One thing i dont understand is jojo chars being mftl at part 1-3 then suddenly drop to FTL?
Araki deliberatly toned it down come Part 4. They've talked about it a lot in the 90s when Part 4 was ongoing. To be specific, the reason for it seems to be literally trying to avoid falling into DBZ bullshit based on the Nisio Q&A.
Coincidentally though, he toned it back up for Part 5, recent JoJo mag flat out states Part 5 has way higher speed on average compared to Part 4 for example.
"Araki: Lines like that make characters seem more powerful. It makes you wonder what would happen if that character was the culprit. It’s hard to stop reading.
Nisio: Jojo had a big influence on that. The enemy characters in Jojo all have depth.
Araki: Yes, I was going for that.
Nisio: There are no throwaway characters. Especially after Stands come into the story, there are Stands that seems weak but can be strong depending on how they’re used. Like (Stand: Bad Company. Only 10 cm tall, but 500 in number!) might just be the strongest.
Araki: That’s right, haha. Well for manga in the eighties, the enemies always keep getting stronger and stronger. But there has to be a limit somewhere, and it gets tremendously exhausting.
Nisio: Like when they go ‘the one you just defeated was the weakest of us.’
Araki: To break through that, I tried to have characters that are strong from an alternate point of view, or who are only strong in a single aspect.
Nisio: So like ‘There’s no such thing as strong or weak.’
Araki: It’s so exhausting to write manga where the enemies keep getting stronger and stronger. It’s like, “they’re already this strong, and they’re still getting stronger!?” and every week you worry about what you’re going to do. And then you get to the height of the bubble and it’s like, what now? It’s a very scary writing method. It’s fine if you do it once. When the strongest enemy gets introduced, you’ll get so popular that the publisher tells you not to stop. But as a writer, you can’t go any further.
Nisio: I wonder who started this inflation of power. It must have been a really crazy idea at first… Whoever it was, using this technique is like reaching a dead end or slash-and-burn farming. I think Jojo was a revolution in that area.
Araki: It was more like an escape route than a revolution, haha. But I think that’s how people work.
It’s like how someone with a strong punch isn’t necessarily strong."
"
The first enemies were student-level enemies like Okuyasu and Keicho, also the guitarist Akira Otoishi—at first I was thinking of student level, delinquent level enemies. The reason for that being that I didn’t want to make a sort of ‘Greatest enemy’. When you create a ‘Greatest enemy’ to be overcome, to be the goal, the readers can’t focus on anything besides that. I didn’t want that to become a weakness in the work. For every story I wrote, I wanted the attention to be on what’s happening right now."
And a whole bunch more. The design philosphy actively changed from unga bunga, power escalation and more to simply, targeted focuses, niche stuff. Part 4 was the start, Araki even got letters while writing with dudes yapping about how Kira seemed weak as shit compared to DIO, which, yeah, to this day Plat is still "the strongest Stand", JoJo mag dropped two more glaze statements for him.
In terms of stats, JoJo peaks at like Part 3, drops in Part 4, goes back up a lil in Part 5, is actual dog shit for parts 6/7/8/9 with the exception being the top dogs (even Part 7's philosphy is less Stands can fight, but more Stands can grant an ability to the main body for combat, hell Tusk is actively so weak he hides behind Johnny till Act 4).
Unironically I thought Polnareff had MFTL reaction speed listed like the other Crusaders, that's on me
They don't either. Kakyoin is as low as High Hypersonic. Jotaro is built diff, Pol is hovering around rel because he like, reacts to light at two different points but has trouble keeping up with it so kind of self explanatory. Joseph, Jotaro, and ******* Avdol of all dudes (perception only, he can perceive but he cant actually move or take action, he almost got his hands chopped off because of it even) the only ones with proper scaling.
If you're going to complain, at least do it right, or don't, because it's obnoxious.
