Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan OVA E01-04 Review

Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Episode 1: Millionaire Village

So yeah, a while back, they did a couple of OVA's for the spinoff for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, "Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan", starring Rohan from Part 4. As a supplementary spin-off from Part IV, these OVA's were originally included as bonus material for the Part 4 Blu-Rays or something, and I've not gotten the chance to watch them until relatively recently. While I am preparing myself for the Stone Ocean anime's second and third batches, I thought I'll watch these OVA's.

The Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan stories have all been pretty interesting. Other than Rohan's own Heaven's Door, no traditional Stand battles appear, but... it really does fit into the strangeness of the JoJo world. Part 1 and 2 crafted a bizarre world even before the introduction of Stands, and even in Part 4, we do get creepy things that are technically not Stands like the ghosts, Mikitaka, or the ghost alley.

The stories -- and these OVA's -- get new framing animation of Rohan telling this to Okuyasu, Koichi and a non-speaking Jotaro, providing a bit more of a tie-in to Diamond is Unbreakable beyond Rohan's presence. We start off the 'Millionaire Village' with Rohan talking to his editor Izumi, who is... a bit over-enthusiastic about talking about how Rohan should use a mountain villa as a reference for his next manga. Rohan goes through a glorious oi oi oi oi oi oi oi rant, and Izumi ends up letting Rohan know that there are a lot of successful young men who went up to the village, bought a house there and became super-successful. There are some fun jokes about how Rohan questions Izumi if she's going to buy the villa as reference, or if it's Shueisha making the purchase. 

Seriously, though, I don't think Shueisha will randomly drop, like, a couple million yen just to buy mountain villas as an artistic 'research'. 

Did feel like the exposition about the mountain villa is a bit too long and takes up a bit too much time for what's essentially just Rohan and Izumi talking to each other, but this isn't a typical JoJo action-packed episode. Rohan and Izumi hike to the outskirts of the village and rescue a little baby bird, and Izumi emphasizes on Rohan the sheer attention on decorum that the villagers have. A strange, black-eyed servant called Ikkyu greets them, and leads them into a waiting room. 

Rohan and Izumi are served tea, quickly realizing that this is a hidden test to see whether they can comply with manners. As soon as Izumi grabs the teacup, however, Ikkyu opens the door to inform them that Izumi had made three offenses. They sat on the wrong-facing chairs, they stepped on the tatami borders, and Izumi hooks her finger into the teacup. It's an exaggeration of the politeness demanded by certain people, except, of course, the price to pay is much deadlier than just snotty rich people scoffing at you. 

Izumi begs for a second chance and Ikkyu walks out... and the anime does a pretty great job at drawing the shadowy menacing aura around Ikkyu and the aura, as Rohan realizes that something's not quite right. The baby bird in his pocket explodes into a geyser of blood and bugs, while Izumi is called and found out that her mother and fiancee died in a car crash. Hysterical, Ikkyu walks in to reveal that his masters had agreed for a second chance. 

Rohan gets angry and uses Heaven's Door, reading about what Ikkyu's true nature is. The 'gods of the mountain' are the ones responsible here, and we get a pretty creepy showcase of the trees being distorted to ghoulish, angry faces. Ikkyu continues to emphasize that manners are absolute, and talks about how the gods of the mountain give and take as they will. Izumi begins to have a heart attack in response to Rohan's breach of etiquette (turning someone into a book is rude!) but Rohan demands a second chance. 

Ikkyu gives Rohan an ear of corn, but then shows that he's able to get past the 'traps' of chopsticks, forks and knives because the way to eat a corn is with both hands. Ikkyu doesn't realize that he's been affected by Heaven's Door, and ends up breaking etiquette by stepping on the tatami lines. Thus, Rohan ends up getting the bird and Izumi's family back (the latter is established in the epilogue). Ikkyu is angry, but as Rohan reminds him, the rules of manners are absolute, and walks out of the mountain victorious. 

And, again, the story itself doesn't really 'build up' into the story of Diamond is Unbreakable, and is just something fun for Rohan Kishibe to do. It feels like a standalone episode in a series of standalone 'a Stand user is walking around exploring stuff' thing. It's very... well, creepy horror aside, it's a relatively faithful, well-voiced and well-animated from the source material. Individual chapters of Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan are extremely self-contained anyway, so it is kind of an ideal thing to adapt out of order, or to adapt the 'series' incompletely. Pretty fun, pretty creepy... and sure, it doesn't add much to the Part 4 story as a whole (unlike something like Purple Haze Feedback or Crazy Diamond's Demonic Heartbreak) but it's neat to just have a light-hearted, standalone story, y'know? 

