Deadman's Questions



Deadman's Questions is a canon spin-off series to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that takes place in Morioh, the setting of Diamond is Unbreakable. Yoshikage Kira is the protagonist, and this series lacks an overall main antagonist and villainous faction.

The story takes place following the end of Part 4 and follows the ghost of a deceased Yoshikage Kira, who has lost all of his memories. He takes up jobs as a ghost solving mysteries and accepting assassination requests by a female monk.

The manga series was released in Shueisha's Manga Allman magazine from June to July 1999. Three chapters were released and were eventually compiled into a volume among three other Araki one-shots titled Under Execution, Under Jailbreak.

As of now there is no English release for this series.

Allman 1999 No. 12-14, Author's Comment
''I wrote this story with the idea of a protagonist who, even after death, seeks peace of mind and continues to "live" in this world in the form of a spirit. (I'd call it an A-type work.) The protagonist of Deadman's is actually the ghost of the main villain from the fourth part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the deceased homicidal maniac known as Yoshikage Kira. In the world of the dead, if there indeed is one, it probably wouldn't be a place where everything is possible; rather, it'd be regulated by rules similar to our own world's. The idea that ghosts have to struggle just as much or even more than normal people is quite peculiar...''

Chapter 1
A man walks through a department store in search of a certain magazine. As he walks among merchandise, he makes note of a book titled "The Elephant Who Lost His Nose." Finally, he finds what he's looking for, it happens to be any magazine, but it depicts a man in a hat. He carefully rips the man out of the book so that he is cleanly cut out. The next thing he needs is a phone.

Deciding to check out the apartments in the residential area to find one, he knocks on a random door and poses as a delivery person, putting the cutout of the man in a hat as the delivery person up to the apartment's peephole.

A woman answers, and the man pretends to be a delivery man from Mitsumaru Department Store, and he has a package for her. Claiming she ordered no such package, the woman attempts to make the man leave, but he refuses, and attempts to say anything he can to get her to come out. He makes a deal with her to ease her suspicions- he will feed the receipt through her mailbox, and she can sign it on the other side.

She opens the mailbox lid and discovers that there is actually no one outside and sees the cutout of the "mailman" float away. Confused and spooked, she turns away in fear. It is shown that the man has phased through the wall and entered her home, unbeknownst to her. The man is revealed to be a spirit, and it appears that he was unable to enter the woman's home without her permission.

He takes a gander around the house, still in search of a phone. He approaches one door and finds out that there is someone else occupying it already, meaning he isn't allowed to enter without their permission. He continues on and finds an empty room with a phone. Upon entry, he finds that the woman happens to own the same book he noticed at the store, "The Elephant Who Lost His Nose."

The ghost man ponders in the room about the "life" he is currently living. While he was alive, he lived a life dominated by numbers. He wanted to be 1 year younger, have 1 more hair than his fellow man, have lower grades, etc. He no longer has any need for those things, so he wonders what kind of life he should continue to live to be content.

He dials a phone number and stares out the window of the room to see more spirits out on the street that only he can see. He'd like to find a room for himself where he can draw flowers without them flying away, and not to end up like those spirits among him who have become reserved and afraid.

The receiver on the other end is never picked up, which angers the man. Seeing as the phone won't answer, his next step is to find a knife. He moves throughout the house and picks out a knife from the kitchen, only to be met by a large dog named Rocky. He had thought that the building didn't allow pets, which meant the woman must have snuck it in. The dog attacks him, ripping his arm and leg off, which cause him to drop his knife.

The woman enters the room to find the dog barking at nothing in particular, and the knife on the ground. She frets that someone may have broken in, and calls to the man that resides in the other room that someone must be in here with them. The ghost man narrowly escapes with his knife and his limbs and decides that he has to start over.

Later, a heavily freckled man in a room hears tapping at his window. Alarmed and suspicious, he unveils his curtains to find nothing there. Behind him, his door is boarded up with chairs and tables, and he laughs as he realizes that he has just imagined the tapping. Outside his window, a newspaper page flies by showing his face with the title, "15 Years Ago: Oak Tree Hill Child Murder Case." The man laughs, confidently inviting police and anyone who thinks they can possibly apprehend him in.

The ghost man takes this as an invitation for himself to come in and uses his stolen knife to stab the man in his back.

