TSKR Episode 16 (OVA)

Episode 16: At a Confessional (エピソード#16【懺悔室】) is the fourth episode of the OVA adaptation of Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan. It covers Episode 16: At a Confessional of the one-shot series.

Summary
Koichi meets Rohan Kishibe at a café, and requests him to give him the ability to speak Italian. This reminds Rohan of a gruesome story from when he was in Italy, which he proceeds to tell.

After an incident forcing him to pause his series Pink Dark Boy for the summer, Rohan had decided to take a vacation in Italy. In Venice, Rohan accidentally entered the priest's compartment of a confessional in the middle of his research. Shortly after, a man entered the booth and confessed his sin to Rohan, believing him to be a priest. Interested, Rohan heard out his confession. The man described his youth as a common worker. One day, a starving Asiatic beggar came to him begging for food. Disdainful, he forced the beggar to carry large bags of corn, eventually leading to the beggar's death. However, the ghost of the beggar appeared, swearing revenge and stating that he would come back on the happiest day of his life.

Things soon looked up for the man; he became rich and eventually had a daughter with a supermodel. One day, as the man walked with a servant and his daughter cheerfully playing with a bag of popcorn, he couldn't help but think that it was the happiest moment of his life.

Suddenly, the spirit of the beggar possessed the little girl and revealed that he had assisted the man's prosperity from behind the scenes so that he could fulfill his revenge. The ghost explained that he wanted Fate to judge the man fairly, and thus challenged the man to throw a piece of popcorn in the air higher than a nearby lamppost and catch it in his mouth, each time at the clap of his hands, three times in a row. If the man succeeded the ghost would leave the man forever, otherwise the beggar would cut off his head.

With luck and ingenuity, the man succeeded twice, but attracted a flock of pigeons looking for the popcorn. To deter them at the last try, the man lit the pop corn on fire as he threw it, but sunlight shone out from behind the clouds, preventing the man from seeing the popcorn. Thus it landed on his shirt and without a second to spare, the beggar cut off his head.

However, the man remained as a spirit possessing the body. Back at the confessional, the two ghosts of the beggar and the servant appeared near him, revealing that the man made his servant get plastic surgery and used him as a body double to trick the beggar, only incurring the wrath of both ghosts. Rohan witnessed the spirits follow the man, vowing to endlessly stalk him.

Okuyasu interrupts the conversation, loudly exclaiming how scary the story is. Yukako is also there and the conversation changes subject.

Rohan still thinks about the man. Wanting to interview him later if given the chance, he also expresses some respect for the man who tried to hang on to life.

One-Shot/OVA Differences

 * A scene at the beginning is added with Koichi talking to Rohan. Taking place before Vento Aureo, Koichi begs Rohan to use Heaven's Door on him so he can speak and understand Italian. Rohan agrees but at first wants to tell the story of when he went to Italy.
 * An additional scene is added at the end after Rohan tells the story. Yukako and Okuyasu join Koichi and Rohan at the table, and Okuyasu gets scared from it.
 * A mole is added to the confessor's neck, as a small detail alluding to the reconstructive surgery he and his servant had to swap faces.

Trivia

 * There are some differences between the finished episode and the first PV trailer, such as visual effects, color palettes, and backgrounds having changed. Why these changes were made during the episode's development are unknown.