Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro is a twenty three volume long manga by Q Hayashida that is packed from beginning to end with weirdness, quite often over the top yet imaginative gore, and an ensemble cast of sorcerers with fucked up magic.

And also a lizard man who murders sorcerers to death with a knife usually after chomping on their head to force them to be seen by the man who lives within his mouth.

Upon seemingly the moment this manga ended after going for eighteen years, it was announced that there would be an anime adaptation by the studio MAPPA. Immediately, I was awash with two very different emotions. Unbridled excitement with a deep undercurrent of overwhelming dread. After all, the last time I was probably this excited for an upcoming anime adaptation was Berserk 2016.

And back then before it actually aired, I remember my often repeated mantra being along the lines of “even though it’s CG, it still has the potential of being an at least okay adaptation.”

And of course, because of how absolutely horrible it turned out, that’s how I ended up starting to review anime on this site.

...So it’s super refreshing that I don’t have to write that exact same review again four years later with Dorohedoro.

#“Unadaptable”#

That’s the word that would come to my mind when I tried to imagine… a whole bunch of scenes from Dorohedoro being animated. ~~Before the anime was even announced, mind you.~~ I couldn’t imagine it in my head without sanding away the artstyle or the overwhelming darkness of the Hole. Or the absolute lunacy of day to day life in the Sorcerer world.

How would they handle this scene? How would they handle this character? How would they handle this moment?

Then the anime aired and I had a hammer repeatedly bashed into my skull until those thoughts ceased. Very quickly indeed, this adaptation proved to have an incredibly firm hold on the admittedly very odd tone of Dorohedoro. Like the general setting of this series is a town comprised of humans who have been victim to sorcerers, having their lives ruined or completely altered as they suddenly find themselves with the head of a lizard, missing a couple of limbs, or worse.

You would think comedy wouldn’t belong in a series with a setting like that, yet it is. It’s present throughout the entire manga. And I thought it’d be pretty difficult to nail it down in animated form, yet the light hearted and more comical tone of the series is just as present and perfectly handled as the manga.

...But then every once in a while, we get a nice little dream sequence of say... a blood covered mystery fellow emerging from the jaws of our favorite lizard man.

In my opinion, the staff that worked on this adaptation were handed what I thought would have been an insurmountable task. Or at the very least, a task that could have been handled wrong in dozens and dozens of different ways. Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here because I've been disappointed so many times, but it's just amazing to me that they actually managed to nail the spirit and the tone of Dorohedoro so perfectly.

#Ensemble Cast#

Dorohedoro is probably home to one of my favorite cast of characters ever. Like if you ask me, hey, who's your favorite Dorohedoro character? My gut reaction is probably Shin. The sorcerer donning a heart mask whose magic, get this, doesn't even kill you. It just cuts you into pieces. While keeping you alive.

So to actually kill people he just hammers them to death.

How about Noi? Shin's partner? Well, she's the healing sorcerer. On the brink of death? She'll just vomit some smoke your way and bam, good as new. So you would think this would cause her to do pretty much nothing but heal the other characters throughout the series but... well...

...Let's move on. There's En, who is basically the head of the Sorcerer world. And his magic is... mushrooms.

To be honest, in the manga, I didn't even like En that much. ~~BUT HE LOOKS SO FUCKING COOL IN THE ANIME.~~

He can turn things and people into mushrooms. And he's essentially the head figure of the Sorcerers. He has his own mansion, he's got a movie about himself he's making, he had a ramen chain until there was a bunch of cases of food poisoning via the mushrooms... I mean he even has his own goddamned song. And it's just him singing about mushrooms.

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As if that wasn't enough, he also even has a pet catlike creature (?) who can bring the dead back to life.

And I could just keep going. I mean, I'm still on Sorcerers. I haven't even gotten to the lizard. And he's the main character! It'd just be quicker to just jump to characters I don't like so much. That of course being Ebisu and Chota. ~~Chota doesn't have that much time in the anime so he's not that much of a bother here. Although, seeing his smoke animated was cool.~~ I never really liked Ebisu in the manga because for sure to an extent, her character is moreso comedic relief than anything else. Not that you can blame her for it.

After having a traumatic experience where a lizard literally chomps your face off, you'd probably never be the same too.

...That being said, her being animated and voiced adds a whole lot to her various shenanigans.

#Fine Tuned Chaos#

The heart of this series is chaos. Pure, simple, and unadulterated chaos. Yes, there is still a plot to be followed from beginning to end, but I would definitely urge you to not take it too seriously ~~(though I very much enjoyed it myself)~~ and just revel in the chaos.

I mean if you watch this and get to the part where there is a baseball game held in the Hole, you'll get exactly what I'm saying.

As one of the members of a team is literally just a gigantic talking cockroach. There's also the Frankenstein'd corpse of Fujita's partner who Caiman ~~(the lizard)~~ murdered in the very first episode.

As can be gathered from what we see of the daily life in the Hole, a lot of Sorcerers are complete assholes and definitely deserve to be knifed to death by a lizard. That being said, it's kinda hard to not feel bad for Fujita. Still in mourning for his dead partner and oh there he is, playing baseball...

Though, probably the earliest piece of world building that caused my love of Dorohedoro is because of all of the fucked up magic from the Sorcerers, the Hole has a certain event every year. It's called the Day of the Living Dead.

On this special night, corpses just get up and start walking around and brainlessly attacking whoever they see. And one thing this series makes abundantly clear from start to finish is that there are a lot of fucking corpses in the Hole.

My favorite thing about this is everybody treats it as completely normal. Rather, it's a contest. The plates you retrieve from downed zombies, you can redeem for various prizes. Really, the only ones who find the fact that the living dead are roaming the streets strange is sorcerers.

And they're the chief cause of it!

#Conclusion#

Dorohedoro is one of my utmost favorite action manga. Would I consider it my #1? No, but I simultaneously can't really say that the other ones I hold above it have what Dorohedoro has going for it.

No other series have I seen a character catch a man's brain with a baseball cap after cutting his head open with a spear. Also, there's a lot of lizard chomping people. And that's pretty great.

And for the anime adaptation to capture the spirit of Dorohedoro so wholeheartedly and to include so many scenes from the manga where I would go "yeah I'd fuckin' love to see this animated" and then go "wow, they didn't ruin it!" is amazing.

~~I basically already said this exact line verbatim earlier in the review but I'm not removing it to drive the point home.~~

It's a 100 out of 100 for me, but I acknowledge it may not be that for other people. I, on the other hand, will desperately be hoping for a second season every day until it's announced.