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REVIEW: Dororo GN 1-3


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here-and-faraway



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 1528
Location: Sunny California
PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 9:23 pm Reply with quote
I love Vertical press for publishing the oldies. I really enjoyed Ode to Kirihito, MW, Buddha, To Terra, Andromeda Stories, and Apollo's Song. So I pre-ordered Dororo and eagerly looked forward to its release. I agree with your review. It's not a horrible story, but definitely not one of Tezuka's best.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 9:42 pm Reply with quote
This is going to seem really petty, but it's not meant as criticism or anything, it's just a question: I've noticed in her last two reviews that Ms. Brienza has used the phrase "sequential art" rather than, well, "manga," "comic book," or "graphic novel." Has she always done this and I just didn't notice? Or does she use them here for specific reasons? And what's the distinction being made?

Good review, though. I'd seen this on my library's shelf and had been wondering about what it was like. Now I know.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:56 pm Reply with quote
What the HELL, ANN? Did you suddenly just wake up one day and decide you needed your own Charles Solomon-style hack to do these reviews for your site? Mad

Quote:
According to Vertical, Osamu Tezuka's Dororo is “a subtle allegory of the individual and society's struggle for wholeness in a world ruled by chaos.” Sounds promising, doesn't it? Too bad that it's the same as calling Naruto “a gripping narrative of man's struggle construct and maintain a complex civilization in the face of his entropic, bestial nature.”


No, it's not the same, because Naruto just features emotional issues and stand-offs with other shinobi, not a friggin' power struggle with "war crimes".

Quote:
In fact, Dororo was originally serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday, competitor magazine of such mainstreamest-of-mainsteam shounen standards as Weekly Shounen Jump and latter day home of Inuyasha and Kekkaishi, just to name two well-known recent manga series.


And Barefoot Gen was serialized in Shueisha. What does that prove?

Quote:
For example, it is basically a prototype of the sort of tournament manga Akira Toriyama perfected with Dragon Ball;


Except there is no tournament in Dororo.

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And as in similar, “Gotta Get 'Em All!”-type storylines such as Tsubasa (Sakura's feathers) or Inuyasha (Shikon jewel shards), getting 'em all could take a long, long time.


Yes, Tezuka was really hoping people would read Dororo, so they could buy replicas of body parts the way kids today buy Pokemon. Brilliant. Rolling Eyes

Quote:
Presumably long enough for the series to cease to be popular—and in fact, the series ceased to be popular before Hyakkimaru manages to find all of his missing pieces: Weekly Shounen Sunday apparently canceled it abruptly, and Tezuka managed to get a few more proverbial strikes of the storyteller's hammer in at another competitor magazine (now defunct) titled, Boken O. Suffice it to say that if you're looking for conclusive endings, you should resign yourself to looking elsewhere.


Actually, it was popular enough to spawn an anime, a video game, and a movie. And the game has a "conclusive" ending.

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The body count, both villains and “collateral damage,” is tremendous, and yet battles have about as much affective impact as watching Tom and Jerry bop each other over the heads with cartoon mallets.


So it's on the same level as 300? Razz

Quote:
Also, one wonders how Hyakkimaru is able to bend his prosthetic arms when he has steel blades inside them.


I'm guessing he can push them up his arms.

Quote:
Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)


You really need to see some Princess Knight before saying that.

Quote:
But instead, what you're really getting is something that would have been lost to the sands of time…if it hadn't happened to have penned by the Dearly Departed God of Manga.


Or maybe people actually consider it a classic in its own right. Did you consider that possibility?
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zanarkand princess



Joined: 27 Oct 2007
Posts: 1484
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:13 am Reply with quote
Oh is it "Get all pissed about a review just because Casey wrote it" day again? I have to remember to put it on my calendar next time.

She basically said it was no different than your usual shounen fare. I actually think that most of Osamu Tezuka's work is. The difference is that he was the pioneer of many of these elements and for that I respect him. I could see how it could seem a bit "been there done that" for fans today though. It sounds like it could be good for a lazy afternoon.


