Winter 2019 First Impressions – Dororo

During the 1470s after the Wars of Onin and Bunmei in the Noto Peninsula of the Hokuriku District, Hyakkimaru, who lacks as much as 48 body parts, obtains a fake body and eliminates 48 monsters that were made from his body to retrieve his missing body parts. – ANN

Streaming: Amazon Prime

Episodes: TBA

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Sixteen years ago, a local lord made a pack with Hell’s demons to obtain power and prevent more famine from befalling his lands. In exchange, upon the birth of his firstborn son, the baby’s body parts were stolen, leaving only a skinless, barely-living husk. The midwife tasked with disposing of the infant takes pity on it, setting it on the river in a boat before being attacked and devoured by a demon, who seems to have a keen interest in the child.

As the years pass the world continues to be filled with conflict and war. A young “entrepreneur” named Dororo makes a meager living selling fraudulent wares while trying to stay ahead of the local authorities. One day Dororo bothers the wrong guys and they’re nearly murdered for it. Dororo is saved by the appearance of a terrifying demon who eats their attackers, and then saved from the demon by a silent, somewhat unusual-looking man with katana blades hidden within his prosthetic arms. Stranger still, after the man dispatches the demon, the mask covering his face falls away to reveal new skin growing over his exposed flesh.

Impressions: This was one of my most anticipated premieres of the season. Not only do I have just a general interest in classic stories remade, I also had the feeling that this tale in particular might provide me with the type of supernatural horror storytelling that I’ve come to really enjoy when done well. Thankfully, the first episode impresses on several fronts and I’m already frustrated to have to wait for the next episode.

Adaptations of classic material are always an interesting challenge. All anime adaptations of other source material run the risk of irritating an established fan-base, whether through adapting the story too liberally, stopping at an awkward time in the narrative, or creating an anime-original conclusion where an ending doesn’t exist. There are a lot of pitfalls to avoid. There’s an added level of danger when the source material is by a famous, well-regarded author, and has already been adapted previously a couple of different times; not only are people comparing the adaptation to a classic work, but also against the previous anime or film outing. While I was definitely looking forward to Dororo, and haven’t seen a substantial amount of the 1960’s anime series or read the original manga, I worried that this current anime adaptation may suffer from having too much reverence toward earlier incarnations and unintentionally hamstringing itself. If the first episode is any indication, those worries were mostly unfounded.

While I’m not familiar with the entirety of Osamu Tezuka’s catalog, what I’ve had the chance to read has always struck me as a slightly unusual combination of tone and style. His artwork often tended towards cartoonish early Disney style (which was obviously one of his major artistic influences), while his story output really runs the gamut of genre and subject matter. Sometimes this combination feels very fitting, as in Princess Knight, a fairy-tale with some interesting (though, seen through a modern lens, a little bit off-mark) examinations of sex and gender. Dororo has a lot of horrific, including body-horror, elements (fun fact: if you do an image search, one of the pictures that appears frequently is a frame from the manga in which Hyakkimaru pops his prosthetic eyes out at Dororo’s feet), which feel at odds with the more-refined but still round, soft, “classic” character designs. While character designs don’t always adhere 1:1 with the “seriousness” of a work (consider Kaiba, which seems to take its cue from Tezuka’s style), combined with Tezuka’s penchant for blunt, overly-exuberant dialog and sometimes awkward visual humor, they certainly speak to a different artistic time period in manga’s history.

With all that in consideration, one of the first aspects of this episode that stood out to me was the fact that the character designs skewed far enough from the originals that I would have had a little trouble connecting them to one-another if I hadn’t known about the relation already. This does come across as somewhat of a complicated road to tread. While this episode looks more in line with other modern animation (and looks very nice, to boot), it also opens up the series to some criticism that it’s not adhering closely enough to Tezuka’s original classic. This isn’t necessarily an issue for me, but it is one of those adaptation “pitfalls” I was talking about. For the record, I think the first episode looks great; the character designs are fitting for the setting and retain some essence of the originals, even if they don’t recall their earlier incarnations right away.

The show also does an excellent job of visually establishing its setting. While the character animation looks fairly traditional, much of the background art, especially scenes that portray wooded hillsides and other natural scenery, are painted in a traditional Japanese brush-paint style. This adds to the episode both rich, textural impressions as well as a strong sense of the time and place in which the story is set. As gruesome as it might be to say, one of the best examples of this, as well as one of the the more stunning images in this episode to me was a wide shot of a field dotted with bodies, dead of arrow wounds, which was depicted as if part of a traditional painting.

Speaking of gruesome, as I mentioned this episode (and likely, the show as a whole) contains its share of body horror imagery. While that kind of material is (maybe surprisingly) something that doesn’t upset me that much, I believe some of the imagery has the potential to bother many viewers. The depiction of Hyakkimaru as a skinless, limbless infant, blood seeping from his near lifeless body, is absolutely something that will stick with me for a while. The appearance of his face as the skin grows back to cover it is also mildly upsetting. While I can’t say that the level of disturbing imagery is somehow out-of-line with the other things that happen throughout the episode – Hyakkimaru’s father Daigo made a pact with Hell’s demons, after all – I think it’s worth the warning.

I suspect the core of the story will be the relationship between Dororo, a scrappy kid without a family, and Hyakkimaru, a (currently) voiceless young man with a family who didn’t want him. It’s a bit of a grim partnership – two people who are essentially orphaned and living in a world that’s harsh for their specific circumstances – but certainly one which feels in line with the overall tone of the story.

I expected to enjoy this episode and I was excited for the series in general even without knowing many of details about the story besides its general arc and supernatural elements. I think it would have been impossible on my part to restrain my expectations of a high-profile adaptation of one of the “God of Manga’s” famous stories. While expectations always have the potential to be challenged, I think that this opening episode is incredibly strong, introduces a compelling story, and presents imagery that, while difficult to look at, is also stunning in its portrayal of human darkness. While there are some caveats to my recommendation, due to some of the more upsetting images (mostly concentrated in the earlier scenes), I think for those able to stomach some gruesome and startling imagery, this opening episode makes a compelling case for subsequent episodes.

Pros: Strikes a good balance of classic and contemporary in its adaptation. Good animation and beautiful background artwork.

Cons: Some disturbing and violent imagery.

Grade: B+