The four words on every JoJo fan’s mind recently have been “Steel Ball Run confirmed.” With a couple of years distance from Stone Ocean‘s finale, fans are dying for more; fortunately, JoJo‘s seventh part was finally announced during April’s JOJODAY event. Every JoJo fan—even those who haven’t read Steel Ball Run—are excited to see the franchise’s next universe come to life after Stone Ocean resolutely brought an end to its first.
Of course, that’s the heart of Steel Ball Run: JoJo‘s new universe, complete with new mechanics, genealogies, and conflicts. But what if that universe never happened? With one brief hint, Hirohiko Araki gave fans a vision of a JoJo world that would never come to be—and its implications are as fascinating as Araki’s reasons for changing course and starting over from zero.
Blink and you miss it: with Steel Ball Run on everyone’s mind, it’s time to ponder what might have been.
The Heart Of The Theory: Stone Ocean‘s Stray Info Panel
One particular panel from Stone Ocean volume 13 has captured fans’ imaginations for years. After Father Pucci consumes the Green Baby and receives the Joestar birthmark, three of Dio’s sons—Donatello Versus, Rykiel, and Ungalo—are drawn to him by the birthmark’s attractive power. In the midst of these battles at the tail end of Stone Ocean Chapter 115 (“Sky High Part 4”), Araki peppers in a biography (stylized as a “privilege card”) for Rykiel. Nestled within is an eye-catching couplet.
“Giorno Giovanna (refer to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5, Golden Wind) is also a son of DIO, but then, why was he not drawn to the priest as well?” Araki ponders. “This is a mystery, but… perhaps he is already somewhere in Florida.”
It’s easy to dismiss Araki’s nod to the Goldilocks mafioso in Stone Ocean Volume 13 as simply teasing his readers. There’s one simple reason you should take it at face value, though: Araki himself. Full disclosure: Araki never came out and said what the original ending would have been. However, he did make clear that he once had other intentions. “That is the end of Stone Ocean, which was changed and redrawn at the last minute,” reads the 2009 afterword to JoJo‘s sixth part.
In fact, Araki gives an indication of when said “last minute” might have happened in the same afterword: “Time itself was getting faster and faster and outpacing human senses, approaching infinity itself, or at least as close to infinity as possible. I thought to myself then that no Stand ability could ever surpass it.”
By extension, the “then” when Araki sensed his creative peak is during the Cape Canaveral confrontation. Fearing his own pinnacle, Araki decided to make Pucci’s stand “even more powerful” so he could start over completely. However, this all also implies that Stone Ocean was originally meant to end with Pucci’s defeat (or at the very least with the thwarting of Made in Heaven’s universal reset). Fans have speculated since Stone Ocean‘s conclusion that Rykiel’s biography indicated Giorno’s return—and that Giorno is the missing puzzle piece to its original ending.
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Cobbling Together Stone Ocean’s Original Ending
It turns out there’s a very solid case to be made for Giorno’s return. Volume 13 was released on September 4, 2002, coincident with the Heavy Weather arc’s publication in Weekly Shonen Jump—and months before Jolyne and crew headed to Cape Canaveral for the final showdown against Pucci (Stone Ocean Chapter 138, November 2, 2002). If Araki changed his mind at the last minute, then it’s at least plausible that the teaser was genuine and, at that point, Giorno was meant to show up during the Cape Canaveral fight.
The case becomes stronger, though, if we let ourselves be led by the birthmark in true JoJo fashion. The Giorno teaser appearing during the Heavy Weather arc’s publication isn’t a coincidence, considering the Heavy Weather arc itself is founded on Weather Report and Pucci’s connection, symbolized and realized through the Joestar birthmark. The fact it came after battling a son of Dio called into action by the birthmark is also a point in favor of the argument.
The continuity of the Joestar bloodline had been a focus since Golden Wind muddied the waters with Giorno, the birthmark-emblazoned son of Dio; it was at play early in Stone Ocean with the emphasis on Jolyne and Jotaro’s relationship. Above all, though, the indelible connection inlaid between possessors of the Joestar birthmark is essential to Stone Ocean‘s finale, a veritable battle royale of birthmark bearers.
The birthmark theme was Araki’s endgame from the start, meticulously blocking out the major plot beats of Stone Ocean from the word “go”. The presence of Dio’s diary and the concept of “Heaven” were solidified as plot devices as early as Chapter 48 (December 11, 2000). The fluidity with which the birthmark-bearing Green Baby comes into play in Chapter 77 (July 23, 2001) is made all the more evident by the revelation of the diary’s actual contents in Chapter 96 (January 1, 2002).
Meanwhile, the foreshadowing of Made in Heaven’s mechanics via C-MOON’s effects on time and gravity in Chapter 104 (January 29, 2002) appeared several months before Araki ever teased Giorno’s return. The more you look into the timeline, the weirder it seems that Giorno didn’t return after all, and the less his return sounds like it would be simple fan service.
For Araki, Stone Ocean‘s Original Ending Wasn’t Made In Heaven
Araki hints that Pucci was originally weaker in the same stroke as he says that, to bring the original universe to an end, he had to make him even stronger. Yet he also gives an indication of where the mechanics of Made in Heaven stood when he describes his creative peak, showing that extreme time acceleration (via the gravitational mechanics) was already Made in Heaven’s foundation.
It’s clear that even a weaker Pucci with the same time acceleration mechanics could easily overpower a past-his-prime Jotaro, Jolyne’s Stone Free, and so on. The only major known Stands with restoration abilities that can actually oppose Made in Heaven’s mechanics are Giorno’s Gold Experience and Josuke’s Crazy Diamond. While neither is quite strong enough to stand up against Made in Heaven, even in a weaker iteration, Gold Experience Requiem just might be with its ability to absolutely negate somebody’s will.
It’s also known that Giorno kept the Stand arrow at the end of Golden Wind, so even if Gold Experience lost Requiem when the Stand arrow dislodges from it after the fight with Diavolo, a Gold Experience Requiem revival is totally possible. In fact, there’s an even more tantalizing possibility: that Giorno brings the Stand arrow and Stone Free is chosen for a Requiem upgrade. Knowing Araki’s creativity, it’s fascinating to consider how Stone Free’s extant abilities might have been upgraded to play with time and space.
At any rate, the original ending for Stone Ocean isn’t known in detail, but it’s obvious that Giorno was supposed to play a part somehow, and also that Pucci was supposed to be defeated before Made in Heaven accelerated time beyond a certain velocity. With Steel Ball Run‘s anime looming, though, JoJo fans who have read the manga know that Araki’s intuition was on the money. Araki had written himself into a corner in Stone Ocean that would have been difficult to escape, but Steel Ball Run sees JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure develop a whole new conceptual arsenal.
JoJo fans have been mulling over the possibility of Stone Ocean ending differently for years now, and we want to hear what you think. If you have a favorite imagining or thoughts about how a Giorno appearance might play out, drop a comment below.
The post JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: With Steel Ball Run Coming, It’s Time to Remember Stone Ocean’s Original Ending appeared first on ComicBook.com.
