>>16273
He makes the mistake of assuming that Araki is mentally coherent enough to have long term lessons planned out.
He thinks Araki has any idea what he's writing, when really the guy is all vibes and riffing.
We do have an idea of where Steel Ball Run came from.
Araki felt like he peaked the series power levels with Part 6 and either needed to restart or reset to write the kinds of fights he's working with.
He also got into his head this idea of 'divergences on the path of fate'. This is what we see at the end of Part 6, where Emporio knows his fate but can't avoid the big events, while still changing the little ones. Part 4 also leaned into this.
This eventually led to Araki talking to his editors about there being 'many Stone Oceans' -
>Q: Part 7 takes place in a parallel world from the rest of JoJo up to that point. What were Araki-sensei's thoughts on this?
>Shima: From his point of view, "it's alright if it's not connected to Part 6, right?" On the topic of Part 6, he also said, "That's just one of the many Stone Oceans." By the end of Part 6, he had told me about his plans for Part 7, but only in vague terms like, "The next part is about the steel ball." So at first I had no idea what he was talking about (laughs).
The same story happening in many ways alongside one another, with little differences in what characters did along the way.
It might have been him looking to square the circle between Free Will and Determinism. Free Will exists for the little stuff, but we're all going the same direction in the end. Gravity's pull is absolute, but you're able to twist and turn inside of it.
Regardless, this idea of parallel but distinct timelines gets us to Part 7 in a very straight forward way.
Jonathan Joestar is still there. But this one is smaller, meaner, and a cripple because of a chain of events that led to his family moving to America, rather than staying in England.
Except he still gets involved in a struggle to save the world from a great malevolent evil. He masters an esoteric foreign martial art. And he befriends a Zeppeli that dies for him. And eventually his bloodline ends up in Japan, and Morioh in specific.
Its all headed the same direction, but there are divergences along the way. The paths through Fate are basically consistent.
Araki has also only become edgier and more cynical as he's aged.
He or the editors might have thought it tasteless to write this into the last universe.