Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan


Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, known in Japan as Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai, is a series of manga one-shots created by Hirohiko Araki. It is a spin-off from Diamond Is Unbreakable, the fourth part of Araki's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, and features the character Rohan Kishibe, a manga artist who travels around the world to get inspiration from people's lives.
The series is published by Shueisha, starting with the one-shot "Episode 16: At a Confessional" in 1997 in their Weekly Shōnen Jump; new episodes have since appeared in their Jump Square, Shōnen Jump+ and Bessatsu Margaret magazines. The series was originally meant to be completely original, but it was changed as Araki found it too tempting to use Rohan. A collected volume was released in 2013, and a second volume was released in 2018. The first volume was the 68th best selling manga volume of 2014 in Japan, and was well received by critics. Original video animation adaptations were released by David Production from 2017 to 2020.

Synopsis

Set between Diamond Is Unbreakable and Golden Wind, the series follows the character Rohan Kishibe, a famous manga artist who wants to give his works more realism, and therefore travels around the world to draw inspiration from people's lives. He does this by using his Stand ability – a manifestation of his inner strength, named "Heaven's Door", which he uses to read and write in a person, allowing him to learn everything about them and altering their memories and behaviors.

Production and publication

Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan is created by Hirohiko Araki in an episodic format. It began with "Episode 16: At a Confessional", which was published by Shueisha on July 7, 1997 in Weekly Shōnen Jump #30/1997. Although he had originally been asked to write a wholly original story, unrelated to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, he found it too tempting to use his Diamond Is Unbreakable character Rohan Kishibe to resist. For later episodes, the series switched back and forth between different Shueisha publications, with new episodes appearing in Weekly Shōnen Jump, Jump Square, Shōnen Jump+, and Bessatsu Margaret. "Mochizuki Family Moon Viewing", the episode from the web magazine Shōnen Jump+, was part of the publication's launch line-up and was made available to read for free.
A collected volume of one-shots by Araki, titled Under Execution Under Jailbreak, was released in 1999 in Japan, containing "At a Confessional" along with three other stories. A collected Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan volume was later released in Japan, on November 19, 2013, containing the first four episodes, along with another one-shot titled "Kishibe Rohan Meets Gucci". A second volume was released in Japan on July 19, 2018. The first volume was published by Star Comics in Italy on January 8, 2015 as Così parlò Rohan Kishibe, and by Tonkam in France in April 2016 as Rohan Kishibe.

Episodes

Original video animation

An original video animation adaptation of "Episode 5: Millionaire Village" was produced by the animation studio David Production, with direction by Toshiyuki Kato, direction assistance by Yasufumi Soejima, character design by Shun'ichi Ishimoto, and Stand design by Kenta Mimuro. The opening theme, "Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai no Tema", is performed by Yuugo Kanno, while the ending theme, "Finding the Truth", is performed by Coda. The OVA was distributed on DVD in 2017 to people who had purchased all thirteen Japanese DVD or Blu-ray volumes of the 2016 television anime series . Kato made use of different coloring compared to the Diamond Is Unbreakable anime, to capture the feeling of horror in the manga, and directed the opening sequence to simultaneously give off a feeling of nostalgia and unease, referencing television shows like The Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks. A second OVA episode by the same studio and staff, adapting "Episode 2: Mutsu-kabe Hill", was released on DVD on July 19, 2018 in a bundle with pre-orders of the limited edition of the second manga volume. A single containing the opening and ending themes was released on the same day as the second OVA episode. Two new OVA episodes, adapting "Episode 16: At a Confessional" and "Episode 9: The Run", were screened theatrically in nine cities in Japan starting on December 8, 2019, and were released on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 25, 2020.

Voice cast

CharacterVoiced By
Rohan KishibeTakahiro Sakurai
Kyōka Izumi Mai Nakahara
Ikkyū Kaori Mizuhashi
Naoko Osato Atsumi Tanezaki
Gunpei Kamafusa Junji Majima
Minoru Kaigamori Takamasa Mogi
Naoko's Daughter Yūki Takada
Young Man Hiroki Takahashi
Yoma Hashimoto Kōki Uchiyama

Episodes


No.TitleRelease date

Reception

The first collected volume debuted to an estimated 278,268 copies sold for its first week on sale in Japan, ranking as third in the weekly Japanese top-50 comics charts, after Detective Conan volume 81 and Terra Formars volume 7. It charted for four consecutive weeks, selling a total of 422,994 copies. By May 2014, it had sold 526,719 copies, and by November, sales had reached 553,380, making it the 68th best selling manga volume in Japan of 2014. The second volume's standard and limited editions debuted to 132,283 and 20,128 copies sold, respectively, ranking as fourth and thirty-sixth in the weekly Japanese comic charts.
The series was well received by critics. Maria Antonietta Idotta of MangaForever said that the series managed to express full range of drama, depth and complexity typical of Araki's long-form works despite its one-shot format, and called the artwork "sublime". Takato of Manga-News also found it to capture the essence of Araki's long-form JoJo's Bizarre Adventure while working as a newcomer-friendly stand-alone work, and enjoyed how the shorter format caused a stronger focus on the atmosphere and world, making it feel like more than just a spin-off. Erkael, also writing for Manga-News, thought the art and writing would both satisfy existing fans and attract new ones, and called it "a pleasure to read" despite the change in tone compared to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with more elements of horror and high tension.