Pretty cool direction for something in the universe of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure to take that manages to feel wholeheartedly like something that fits right in with the series, while being its own thing. The supernatural, urban horror route here is executed pretty well and made to feel very unique thanks to Araki's sense of humour, worldbuilding, and story writing all playing into giving this a very different vibe to your average anime ghost stories. Sure, you've got things like vengeful spirits and mysterious haunted villages out in the middle of nowhere, but you've also got elements such as treadmill-based competitions and a guy's life being decided by whether or not he can catch a piece of popcorn he threw in the air. The juxtaposition in these more grisly themes and creature being juxtaposed by your standard Jojo brand of absurdity, both sides taking themselves insanely seriously in the context of the story, ends up being a huge reason why this works so well.

This is further heightened by the fact that Rohan Kishibe himself is such a fun character to follow along, with his ridiculous commitment to his art both acting as justification for these escapades and adding a lot to his personality to see the heights he reaches. Cameos of other characters from part 4 were also a nice touch in further fleshing out these 4 shorts and giving them a sense of cohesion with the framing device of them all being stories told by Rohan himself about these spooky stories. I feel this also helps in making these stories slightly more able to go off the rails in unique ways due to the fact that so much is based on second hand information within the world, which adds those potentially exaggerated plot points that contribute to the way everything is told in the style of passing on an urban legend from one person to the next. I also just, really, really love how utterly insane it gets throughout, with so much intensity and emphasis being put on the mundane, which is nicely combined with some very expressive animation that further heightens the emotion at the right moments. The use of colour throughout is particularly cool to me, with a lot of contrast and emphasis being put on various elements through the neon palette that phases in and out. All 4 of these episodes are a ton of fun all nicely wrapped up in a great sense of atmosphere and the ability to throw the viewer for a loop without going particularly overboard in the wrong ways. Definitely worth a watch for those who enjoyed Jojo part 4, even if it obviously doesn't quite match up with part 4 itself. Always nice to have these smaller, self-contained stories and I'm hoping for more of those JJBA side stories to get a similar treatment to this in the future.