by Yes
- “Walk Like An Egyptian” by The Bangles
- “Last Train Home” by Pat Metheny Group
- “I Want You” by Savage Garden
- “Freek’n You” by Jodeci
- “Distant Dreamer” by Duffy
Each of these licensed tracks was an idiosyncratic choice picked by JoJo mangaka Hirohiko Araki that added character to the setting of each arc. This time around, however, they went with a new song by Yuki Chiba, who so recently collaborated with Machine Gun Kelly on the deeply cringeworthy track “JJK.” The JoJo end theme or "Dead Or Alive” (Shinukaikiruka) is a deeply mediocre track, which I would be less annoyed with if it wasn’t also produced by Dr. Luke, a man who was accused of drugging and raping singer Kesha which ended with several lawsuits that they settled out of court. The beat is pure ass, and it’s not much of a song. On top of the song sucking and being fraught due to its association, it feels bafflingly out of character, like they were forced to do this by higher ups or there was some aggressive record deal involved.
Kinda beat that sounds like Garage Band needs Lactaid.
The reaction I’ve seen has been almost uniformly bad. One needs only look at the YouTube comments to see how bad the fan reaction has been, both in Japanese and in English. It’s just brutal. Here is a quick sampling of the Youtube comments.
– “Even the horses in the outro are trying to escape the song”
– “Kars is lucky since he's floating in space”
– “this song has to be one of diavolo’s deaths”
– "’Valorant e-sport team introduction’ ahh song”
– “This story is the tale of me starting to walk. Not in the philosophical sense… but in the walking over to grab the TV remote to skip this song sort of way.”
– “Perfect intro song for a 2014 youtube gaming channel”
– “hope this song become lost media🥀🥀🥀"
Meanwhile, the opening? Kinda a heater!
But hey, it’s not all bad. I actually like the intro song “Spin” by Kroi. It’s far from my favorite, but it gets your blood pumping, and it fits the theme.
And there is still an easy way for them to fix this: Just edit the outro to a new song. People have already started doing edits with “Horse with No Name” and The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. It’s not unusual for them to do multiple songs in the same season, but this song is so universally loathed that they may wanna accelerate that timeline just a little bit.
