WakuWaku Japan to air “Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan” live-action series this October

Japanese entertainment channel WakuWaku Japan has announced that the live-action adaptation of Hirohiko Araki’s Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan manga series will premiere this October.

The three-episode series will air on October 8 (Friday), October 12 (Tuesday) and October 13 (Wednesday) at 09:00pm PHT.

Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan is a live-action television drama based on the spinoff series of Diamond is Unbreakable, the fourth part of Hirohiko Araki’s highly popular manga franchise JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

The story is focused on the titular character, Rohan Kishibe, who is a famous manga artist that travel around the world in search for inspiration from people’s lives. He uses “Heaven’s Door”, his stand ability, to read another person’s inner thoughts and alter their memories & behavior.

The manga is being released occasionally since July 1997 and currently has two volumes.

The live-action drama is directed by Kazutaka Watanabe, while Yasuko Kobayashi wrote the scripts. Watanabe produced the 2017 Japanese drama film Passage of Life, while Kobayashi written scripts for several anime and tokusatsu series, including Shakugan no Shana, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime series and several Kamen Rider series.

The live-action drama was aired on Japanese public television in December last year, and three additional episodes will be aired this December.

Issei Takahashi, who recently played the role of “Katsura Kogoro” in the Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning live-action film, starred as the lead character “Rohan Kishibe”.

Takahashi was also joined by Marie Itoyo (“Megumi Nishidome”, Boys Over Flowers Season 2) as “Kyoka Isumi” and Tomoya Nakamura (“Goro Akechi”, Gourmet Detective Goro Akechi) as “Taro Hirai”.

Global streaming giant Netflix released the anime adaptation of Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan as part of its aggressive promotion featuring Japanese and animation content, offering at least 16 new titles for this year.

The four-episode anime series made its way to the streaming platform last February.

WakuWaku Japan can be seen nationwide on Channel 172 for Cignal TV subscribers, from Postpaid plan 520 and Prepaid plan 500.

For more details on the schedule and other programming details, please visit their website at wakuwakujapan.com.