Random Notes:

• The official numbering follows the chapter of the one-shot series this is based on, which is 'Episode 5', but we'll do it per release schedule for simplicity's sake. There is also a live-action TV Drama, which I'll probably review when I'm done with the Stone Ocean anime. 
• I do wonder if the random pre-drawing exercise is something that Araki also does? 
• Akira (Red Hot Chili Peppers) shows up in the background of the present-day scenes. 
• The names might sound pretty normal, but as with any JoJo material, there's some reference! Izumi Kyoka is named after a Japanese writer. 
• Wait, how does the Isetan on the mountain villa village really work? 

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Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Episode 2: Mutsukabe Hill

This one is a bit more different. While "Millionaire Village" features Rohan in both the ghost story and the framing stories, Rohan isn't really featured in the main story of Mutsukabe Hill, and only really gets involved near the end. 

The framing story begins when a different editor, Minoru Kaigamori, talks to Rohan about his recent manga, finding out that Rohan is flat-out broke. This follows up on the anime-exclusive scene of Rohan talking to Koichi and Okuyasu about his living conditions in the previous episode. Rohan talks about how he spent all his money buying up several mountains around a certain mountain, and despite his editor's skepticism, Rohan claims to have seen the yokai with his own eyes. 

And a chunk of the story is told with Rohan as the narrator. A wealthy heiress of an estate called Naoko Osato was having a relationship with the gardener of the estate, called Gunpei. However, the fact that Naoko had an arranged marriage meant that she ends up calling off the relationship with her boyfriend during an argument. Demanding that Gunpei leave just as her father and fiancé arrive outside of the building, Gunpei hugs Naoko and she shoves him, knocking Gunpei to a bag of golf clubs. One of it pierces Gunpei in the head, killing him instantly. 

What follows is a rather horrific sequence as Gunpei's corpse keeps bleeding blood -- even unnaturally so, with the corpse shriveling up and spurting blood long after the heart stops beating, and even when Naoko has covered up the wounds with bandages and stitches. There's a bit of a tense situation as Naoko's fiancé asks to be let in, and Naoko keeps coming up with excuses as she panics over killing Gunpei. She rolls up Gunpei in a carpet and stuffs him on top of a cupboard, before pretending to clean the room when she's actually drinking the blood that flows out from her wound. 

We then flash-forward through Naoko's life. She married Shuichi, but keeps Gunpei's body in the attic. Gunpei's corpse keeps producing a fixed amount of blood that Naoko disposes of every day, and she also continues to have an obsession with the corpse.

And then we finally see Rohan, who went off to Mutsu-kabe Hill, after meeting Naoko and reading her life experiences through the book. Rohan wants to witness Gunpei directly, and goes to the area. A little girl talks to Rohan, and as Rohan talks to her, she trips and falls and apparently dies when she bashes her head against the rock. Rohan recognizes how bad the situation looks if the real estate agent arrives, but also realizes that the girl is Gunpei and Naoko's child. Rohan is ready to run, but realizes that the corpse is going to literally 'haunt' him, as it starts moving towards Rohan even as it disintegrates. Rohan uses Heaven's Door to try and understand what's going on, and then just scribbles in an order -- that the girl will not be able to perceive or remember Rohan Kishibe. We get to see a terrifying jump-scare as Heaven's Door's effect dissipates, and the yokai screeches in unholy terror before reverting back to her 'little girl' form. Unable to perceive Rohan, she skips away. 

Rohan then gets confronted by the rest of the Part 4 cast (this scene is original to the OVA), namely Koichi, Okuyasu, the still-nonspeaking Josuke and Mikitaka! Mikitaka gets to be his usual alien stuff, and Rohan asks Mikitaka if he's an alien... and of course the anime cuts away to Rohan's final epilogue narration before we get to see if Rohan confirms this with Heaven's Door.