Last edited by zanarkand princess on Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:57 am; edited 2 times in total
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Taiyz



Joined: 16 Aug 2005
Posts: 202
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:15 am Reply with quote
I can't say anything for the manga, but Dororo is great in its other incarnations.

First is the video game; renamed Blood Will Tell for that iteration. It's essentially a hack-and-slash/action game more in the vein of Devil May Cry than Dynasty Warriors, but it has a mix of good/bad elements of both styles. It's unique in that the body parts you regain change gameplay significantly, not unlike the weapons you acquire in Devil May Cry. Many organs are purely optional as well, but offer status boosts if you go out of your way to defeat the requisite Fiends, as the game calls them. Acquiring organs actually felt rewarding; I can't say the same for Inu-Yasha and the Shikon jewel shards, referencing the comparison made. There were some neat tricks too, such as how Hyakkimaru speaks until he acquires a voice box, and how the game looks until he acquires his eye(s.) It also reinterprets Hyakkimaru's arsenal, giving him a CANNON in his leg and machine-guns in his arms. They're pretty fun to use. Anyway, I found that the story was well executed through cutscenes and felt pretty meaningful compared to any other action game; it was just really enjoyable.

Then there was that live action movie from 200...7? I also really enjoyed that, as it retained the same story I had grown to enjoy, although with some different interpretations and more exposition in many other areas. The fights were amusing, but also kind of bizarre sometimes due to CG/monster-suit combinations, but again, the story gives it leverage over a lot of the other "guy with sword(s)" live action flicks you could watch instead.

Maybe the issue is with the timestamp here. The movie was about 2 hours and the game had probably less exposition than that, concerning cutscenes, but it got its point across, with enough eye candy, action and gameplay respectively to make them both very compelling. This is probably much more manageable than 3 volumes of manga.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2599
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:31 am Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:

Quote:
Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)

You really need to see some Princess Knight before saying that.


I admit that I had the same reaction as Gatsu initially, but then I thought about the women in, specifically, "Ode to Kirihito." With the exception of the human dumpling (forgot her name), the women pretty much exist to wander around, get raped, and (largely) forgive their attackers. I think it may be safe to say that "Princess Knight" in all its incarnations is the exception rather than the rule. And before I get jumped on for that, I would guess that this is more due to the times in which Tezuka lived than any misogyny on his part.

Quote:
She basically said it was no different than your usual shounen fare. I actually think that most of Osamu Tezuka's work is.


Absolutely. And that doesn't make him less of a manga god or Casey a horrible human/reviewer for not liking this particular work.
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NearlyMello



Joined: 02 Mar 2009
Posts: 11
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:38 pm Reply with quote
Guess this is a case of first time caller, long time listener... Smile I don't usually post since I don't read all that many of the manga reviewed. Dororo is no Buddha, sure, but I don't think that's necessarily a flaw.

Personally, I would give it around a B, B+ myself, I enjoyed it, and I found a bit more food for thought in it than your average volume of Naruto (which Casey has no problem with. ha, ha.) so I didn't find the advertising or packaging obnoxious at all (and should the packaging really matter as much as the content of the manga? An orange is as much of a fruit as any even though you can't eat the peel...) but the cheap shots at Tezuka... the comparisons to pokemon... That's a bit tacky and just needlessly venomous. Combined with your Astro Boy review, it just seems like you have a personal issue with Tezuka or something, which is kind of... I dunno. Funny? Laughing I don't really see the comparison to DragonBall, either, but that just might be me.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:02 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
I admit that I had the same reaction as Gatsu initially, but then I thought about the women in, specifically, "Ode to Kirihito." With the exception of the human dumpling (forgot her name), the women pretty much exist to wander around, get raped, and (largely) forgive their attackers.


Well, to be fair the rapist in question spoiler[was a raging schizophrenic losing control over his actions], so he comes across as pretty pitiable. The trauma doesn't really get the treatment it deserves, though; it's just a subplot that isn't really developed in an otherwise good story.

