Location from Steel Ball Run by Hirohiko Araki
The iconic Western landscape of towering red buttes and mesas — where Steel Ball Run becomes a true Western, and several defining battles play out against the most cinematic backdrop in America.
Monument Valley is where Araki's love of Western cinema becomes the literal backdrop. The buttes and mesas provide tactical terrain for Stand battles — elevation changes, narrow passages, shade and exposure. The landscape is both obstacle and arena. Key early-race confrontations occur here, including encounters with Valentine's agents and the first serious clashes between rival racers. The terrain funnels riders through predictable paths, making ambushes inevitable. Diego excels here — his Scary Monsters dinosaur forms are adapted to this kind of terrain, and the isolation suits his predatory style. The Western imagery is deliberate. Steel Ball Run is, among other things, Araki's love letter to the American West, and Monument Valley is where that love is most visible. Cowboys, gunslingers, and dinosaurs against red rock and blue sky.
Colossal sandstone buttes rise from a flat desert floor of red-orange sand, their shapes carved by millennia of wind and water into cathedral-like formations. The sky is impossibly blue against the red rock. Shadows stretch for miles at dawn and dusk. The scale is inhuman — the formations dwarf horses and riders, reducing them to specks against geological time. Heat shimmers distort the air. The silence between wind gusts is absolute.
Also known as: The Valley, Monument Valley