And... yeah. A rather spooky one, and this feels like something from a Junji Ito short story collection. I mean that in the best way! This adapts one of the earlier "Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan" one-shot mangas, and I do wonder if some of these earlier stories were originally meant to just be about the horror stories with Rohan being even more tacked-on than the other issues? Anyway, pretty spooky stuff.

Random Notes:

• ...I really should've done these spooky episodes on October, huh? 
• Tamami ("The Lock") and Akira ("Red Hot Chili Peppers") briefly show up to ask Rohan for his autograph, and Rohan uses coffee flicks to sign his name and draw a picture of Heaven's Door on them. 
• Rohan had to sell off his Sailor Moon figurines, his Rurouni Kenshin comics and his Led Zeppelin CD's -- all explicitly named -- in order to buy the mountains. Rohan also identifies that there are other ways that mangaka can irresponsibly spend money other than supercars and video gaming basements.
• I was about to say that 'blood isn't that easy to clean off the floor', but I suppose this is supernatural blood. 
• Was it really necessary for Naoko to strip to her underwear? And she somehow manages to roll up Gunpei's body and get dressed during the time that Shuichi opens the door. 
• The real estate agent that Rohan talks to is original to the OVA and they added him probably to give some sense of tension that Rohan will be 'discovered'.

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Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Episode 3: The Run

So in a bit of a departure from the previous two episodes (and the next one), this episode starts off with Rohan not talking to the rest of the Part IV cast, but to the audience, about how he did some foolish things that resulted in an accident that severely injured his hand.

Rohan then introduces us to the weird guy of this episode, Hashimoto Yoma, who's scouted by a model production agency who sweet-talks him and puts it in his head that the way to become successful is to have a good physique. Thus lead Yoma's insane work regimen, exercising in a gym and eventually becoming so obsessed with his training. His girlfriend Mika starts off being annoyed at more mundane gym freak stuff like weights in the apartment and doing jump-rope-skips in the living room, but then Yoma starts demanding her to fix him food that fits only to his insane diet (no pollock roe spaghetti for him!) and screaming at a delivery man for knocking the door and interrupting him. 

In the gym, Rohan meets Yoma and casually challenges him to what he thinks is a friendly match -- something that our favourite competitive mangaka would definitely do. Yoma also gets more and more frustrated in the gym when he realizes that the gym trainers actually have to prioritize certain customers over others. Eventually, at the sight of Yoma putting wall-climbing boulders all over their room, Mika finally flips out -- particularly at the fact that Yoma stole money from her debit account to buy these equipment. Mika demands Yoma leave her and her apartment, and Yoma... scuttles down the side of the building, which he has attached these rock-climbing things at. 

And... yeah. I wonder if this is based on a real person Araki knows, but I have seen some people get super-obsessed about something. Not necessarily just bodybuilding, but self-beautification, video gaming, sports... something that so wholly consumes their lives that they think it's going to just take 'just a little bit more training' until they get their big break and they splurge not just money but also their loved ones' money and lose all kinds of good relationship with their loved ones. It's honestly pretty tragic, and where the previous Kishibe Rohan episodes have been far more fantastical, there's a degree of groundedness in this one that makes it pretty terrifying in a different way. 

The final stretch of the episode actually features Rohan 'fighting' against Yoma, in what Rohan thinks is yet another friendly match ('friendly' by Rohan's prickly terms, anyway). They run side by side on two treadmills connected to the same remote on a table between them, which sounds like a gigantic safety hazard. 

Rohan realizes that the 'playful' and 'friendly' teasing he's doing is really pissing Yoma off, who views this with an intensity that Rohan didn't expect from what's just a regular gym workout for him. Yoma shows off his toned body, and Rohan realizes that the muscles around his back, leg and even around his ears have contorted to resemble wings. 

Yoma then grabs a dumbbell and tosses it to break the window behind them -- which somehow goes unnoticed by the gym staff. The loser who can't grab the remote will inevitably fall to certain death outside the window. We get a rather well-animated and well-scored sequence as the speed increases and increases. Rohan tries to grab the remote to save himself, but Yoma grabs and breaks three of Rohan's fingers, leading to the injury we saw in the prologue. 

