Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan OVA E03: God of Muscles

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.