“Rohan Kishibe’s Adventure”

Fridays at 12:30 pm EST on Crunchyroll

Rohan and Koichi stumble upon a mysterious unmarked street and its spectral residents.

Iro’s thoughts

The plot thickens! We’re basically halfway through Part 4 at this point, so it’s about time to start setting up for the Big Bad. He’s been hinted at occasionally by the anime staff, what with the severed hands here or there, and we’ll get to all that nastiness in due time. Suffice to say that following up DIOOOO as a main villain is a real tough job, but Yoshikage Kira is second only to Mr. Brando himself in terms of JoJo villains.

For now, Morioh Landmark #6: the ghost street where you can meet a pretty girl. Reimi Sugimoto is (bizarrely enough) one of the main faces of Part 4 in a meta sense, probably because she’s one of like, maybe three or four? mildly important female characters in the entire arc, and probably the only one important to the larger plot. I mentioned previously that Heaven’s Door’s face-page effect was the loading icon for All-Star Battle, and I believe the face in question is Reimi’s. In any case, she’s cute enough, and since this is anime it’s okay for Okuyasu and Koichi to be all smitten with the undead soul of a girl murdered 15 years ago. Even Rohan gets in on the vaguely creepy antics, reading Reimi’s highly personal information with Heaven’s Door. Thanks, Araki…

Speaking of Morioh’s resident mangaka, this episode is named after Rohan for reasons which aren’t apparent until near the end of the episode. For most of it he is content merely being a snide asshole to literally everyone around him, and that doesn’t really change even once we discover that Reimi’s final act before being horribly murdered was to save his life. It is nice to get some personal stakes other than there being a fucking murderer around, and it’s also nice to actually give Rohan some humanizing characterization after the shit he’s been pulling. I mean, not that he’s ever going to stop being an asshole, but the effort is nice.

Dorarara-bservations

• Rohan and Kira join the number of the cast who all have changed actors since All-Star Battle. I think only Okuyasu has reprised his role, which is too bad since they were all quite good.
• With Rohan, we’re already sort of seeing the running gag that literally everyone in town likes Koichi, while people tend to think Josuke is kind of an ass.
• JoJo’s Bizarre Amount of Violence Towards Dogs continues!