Since the Stone Ocean anime quietly finished on Netflix in 2022 with little social media activity from Netflix about the release of their exclusive anime, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fans have been anxious about history repeating itself. The hope was that its seventh part, Steel Ball Run, would be released weekly like other seasonal anime. Instead, it seems there’s a secret third, worse outcome at play: the series releasing in “stages” through longer episodic cuts, with a second episode scheduled to premiere sometime in 2026, and fans are plaguing every Netflix social media post about it.
If you click on any Netflix Anime post on X/Twitter updating fans about when new shows are releasing on the streamer each week, the comments and quote retweets of such posts are littered with a barrage of horror-core edits of Steel Ball Run protagonist Johnny Joestar—most notably, one where he’s depicted with the Mangekyo Sharingan from Naruto. The SBR meme image is a spoof of another meme of Chicago drill rapper King Von, who is known for writing songs about killing people. You don’t need me to help you connect the dots on the relevance of JoJo fans spamming the meme under Netflix posts that are hyping up SBR‘s first episode, which cracked the top 10 global non-English shows on the streamer, while essentially playing in fans’ faces about its lack of a release schedule. Though if we had to hand it to them, the meme is a touch clever since a whole part of JJBA is pop culture music references.
💀 INSOLITE : LES FANS DE JOJO ont lancés une campagne de spam dans les commentaires des posts NETFLIX suite à la non diffusion de l’épisode 2 de l’anime STEEL BALL RUN 😭
Le mème de Johnny Joestar (Creepy) vient du rappeur US ‘King Von’ qui était connu pour éliminer ses opps… pic.twitter.com/ilexHEA5X1
— Gaak.fr (@gaak_fr) March 31, 2026
Essentially, every post sends the same message: telling Netflix they don’t care about what fans want to know and that fans are eager for updates on the next SBR episode. This kind of social media protest from fans makes sense (at first), as Netflix has been strangely vague about the show’s release schedule, and even the anime’s director, Yasuhiro Kimura, told AniTrendz he isn’t exactly sure when the next episode will air. The lack of transparency around the series has left fans especially angry, as if Netflix is intentionally killing the hype for a show that, during its weekly Crunchyroll releases, fans affectionately called “JoJo Fridays” to celebrate.
— A24 (@A24) April 2, 2026
The whole situation has gotten so out of control that A24 has seemingly joined in on the matter, like Donald Glover walking in on a house on fire in Community, getting ahead of the trend by posting its own SBR meme under a Netflix post about Beef Season 2 of the show’s logo in the same typography as the anime’s. Naturally, the only thing the meme accomplished was fanning the flames of an already aggravated beehive, leading outraged JJBA fans to pestering other fandoms that have nothing to do with whatever David Production and Netflix have going on with SBR‘s release.
To be honest, even as a JoJo fan, the meme trend has gotten annoying really fast. Not just because it’s showing up everywhere, but particularly when its fans hijack the hype for weekly-releasing shows like Dorohedoro. It’s pretty much the evil eye, with JJBA fans upset that Dorohedoro has a weekly release on Netflix when their show doesn’t, not taking into account that it has a lot to do with the show sharing streaming rights with Crunchyroll, in a similar fashion to Dan Da Dan. Regardless, it’s led to Dorohedoro fans feeling pretty confused being thrown into a fandom war about release schedules despite the fact that their show has had an even longer journey to get a second season on account of animation studio Mappa being busy animating Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Attack on Titan in the six-year interim of its first season hitting Netflix.
I’D SACRIFICE A THOUSAND JOJO’S FOR EVERY Q HAYASHIDA ANIME TO BE RELEASED WEEKLY https://t.co/XsOv5mOpwx pic.twitter.com/TyAQpWEkZJ
— diossaro (@drizzypostingls) April 2, 2026
All that to say, the SBR situation is crazy, and it’s only gotten more annoying for everyone in part because of the lack of transparency from Netflix and David Production, as well as disgruntled anime fans acting out. io9 reached out to Netflix for comment and will have an update once one is available.
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