There is a noticeable dearth of strong female characters in Tezuka's work, which has unfortunately translated over into Urasawa's Pluto; the women in his stories are generally kickass, but there they mostly take supporting roles.

And I repeat my question on what distinction is being made with "sequential art."
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Moomintroll



Joined: 08 Oct 2007
Posts: 1600
Location: Nottingham (UK)
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:09 pm Reply with quote
Casey wrote:
Overly pretentious packaging not justified


The production values are nothing special by Vertical's standards. What needs to be understood is that Vertical (along with D&Q, Fanfare and Last Gasp, amongst others) are primarily targeting their manga releases at the literary / alternative comics market, not the teen- / otaku-orientated manga market and they tailor their production values accordingly.
The market they're targeting expects a far better level of quality than the average Tokyopop release, generally have the resources to pay for it and may well be put off by the typical production values of the more mainstream US manga publishers.
By way of example, according to the staff of my local comics shop, the pricier ($24.95 RRP) hardback editions of Vertical's Black Jack release have been outselling the significantly cheaper paperback editions by a very wide margin.

Regardless of whether or not you personally think that's a good thing, it's hard to see why a company would be unjustified in giving the bulk of its customers what they want.

---

As for Dororo, it's a middling effort by Tezuka's standards but it's a pretty entertaining romp nonetheless and any release that helps to illustrate the evolution of one of the world's greatest cartoonists has got to be a good thing.

---

NearlyMello wrote:
Combined with your Astro Boy review, it just seems like you have a personal issue with Tezuka or something, which is kind of... I dunno. Funny?


Casey's evidently still in the student newspaper iconoclast phase of her career - you should see some of the reviews on her blog...

---

vashfanatic wrote:
And I repeat my question on what distinction is being made with "sequential art."


It's just another (rather inelegant) way of saying "comics".
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NearlyMello



Joined: 02 Mar 2009
Posts: 11
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:00 pm Reply with quote
Moomintroll-- What you said about the sale of their Black Jack release I found really interesting. It's good more than a few fans are willing to pay extra for high-quality releases. I have yet to order either the hardcover or softcover, which is kind of embarrassing, since I fell in love with the VIZ release a long time ago, and I'd like to see Black Jack completely now. Smile It's hard enough to get stuff from Vertical in my area, though. I tried to get their translation of the Ring series, and I kept getting older, cheaper copies from the order system, and many of their titles just don't show up as an option for ordering, part of the reason I only have 1&2 of Dororo despite liking it a good bit. I'd be happy with either version, frankly. Buddha and their Aranzi craft guides are the only ones I can seem to find easily, oddly enough.

Anyways, I think I understood what you meant at "student newspaper." Laughing A lot of her reviews (of very particular series) seem unusually picky next to her more benign reviews, kind of missing the overall point of the series for the sake of grilling the sacred cow, but that's appealing to some people, so whatever. I just get a chuckle from it and move on.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:02 pm Reply with quote
Irene: I'm not really fond of Kirihito myself, but I tend to think it makes the men look worse than the women. If you read MW, there's a decent female character near the end.

vash: Not for me he doesn't. Though the irony of saying that there are no strong female characters gets lost when you forget about the nun.

Moomin: Everyone likes exclusives.

Mello: Don't worry. There are still five "unpublished" stories, so it's not technically "complete". You still wanna get these suckers, though, you might have to go the E-bay route or look for it used on Amazon.
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HellKorn



Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 1669
Location: Columbus, OH
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:04 pm Reply with quote
I haven't read Dororo, and also am not in love with Osamu Tezuka like some are; however...

Casey Brienza wrote:
The emperor has no clothes.
This has become such a nasty cliché that a reviewer can be dismissed as soon as they drop this.

