Long-running manga series Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has had its share of gags leaning on the fourth wall over the years, but it’s only in the most recent chapter of spinoff series Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe that series creator Hirohiko Araki smashed through it entirely.
The character of Rohan Kishibe is a fairly popular one amongst the Jojo fandom, in part because this in-universe manga creator has become Araki’s author avatar. Rohan’s series revolves around stand-alone stories with strange monsters, often being recounted after the fact in a way that causes the reader to question how much of the story is actually true–especially since he’s usually telling these stories to convince someone to do something for him. The chapters are often similar to internet “creepypastas,” brief horror tales and urban legends with no clear origin, enhanced by Araki’s detailed and stylized artwork. A few chapters have even been adapted to anime form and are currently streaming on Netflix, while a live-action Japanese show is also in production. While some fans have wondered why Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe has no ending, that’s because new chapters are still releasing sporadically.
This latest chapter, which has been revealed as a two-part story, opens with Rohan working on his manga when his editor pays him a visit and finds he’s crying. She asks why, and he explains that a previous event, which he refers to as “episode 11,” has been weighing on him heavily. Episode 11 saw him speaking to “a respectable person” about heavy topics like global warming, but laments that the discussion brought him only despair. Rohan cryptically states that he’d keep these events secret if he could, but that’s simply impossible; thus, anyone who reads further should be prepared for a downer ending.
While it’s initially pretty clear that Rohan is speaking to his editor, as soon as he mentions chapter 11, he turns away from her and faces the reader in every subsequent panel where he appears. It’s still pretty ambiguous at that point, as it seems he’s just looking out the window, but the editor is missing from the next page, and his very particular use of the phrase “reading on” only really makes sense as a metafictional comment. There’s also the fact that this is the 11th chapter of Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe, tying Rohan’s experience to this particular chapter of his manga. A warning about the story’s content from Rohan already feels a bit like a direct address from Araki due to his relationship with the character, but these details push it out of the realm of plausible deniability to a straight-up breaking of the fourth wall. The rest of the chapter is a bit confusing, following a new woman who’s seemingly having an affair and terrified of being caught. The only unusual event of the chapter is her sighting of a spiky boar monster, which disappears when she stops her car and has not been elaborated on in any way. The story doesn’t match up with what Rohan described, particularly since he hasn’t been involved at all (so far as we know; the woman’s lover speaks, but isn’t shown).
Whatever prompted this fourth-wall-breaking edition of Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe is just going to have to wait for the conclusion’s release next month, giving fans plenty of time to speculate on just how meta Rohan, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure in general, can get.