Rohan uses Heaven's Door on Yoma, and finds out to his horror that between the scenes of Yoma leaving his girlfriend and his competition with Rohan, Yoma had murdered Mika, the delivery boy, and another one of the gym's patrons all for interfering with his training. Absolutely horrified at what he's seeing, the competition continues, and Yoma inevitably wins -- but when he grabs the remote, the button he presses is the one to stop Rohan's treadmill, because of Heaven's Door putting in an order. Yoma is flung out of the window, presumably to his death. 

As Rohan gasps in recovery, Rohan realizes that Yoma has become the avatar of the 'god of muscle', Hermes (not exactly acccurate, there, Rohan), and Rohan fears that he had crossed a line. Not just in the murder, but also in invoking the wrath of a god. And Rohan quickly makes his way out of the gym.  

And, again, I really do like this one a fair bit. Just like 'Millionaire Village', I do really like it more when we get to see Rohan interacting and being menaced by the mysterious entities in question. As mentioned before, the story of Yoma also feels a lot more... relatable, so to speak? And painting him as someone who went from a well-meaning guy who just wants to make some gains to a psychopath that eventually develops those strange transformations in his muscles... pretty creepy in a different way compared to the other horror stories in TSKR.

Random Notes:

• I do wonder if the genesis of this story is a little gag at how Araki's own art style went from exaggerated Greek-god muscles in the first three parts to more slimmed-down, realistic-looking proportions?
  
• The mentions of real-life actors like Takeru Sato (a.k.a. Kamen Rider Den-O!) is cut from the OVA.
• Having a single week to heal from the shattering of bones that Rohan described is insanely fast, but I suppose Stand users might just be built different?
• I do like that the speeds that Rohan and Yoma runs is extremely fast, but not ridiculously so -- it's just slightly faster than half of Usain Bolt's top speed, as the characters mentioned. 

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Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Episode 4: At A Confessional

In the (at the moment) final animated OVA of Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, we get probably the biggest tie-in to the 'canon' stories with Koichi meeting Rohan at a cafe, asking him to use his Heaven's Door abilities to help Koichi speak Italian. This is something that actually did happen in the beginning of Vento Aureo, and it's nice that they managed to tie in 'At A Confessional' to the canon manga. Rohan also reminisces that this was his own trip to Italy as well, which dovetails nicely into the story.

And we get to see some more of Rohan's eccentric 'researches'. Remember, this is the guy that ate a spider just to include some details to make his manga a bit more authentic! After the injuries suffered by his initial confrontation with Josuke that caused his manga to take a hiatus, Rohan ended up taking a vacation in Venice, Italy, and I love seeing Rohan's almost gleeful obsession as he photographs and just tries to get the most of what he could from the vibes of a cathedral and its confessional booth. Absolutely love this more mischievous, devil-may-care attitude of Rohan's, and him entering the booth without permission is absolutely something he would do. We get a pretty nasty smile from Rohan as he realizes that someone else has entered the other side of the booth and is about to give a confession. Rohan wants to hear his story to get some 'authenticity' for his manga, and there's also the not-exactly-wrong statement that the important thing isn't who hears the confession, but that the penitent has done the act of confessing. 

The story of the unnamed confessor begins his story as a youth, being a worker that works overtime to move around giant bags of corn, and he grumbles about his fate of having to work. A beggar comes in asking for food, and the confessor (this is the term the Wiki calls him, so I'll call him that too) gets pissed off that this guy just wants a free lunch while he's working his ass off to get money to buy food. Which... yeah, fair enough, but then the confessor demands that the guy do his work before he pays him with his food (which he proceeds to eat anyway, the jackass). The story really makes it clear what an unpleasant piece of shit the confessor is, telling the guy to take more than a single bag and eating his sub as he's doing so. 

The beggar, predictably, collapses in exhaustion, but gets squished by the bags of corn and gets killed. The ghost of the beggar appears under the confessor's table as he panics, swearing vengeance and stating that he will get it at the happiest day of his life. And the confessor's life became pretty great. His business bloomed, he got a supermodel for a wife, he got a sweet daughter...

And as he and his daughter are playing around with a bag of popcorn, the confessor thought about how "this is the happiest moment of his life". Which, of course, triggers the curse and the spirit of the beggar. The beggar manifests in the confessor's daughter's tongue, which is simultaneously a little bit more grisly and ridiculous compared to just possessing the girl. There's definitely an 'Empress' vibe to this all, if you guys remember the Part III Stand. 

