The JoJo's Bizarre Adventure franchise has exploded in popularity in the last decade, going from a relatively niche shonen series to one of the biggest anime of the current era. The series stars a family whose patriarchs are all known by the nickname JoJo and who, true to the series' name, encounter increasingly terrifying and monstrous supernatural obstacles.
Beyond the Joestar family, the series has several other popular characters, including Kishibe Rohan. This side character was popular enough to receive his own spinoff manga, Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, now available as an OVA on Netflix. As enticing as the series might seem to new audiences, its spinoff status might make those who've never seen any of the JoJo franchise wary. Here's what the outlandish OVA is about and how much it connects to the main Joestar saga.
Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe
The series is a four-episode-long OVA starring the eponymous Kishibe Rohan, a manga artist on a quest to improve his craft. He does so via random adventures, encountering strangers and using the ability of his mystical, metaphysical "Stand" to learn about people and even manipulate them. One such misadventure involves Rohan having to eat corn correctly to impress the mountain gods and save his editor's life -- so the "bizarre" is certainly not lost on this spinoff.
The standalone episodes are titled to emphasize the lack of necessary chronology -- named Episodes 5, 2, 16 and 9. Thus, Spoke Kishibe Rohan, even more than the series it spins off, is incredibly surreal and unorthodox in its content and storytelling. This sense of eeriness is compounded further by references to The Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks, resulting in a show that can go from merely wacky to downright horrifying.
Is Watching JoJo Necessary?
The biggest question is how much, if any, of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is required to watch beforehand. After all, the show is based on a series of manga one-shots about Rohan that spun out of Diamond is Unbreakable -- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's fourth sequence. Thankfully for newcomers and fans who haven't entirely caught up yet, familiarity with the source material isn't required.
As mentioned, the show doesn't even have much continuity with itself, being a purely episodic affair that deals with unrelated adventures in Rohan's life. The episode listings' weird chronology backs up that pretty much any episode could be watched "out of order" without any problems. Of course, as with any spinoff, those who are at least knowledgeable of the source material will likely get a bit more enjoyment out of it. Existing JoJo fans will pick up on things that others will overlook, but this doesn't detract from the show's quality.
One somewhat supernatural element from the franchise is the idea of Stands, but the only Stand to appear in the series is Rohan's Heaven's Door. Thus, once this easily explained concept is understood, even the greenest newcomer will have no problem following the short series. From there, they can also go on to enjoy the rest of the series as a whole.