Dorohedoro

- This is some of the weirdest shit I have seen in my entire life, and that is all you really need to know before jumping into this series. Seriously this anime from beginning to end feels like the author of Alice in Wonderland decided to up their hallucinogenic doses by at least 1000%, and when it was finally allowed to be made into a cartoon Disney wasn't around to cut out the not safe for work pieces. To be clear, I don't just mean weird as in like “oh this show is pretty unique”, I mean like our main protagonist is a fucking buff guy with a lizard head, whose main hobby is beating the shit out of people, unless the other head that is hidden within his mouth tells him this is the guy he's looking for, I mean that kind of weird out there shit. However ironically though, the weirdness doesn't feel completely out of left field, and somehow doesn't completely ruin the narrative that is being told, but instead actually feels like a genuine irreplaceable part of this world, that is how ingrained the weirdness is in this series. - This series just throws you in the deep end of the insanity from the very beginning and expect you to figure out what fuck if going on while heads are exploding left and right, and people randomly get turned into bugs around you, this series really feels like the anime equivalent of an acid trip in many ways. Because of this, you spend the majority of the first half of the season confused, playing catch up with a narrative that doesn't hold your hand to figure out what is going on, and while some viewers probably hate this approach, because of this, once you finally do catch up and understand what is going on within the narrative, you really feel like this is a living breathing world. Because from the very beginning it doesn't feel like the series is explaining shit just to catch up the audience, instead you are just along for the ride just like our main characters. Speaking of main characters I guess we should start actually talking about those. - Our main character throughout the series is Kaiman, the lizard headed buff guy I mentioned earlier, and the fact that he has a lizard head is basically the main plot of the series, because no one really knows how he got the lizard head, not even him. So you spend the entire season trying to find the answer to said question, and throughout this journey you meet a variety of insane yet fun characters who just add more layers of complexity to this vivid world. And that is really it, I could tell you more about the setting of this show and how it influences the plot, but honestly, I feel one of the most enjoyable parts of this series is getting thrown in without knowing anything. That transition from being completely lost with what is going on, to genuinely finally understanding all the different groups at play, to me at least, was one of my favorite realizations. So instead let's talk about the final elements of the show before we wrap this review up. - The only thing I haven't really brought up thus far is the animation and the music for this series, which as you probably expect is just as weird and out there as the rest of the show, so in that regard, you can say it fits the show perfectly. The EDs specifically do a really weird thing, which is that they almost change every episode, in fact, it is very rare for you to hear an ED repeated 3 or event 2 times in this series, which just highlights how bazaar this series is to its very core. There is also the animation, which relies heavily on 3D, and weirdly enough, it almost feels like the show looks the way it does because it purposefully wants to make you feel uncomfortable. Like in some cases it feels like the 3D is being used to elevate the weirdness of the series, I don't 100% know if it was on purpose, but I will definitely say if that was their intention, their goal was 100% accomplished. The way the show looks really does somehow capture and invoke that feeling of disgusted mixed with a morbid curiosity, there are many times in the series where even though you don't like what you're seeing, you can't look away because you just have to see how this will play out. - In the end, I guess the biggest negative I can say about the series is that it doesn't really have an ending, with the ending we get in the anime feeling more like a checkmark in a campaign more than anything else. You also don't really spend enough time with these characters to truly become invested in the mystery, like I said before, Dorohedoro takes a while to get into, and because of this, once you really start almost feeling invested in the plot, the show ends. Sure the journey you take throughout the series is insane and is a ride I would recommend to anyone who's into that kind of thing, but as of right now, I don't really think the anime series has more to offer than that. This is why I find myself ultimately rating this series an 85/100, again it's not bad, in fact, it is really an enjoyable ride, but as it stands right now, it is nowhere near a complete story. Virtually none of the questions we start with get answered, and instead just more questions get piled on top, and because of this, I find it hard to really answer the question, what was this story really about? But as of right now we don't really know. If you are fine with that, then yes check out this series, otherwise, I guess either watch what you can and then read the manga, or just wait until Season 2 comes out.

P.S. In case anyone wants to read the manga, this episode ends right before Chapter 39, so start there😉