And the proceeding deal is something that reminds me of Rohan's own encounter with the Janken Boy in Part IV. The ghost gets tricked with some of the confessor's wordings, and he decides that he would want fate itself to judge the man fairly. He posits a rule -- do the same game that his daughter was playing, which is to throw the piece of popcorn into the air higher than a lamp-post, and catch it in his mouth, three times in a row. If he succeeds, the ghost will leave him alone. 

And again, there's some typical JoJo 'simple game with high-stakes intensity' that I think Araki missed writing from his Part III and IV stories. The first one succeeded despite the bright sunlight, the second one attracted pigeons but the confessor distracted the pigeons by ripping open the popcorn packaging... but the result of that caused a gigantic flock of pigeons to arrive for the third attempt. There's some insane over-the-top JoJo stuff as the confessor lights the popcorn up in fire with his cigarette lighter to deter the pigeons, but then the sunlight blinds him and he fails, causing the ghost of the beggar to decapitate him.  

...and Rohan is as bamboozled as the audience at what's going on, since isn't the confessor, well, confessing right now? Is it the ghost? Rohan peeks out of the confessional booth to see that the beggar's ghost is still there... but also the headless ghost of what appears to be the confessor, but turns out to be revealed as a servant that the confessor had paid into doing plastic surgery and used as a body double. 

And now, the confessor (who's revealed to be the attendant knocked out by the beggar's ghost at the beginning of the popcorn game) ends up being hounded by two ghosts, being stalked as he walks out of the cathedral. And... again, a pretty interesting story with a somewhat predictable twist, but unlike the characters in 'Mutsukabe Hill' or 'Millionaire Village', you don't really feel all that sorry for the confessor because he's... well, kind of a dick, isn't he? Rohan eventually comments that he has some respect for the man for clinging on to life regardless. 

We then cut to the present day, where Okuyasu and Yukako arrives to comment on the story. There is, of course, Okuyasu's eternal question at everything that goes on in 'Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan' -- is Rohan just witnessing the effects of Stand fighters fighting each other? And since this is the final OVA that I'll be reviewing (I may or may not do the live-action stuff after I finish Stone Ocean), it's pretty interesting to think about. Stands have always been portrayed as having some connection to its user's 'souls', being tied to stuff like Hamon and whatnot. But in the same vein, we've also seen that there are things in the JoJo world that's not necessarily tied to Stands -- like vampire masks and vampires from Part I, the Pillar Men from Part 2, the ghost alley and actual ghosts from Part 4, rock humans and the Wall Eyes from Part 8...

It's easy to just try and classify everything as the potential effect of a Stand, and they very well might be. The Millionaire Village and the 'will of the mountain' might be something similar to Shakedown Street in JoJolion, where a location develops a Stand of its own; or it might just be a supernatural occurrence like the ghost alley. The beggar's ghost here might be a post-mortem Stand like Notorious B.I.G. or Cheap Trick, 'Hermes' might simply be a full-body Stand similar to Love Deluxe or the recently-revealed The Hustle...

Anyway, it's been a nice, short trip watching and reviewing these four episodes. I think my feeling about this episode is similar to 'Mutsukabe Hill', where the story being told is pretty well-done! It's pretty creepy, pretty tense, and pretty 'Bizarre Adventure'. It's just that Rohan isn't really involved, and while that's not really necessary for a story to be good since it's more about Rohan reacting to the story, in the case of 'Mutsukabe Hill' I did admittedly feel a bit bored. In this case, the mystery of the sins of the confessor and how he's going to 'survive' the ghost's game is an interesting enough twist that it works. 

Random Notes:

• Koichi actually did claim that Rohan used Heaven's Door to help him learn Italian during his brief role in the beginning of Vento Aureo. 
• Stone Ocean actually features a very important scene of an accidental confessions being overheard in a confessional booth, in Enrico Pucci's backstory. I wonder if Araki actually got himself into some confessional-booth-related hijinks in one of the many research trips he undoubtedly took all over the world? 
• Man, that confessor with the three spiky hair pointing upwards... he really could've been a character just taken out of the colourful designs of Part V-VI, huh? 
• I didn't realize it, but the OVA actually adds a mole on the neck to mark the 'real' confessor -- the plastic-surgery confessor that played a game with the beggar's ghost is completely lacking the mole throughout the whole scene.