While we all wait for the continuation of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run anime, it is probably worth noting that there was a time when this strange and sometimes misguided arc wasn’t an official part of the JoJo’s storyline at all. Despite having many of the trappings of a JoJo’s story, including a JoJo, a Dio, and a weird, ill-defined power available to some of the characters, Steel Ball Run was originally marketed as a completely stand-alone manga, which is probably why it barely feels like a JoJo’s story at all.

After the end of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, the series seemingly came to an end. The universe was reset, and a new timeline, free from Dio’s influence, was created. The fate of the Joestar family is unknown, but the world is safe, which is the important thing. We have a bittersweet ending, but it is an ending all the same. 

Then, just under a year later, Hirohiko Araki launches a new manga titled Steel Ball Run, which is published in Weekly Shonen Jump but lacks the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure title. It takes place around the same time that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood is set, albeit on the other side of the world. This time, characters are racing across America in an epic horse race. There are no stands. No Hamon. It appeared to be a totally new story.

Except it clearly wasn’t. The main characters are all obvious references to JoJo mainstays. Johnny Joestar is a paraplegic jockey who forms a rivalry with Diego Brando. If that was too subtle, Diego has the word DIO on his hat for no apparent reason other than to clarify that this is at least JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure-adjacent. Most of the other characters are references to other JoJo figures. Gyro Zeppeli is the first to introduce Johnny to Spin, this series’ new weird power that restores the use of his legs. There is even an early reference to Avdol, who features heavily in Stardust Crusaders.

So what was the deal? Why was Steel Ball Run not marketed as the next JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure when it first started serialization, despite the fact that it is clearly meant to be at least tangentially connected to the Joestar Family? The answer to that isn’t entirely clear, but it may have something to do with the way the manga was published. For the 23 chapters of its 95-chapter run, Steel Ball Run was published in Weekly Shonen Jump. Then, just over a year after the first chapter of Steel Ball Run ran, it was moved to Ultra Jump.

That move came with the announcement that Steel Ball Run was, indeed, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7. It also changed the frequency at which new JoJo’s chapters are published, moving from a weekly format to a monthly release schedule. Most importantly, just a few chapters into its Ultra Jump run, Johnny Joestar first develops his Stand ability, which brings the action more in line with what had been established in previous arcs of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The move to Ultra Jump, despite separating the title from other JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure stories in publication, ultimately brought Steel Ball Run closer to what had come before.

What we ended up with was a new universe for Araki to play in, free from the generations of continuity that he had established in the first six parts of his epic manga. Steel Ball Run continued in this new universe, as did the subsequent JoJolion and JoJoLands story arcs. Despite a confusing publication history, Steel Ball Run has become one of the most important JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure arcs to date because it showed that Araki was willing to change things so much that we can barely recognize what we’re reading, yet still make it feel like JoJo.

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