He does this and reveals in his inner thoughts that his name is Yoshikage Kira, and while he does not know who he was in his lifetime or how he died, he knows for sure that he isn't going to Heaven. He reveals to the man that his sender has requested that he take his life in his happiest moments.

He takes a phone from the counter and calls the police. He also notices that the man is residing in the same apartment that he visited the woman in, meaning she must have been housing him as a fugitive.

Kira leaves the apartment wondering about where he's going to spend the night.

Chapter 2
Yoshikage Kira walks through a train station, on his way to his next job. He notes how beautiful a day it is, and how if he didn't have to travel such a distance, he would rather walk.

He takes money from out of a stone pillar that he put there in case he needed it, and books a train ticket for two seats. Once he boards the train, he takes his seat and prepares to ponder the wonderful view, but before he can get settled, a woman unknowingly drops her bag on him.

The woman's son is whining and crying about wanting ice cream, and the mother is unable to control her unruly son. The conductor comes by to collect their tickets when she reveals that the sun is sensitive on her son's skin, so they moved seats into the "empty" ones on the other end. While this is being discussed, Kira grabs the child's arm and uses it to pick his shoe up and shove it in his mouth. He then kicks the folding tray up and hits the mother in the mouth, getting them out of his way so he can continue to enjoy the view.

Finally, the train comes to a stop and Kira wonders where human souls really come from. Is there some sort of spirit world where they all reside? Or does a mother's soul split like a cell to produce that of her child's? Done pondering, he makes his way to his next target's house, which is that of a soldier's.

Kira remembers the conversation he had with the woman who assigned him this job- a female monk who is apparently still living. She claims that the soldier's house was destroyed during the Pacific War, and while the soldier himself only perished a few decades later, the house still remains as a "ghost house." The woman claims that 56 people have committed suicide or died mysteriously around the ghost house, and she wants Kira to handle it.

With the news of learning about a ghost that lives in a house on his own, Kira seems to get an idea to use this to his advantage, wondering if the house has a nice view. The monk asks him why he doesn't just move on to the spirit world, to which Kira retorts back that he does what he wants to do and doesn't care if it's truly "moral" or not. He simply takes the jobs because that is his purpose.

Later, he approaches the address and discovers that the "ghost mansion" is hidden behind an alleyway. He approaches it and gets sucked in, finding that when he looks outside from within it, the world around him looks to be something like the spirit world.

He continues exploring the ghost house and discovers that it and everything inside of it is also a ghost. He begins to realize that there is no "presence" within the house either, no barrier stopping him from entering. If there was a ghost or a human in there, he would still need permission to enter, yet no such barrier can be found.

He starts rummaging throughout the house, fascinated by its old paintings, the silverware, and books that line its shelves. Excited by the prospect of taking these with him to read on the bus or at a park, he starts filling his pockets with anything he can find. He suddenly stumbles when he opens a cabinet to find it completely filled with eggs, some of which come to fall out and crack on the floor around him.

Chapter 3
Kira stares at the pile of eggs curiously, wondering if these are ghost eggs, food placed here by the house owner, or what. It appears that no one has opened the cabinet, and moreso it appears no one appears to be using anything in the house either. He suddenly notices the eggs have reached his pocket out of nowhere, and while he is taking them out, he feels one of them move.

Caught by surprise, he throws it across the room to see it continue to wriggle. Something is growing inside it, meaning that this thing isn't a ghost object at all. The egg completely cracks open, revealing nothing inside... That's when Kira notices footprints running up his arm, and some sort of spotted creature emerging from it.

In a frenzy, he also notices more of these creatures being born on the table, which seemingly cause it to melt under them. He attacks the creature in his arm and throws it off to the side, but more are growing from inside him and eating him apart.

He starts to piece things together and chalks these creatures up to be "spirit cleansers," as there are organisms in the real world that take care of decomposing corpses, these creatures exist to take care of spirits. He attempts to get rid of them once and for all and make a run for it, also realizing that he's stumbled right into these thing's nest. The cleansers continue to chase him throughout the house until Kira takes out a gun he finds and shoots them all off of him, while also falling out the window.

In the commotion, he happened to knock over some records as well, which he is disappointed about never being able to sit and listen to, losing the hope of taking this house for his own.

Walking away from the house now he wonders if the monk that sent him there knew what she was getting him into, and if she did, he says that she'll truly find out if there's a spirit world after all.

