Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan: At a Confessional

Following the release of Rohan at the Louvre, I continued to keep up with the live-action Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan (TSKR) drama as it became available in English, and remain a big fan of it for how well it translates the world of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to live-action. When another film based on the series, Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan: At a Confessional (At a Confessional) (JP: Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai Zange-shitsu), was announced, this time based on the original At a Confessional manga one-shot that started the spin-off manga, I was instantly hyped for it, both as someone who read the one-shot and watched the OVA adaptation, and based on how well Rohan at the Louvre turned out. This hype was instantly all but completely shattered as soon as I heard about how the music was handled (more on that later), but I still wanted to see it anyway once it became available in the US. Now that I’ve finally seen it through Amazon Prime Video, while I did think it was worth the wait to see it in English, it overall falls just shy of Rohan at the Louvre.

While in Venice, Italy for a cultural exchange, mangaka Rohan Kishibe (Issey Takahashi) looks around the area for research. On his way, he stops the theft of a mask maker (Tina Tamashiro) and returns the stolen mask to her, through which he learns about their functions and meanings. As he investigates a church confessional, he gets mistaken for a priest and accidentally hears the confession of a masked man who is cursed, the consequences of which Rohan finds himself getting mixed up in.

Rohan Kishibe (Issey Takahashi) gets more than he bargained for when he
accidentally hears a confession.

On its own merits, At a Confessional tells a compelling story full of twists and turns, exploring themes of luck and despair in an interesting way. As an adaptation, it expands on the source material in a way that works within the world of the live-action drama, with any liberties taken with the source material being in service of the adaptation. Due to the nature of the original one-shot, however, which was not originally going to feature Rohan due to editorial restrictions and is framed as him recounting a story, the plot feels more obviously stretched out compared to Rohan at the Louvre, in which the source one-shot featured Rohan as a central character. Despite this, the expansion still works and makes for a neat story regardless.

Similarly to the previous film, At a Confessional was filmed entirely on location in Venice, Italy, lending a great deal of authenticity to the plot and showing a side of Venice that is seldom seen in most media. The expert camera work not only captures the beauty of the city, it also captures the suspense of a scene where necessary. As with prior TSKR drama installments, the film relies on practical effects as much as possible, making more supernatural events feel more real. One particular effect, while impressive in how they managed a live-action equivalent, was admittedly a little more gross for me to look at and was one I felt came off better in the OVA version.

 

Throwing popcorn can still be made suspenseful in live-action.

 

An observation I made is that, while Rohan at the Louvre featured a good mix of Japanese and French actors, and At a Confessional does still have some Italian representation in the cast, the plot of the latter is engineered in a way that the main cast is predominantly Japanese; while this makes sense from the perspective of it being a Japanese production, and it does get explained well, it felt a little too convenient for the plot given the Italian setting. The film is well-cast regardless, and since I’m not fluent in either Japanese or Italian, both of which are present in the film, my opinions are based more on the physical acting of the cast. Issey Takahashi proves to still be the perfect casting choice for Rohan Kishibe, as does Marie Iitoyo as his editor Kyoka Izumi, due to their body language and the way their respective stoic and bubbly personalities bounce off each other. The rest of the cast does a good job as well, with Tina Tamashiro (Maria) and Andrea Bellacicco (Lorenzo Grimani) complementing each other in a similar, gender-flipped fashion to Takahashi and Iitoyo.

Upon this film’s release in Japan, something that came to my attention was that Naruyoshi Kikuchi, the film’s composer who previously scored the TSKR drama and Rohan at the Louvre, proudly admitted through an interview in a promotional pamphlet that, aside from existing songs, the entire soundtrack was created through generative AI. This would not be the first time he had used AI in his compositions for the series, as I didn’t learn until after watching Rohan at the Louvre that a single track from both that film and the drama S3 episode “Rock-Paper-Scissors Kid” were done this way, which disappointed me since his original work was otherwise perfect for the series (the tracks were at least labeled as AI-generated on the official soundtrack, but this did not help). The fact that he went this route for an entire movie, let alone with the deep irony of it centering on a character who deeply cares about authenticity when creating his manga, disappointed me greatly as both a fan of the series and as an artist myself and made me wonder if he should even get a composer credit in the first place.

Araki's own stance on generative AI only adds to the irony.

At the onset, while not present throughout the entire film, the AI-generated music proved to be distracting to some degree, as none of it ever seemed to quite fit what was happening on-screen and felt more like incomprehensible noise. Thankfully, I was able to tell when some actual, human-composed music was playing, even from the same composer when it was recycled from the drama, but I otherwise tried my best to not think about the AI music too much over the story. Overall, I am still disappointed that Naruyoshi Kikuchi would go this route and hope he keeps the backlash in mind going forward.

While not quite as good as the previous film, Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan: At a Confessional is a great watch for fans of both JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and the live-action TSKR drama. The film being free for Amazon Prime Members makes it a little easier to recommend than it otherwise would be if it was behind a separate paywall, though points can still be docked either way for the presence of AI slop music in the soundtrack. I still want to see the adventures of this version of Rohan continue, hopefully with more human creativity and authenticity.