What I’m Watching – Dororo (Episodes 1-6)

This post discusses plot spoilers through episode 6 of the anime.

Check out my first impression here!

While I hate to keep mentioning my recent out-of-town trip since it’s not relevant to this site otherwise, it continues to be on my mind because these types of mini-vacations (work trips to other cities where my evenings are basically free to do as I please) are great opportunities for me to keep up on my anime-watching. Aside from The Promised Neverland, the other series that kept my company that week was Dororo. For whatever reason I was getting seriously intermittent access to Crunchyroll where I was staying (I blame it more on the Android app itself, which has always worked spotty for me even with great internet and a brand new cell phone), so I stuck to Amazon Video this time around.

In some ways Dororo isn’t my typical style of viewing material, mostly because it’s fairly violent. I have a pretty well-deserved reputation for being gore-averse, but the somewhat incomprehensible other side to that coin is that some of my favorite anime series (or at least some I can speak highly of) are also some of the more violent ones. Berserk is an old favorite that’s well-known for its demon-slashing, blood-spraying horror elements, although I’d argue the old anime series is often cartoonish in its depiction of gore. Blood-C, which I thought had an interesting pseudo-feminist message at its core, also features some of the most gut-wrenching images of human dismemberment I can recall. And Devilman Crybaby is pretty infamous for its adult content, unrestrained due to its release outside the boundaries of broadcast television. All of these are series I liked or even loved, though the violent content was no so much a feature as it was a challenge for me to overcome.

Dororo isn’t yet in the same league with those anime in terms of how violent it gets, but considering that one of its plot elements is the fact that Hyakkimaru, the protagonist, grows back limbs and organs as he defeats his foes, there’s a strong element of body-horror that tags along with the more garden-variety blood and dismemberment that feature in the series. It’s strong enough that I’ve taken notice of it several times, but not so dramatic or shocking that I’ve felt compelled to drop the series.

It really helps that the story itself has been so compelling, because that makes it much easier to overlook some of the unsavoriness. Dororo is a very classic-style story about an individual seeking vengeance. While revenge stories aren’t necessarily my style, there’s something uniquely fascinating about the mechanism by which Hyakkimaru’s revenge results in the restoration of the person he may have been had his father not been willing to sacrifice him to selfish ends. He’s a person whose personality certainly wasn’t a blank slate at the beginning of the series, but it existed in a form that was difficult for others to perceive. Now that he’s slowly gaining back things that many of us take for granted – limbs, hearing, his voice – some more of his inner feelings and thought processes might become more perceptible to us outsiders.

This does beg a few questions about how the series represents disabilities, though. Vrai Kaiser of Anime Feminist has made some good points about how Hyakkimaru reads as disabled, but that his quest is one which essentially aims to remove and erase those disabilities. In the fifth and sixth episodes, we see how Hyakkimaru’s restored sense of hearing becomes a weakness, because the sudden onslaught of sounds is too much for him to process. Gaining back his feeling of pain alongside the restoration of parts of his flesh means that he can suffer from injuries, providing him with wariness and making the outcomes of his battles less cut-and-dry. There’s an interesting push-and-pull as to the way that the character’s disabilities also serve as abilities; if Hyakkimaru could see like average folks, he’d be much less equipped to battle demons. On the other hand, the more parts of himself he regains, the more he’s portrayed as human rather than supernatural. There are a lot of conflicting aspects that are a bit difficult to disentangle from one-another.

Overall it’s a complicated criticism that I feel under-qualified to make, so I’ll be interested to watch this aspect of the series unfold and read whatever critical follow-up there might be discussing it. Personally I find the series difficult to relate to real-life disability culture due to its supernatural/magical elements, but I suspect that’s my own clouded reading of the content rather than a legitimate distinction.

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed throughout these episodes is how rain and storms are used to compliment the story and action. Lord Daigo’s pact with the 12 demons ensures that his lands will become verdant and his crops will grow, so the rain becomes a sign of prosperity… until Hyakkimaru begins to defeat those demons and reassemble himself. It’s then that the gentle rains become oncoming storms, bringing with them landslides, lightning, and other destruction. Hyakkimaru is the thunder drumming in the background, as Lord Daigo readies once again for war. It’s an image that suits the series well.

The reason why I waited until now to post my thoughts on the show thus far is because episodes 5 and 6 comprise a 2-part story and I was interested to see how it resolved before following-up in writing. These episodes feature a story that’s both tragic and predictable and which adheres to some tropes that I find personally frustrating. In them, Dororo and the injured Hyakkimaru discover a group of orphans living together in a dilapidated house who are being parented by a young woman named Mio. She provides them with care and with food by working at night; the type of night-work is what one might expect. Hyakkimaru is drawn to Mio because her singing is the only sound that doesn’t overwhelm his newly-obtained sense of hearing. Unfortunately Mio is pegged as a spy by the authorities since she travels to the samurai camps of both warring factions – she and the children are then slaughtered. This “twist” brings out a demonic rage in Hyakkimaru, who brutally destroys the samurai responsible for the murders.

This is one of the first times that Hyakkimaru really expresses strong emotion in the series, and it’s also the first time that he speaks an identifiable word. It’s a shame that these turning points – Hyakkimaru’s voice, and his pain – are motivated, as they are so often, by the death of a “disposable” woman. I use the word disposable not because Mio isn’t an interesting character, but she’s an interesting character whose life exists for one purpose – to motivate the hero with her tragic death. It’s a truncated existence and a sadly typical way of handling a story.

Mio’s death isn’t a surprising twist by any means; since this story has been around for quite a while it wears a lot of its “twists” on its sleeve and so I’d predicted what was likely to happen during the first episode of the two. That said, even if a story element is essentially unavoidable due to its history or whatever other reason, it doesn’t prevent me from having feelings about it.

Even considering that particular flaw (one which speaks more to the story’s age than it does any underhanded motivation of the author, I expect) I’ve really been enjoying the series so far. It’s beautifully-rendered with some of the most subtly-beautiful background artwork I’ve seen in a long time. It’s also very compelling, and I find myself very interested in the type of person Hyakkimaru may become once his quest is complete. This is turning out to be the type of classic adaptation I really enjoy – one which retains the original story’s spirit but which utilizes some of the best resources available in the modern era to provide visual refinement and refocus the narrative.