Under Execution, Under Jailbreak (1995)
Originally a one-shot chapter written by Hirohiko Araki in Super Jump in 1995, Under Execution, Under Jailbreak was rereleased in 2008 in a tankoban volume of the same name along with Deadman's Questions and two other one-shots written by Araki. The plot follows a man known as Prisoner 27 who has been imprisoned and awaits his trial. The man attempts to find many ways to escape, but it ends up that he will be waiting for his trial to end forever, and there is no way out. As decades upon decades pass, he swears to himself that he will find a way out one day, but never does.

In 2015, the one-shot received a stage play adaptation starring Mirai Moriyama, who plays Jugo Shishi in a Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan drama episode. The play has no dialogue or words and is entirely representational. It follows a similar plot to the original manga, but elements from another one-shot from the tankoban volume, Dolce and his Master, are also included in it.



Dolce, and his Master (1996)
Another one-shot written by Hirohiko Araki, this time in 1996 in Shueisha's Manga Allman Magazine. Like Under Execution, Under Jailbreak, this story was rereleased in 2008 in the volume named after UEUJ along with Deadman's Questions and another one-shot. It is a two chapter story that follows Dolce the cat, and his master Masago Ayashi as they are stranded on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean with no food or water. Masago attempts to catch Dolce to eat him, but the cat is cunning and intelligent, and is able to evade capture. It is also implied that Masago brought a "friend" onboard and somehow killed her. The cat and human play a game of cat-and-mouse, and the story ends with Dolce forcing his way down his master's throat, killing him instantly.

Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan Episode 16: At a Confessional (1997)
Main article: Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan

Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan is a canon spin-off series to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that takes place in Morioh, the setting of Diamond is Unbreakable. It is an anthology series featuring Rohan Kishibe as the protagonist/ narrator throughout every chapter. The stories deal with other supernatural abilities besides Stands, including the likes of ghosts, avatars of Greek Gods, Yokai, and ancient cursed doppelgangers. The first chapter to be released, At a Confessional, came out in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. The story focuses on Rohan Kishibe going to Italy for manga inspiration and overhearing the tale of a man swallowed by guilt and followed by a vengeful spirit. This one-shot was rereleased in 2008 for the Under Execution, Under Jailbreak tankoban volume along with Deadman's Questions and two other one-shots.

This story was officially released in English in 2022 when Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan received an official English hardcover version.

Trivia

 * Deadman's Questions appeared in a volume release along with three other one-shot manga, which included Under Execution, Under Jailbreak (from where the volume gets its name,) Dolce and his Master, and Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan Episode 16: At a Confessional.
 * When Araki originally wrote this series, he neglected to mention that the ghost protagonist was Yoshikage Kira until the end of the first chapter, so that readers would not have the impression that this character was Kira.

Iconography
Only having three chapters, and being compiled into one volume, there isn't much to speak of in terms of iconography in Deadman's Questions. The original cover for the manga in the magazine depicts Kira in his new outfit with different images of things that happen in the story, including depictions of key characters like the monk and the woman who's house Kira breaks into.

There are certain patterns vaguely associated with this spin-off, including Kira's stripped hat pattern, and the checkered pattern that is on the Under Execution, Under Jailbreak volume cover.

Most commonly associated with Deadman's Questions is the logo of a skeleton wearing Kira's new outfit. This is meant to represent the fact that Kira is a ghost, dead, and his spirit haunts the world of the living. Skeletons, too, are associated with death and the dead, which is why Kira is depicted as such in a couple of occasions. In particular this image of Kira as a skeleton is used as a logo in the final page of the spin-off and enlarged on the Collector's Edition of the manga.

Continuity

 * The idea that there are ghost objects and ghost "rooms" is an idea continued in Stone Ocean with Emporio's Stand ability, Burning Down the House. Considering that this series was written before Stone Ocean, the ghost houses mentioned here may be the inspiration for Emporio's Stand power, and an in-universe example of such a phenomenon that Araki can base it on.
 * This marks Yoshikage Kira's second appearance in a canonical series following Part 4. This series reveals his fate after being taken apart by the ghostly hands of the Ghost Girl's Ally.
 * It is revealed that he has lost his memories, and he is supposedly unable to use his Stand.
 * At the end of the series, he begins a monologue that is very similar to his monologue to Shigechi, mentioning his name and his hobbies, but in this case, he comes to terms with the fact that he may not have been a good person in his life.