Quote:
In fact, Dororo was originally serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday, competitor magazine of such mainstreamest-of-mainsteam shounen standards as Weekly Shounen Jump and latter day home of Inuyasha and Kekkaishi, just to name two well-known recent manga series.
So all of the acclaim for The Drifting Classroom is warranted by this logic, since it ran in a shounen magazine? Guess all these comic critics are just crazy.

Quote:
And although it was published way back in the late 1960s, many of the narrative features intimately familiar to shounen manga readers today are present in Dororo as well.

Okay, so it lays the groundwork that others would copy off of. So? It's also not as though similarities in tropes means that it can be unabashedly roped in with others -- if a person tells me that the appeal of adventurous One Piece is the same hack n'slash Naruto and Bleach, I'll laugh at them.

Quote:
Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)
Just how much of Tezuka have you read? Really?

NearlyMello wrote:
A lot of her reviews (of very particular series) seem unusually picky next to her more benign reviews, kind of missing the overall point of the series for the sake of grilling the sacred cow...
No, no -- see, Ouran High School Host Club plays it completely straight, Honey and Clover promotes weak-willed and incapable Japanese females, and Me and the Devil Blues is totally racist. Casey and her world view NAILS them.
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musouka



Joined: 09 Sep 2003
Posts: 705
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:43 pm Reply with quote
As far as female character in the series go, aren't we, uh forgetting (MAJOR SPOILER) spoiler[Dororo herself]? I'm pretty sure she's neither maiden, a mother, or a monster. Neither, for that matter, are many of his women in Black Jack--including Pinoko.

Ribbon no Kishi is the last thing I'd be using as an example of a lack of sexism on Tezuka's part, though. All you have to do is remember the scene where Sapphire can't swordfight without her "male heart" after Tink steals it temporarily.

I think Tezuka can be problematic when it comes to his women, but I think he has a wide enough range (no, not just mothers, maidens, and monsters) that I would feel uncomfortable labeling him misogynistic.
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Moomintroll



Joined: 08 Oct 2007
Posts: 1600
Location: Nottingham (UK)
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 7:42 pm Reply with quote
NearlyMello wrote:
Moomintroll-- What you said about the sale of their Black Jack release I found really interesting. It's good more than a few fans are willing to pay extra for high-quality releases. I have yet to order either the hardcover or softcover, which is kind of embarrassing, since I fell in love with the VIZ release a long time ago, and I'd like to see Black Jack completely now. Smile It's hard enough to get stuff from Vertical in my area, though. I tried to get their translation of the Ring series, and I kept getting older, cheaper copies from the order system, and many of their titles just don't show up as an option for ordering, part of the reason I only have 1&2 of Dororo despite liking it a good bit. I'd be happy with either version, frankly. Buddha and their Aranzi craft guides are the only ones I can seem to find easily, oddly enough.


They're only doing the first three volumes of Black Jack in hardback, unfortunately, and those are only supposed to be available from bricks and mortar outlets. The paperbacks should be easy enough to find though, either online or off.
Vertical are distributed through Random House so even if your local bookshops don't generally stock much of their stuff, ordering it in shouldn't be a problem.

HellKorn wrote:
No, no -- see, Ouran High School Host Club plays it completely straight, Honey and Clover promotes weak-willed and incapable Japanese females, and Me and the Devil Blues is totally racist. Casey and her world view NAILS them.


Uh-huh. And Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is also totally racist. But evidently Casey's the only reviewer whose eyes are open to these truths. Oh, and the multiple award winning The Great Catsby is bad because it's a Korean comic that doesn't look like a generic Japanese comic (how dare it!). What's more, it's a full-colour indie comic on decent paper that has the temerity to be priced like every other full-colour indie comic on decent paper and not like, say, a volume of Fruits Basket. Shocking, I know.

Read these and other pearls of wisdom here..

musouka wrote:
I think Tezuka can be problematic when it comes to his women, but I think he has a wide enough range (no, not just mothers, maidens, and monsters) that I would feel uncomfortable labeling him misogynistic.


Agreed. And I'd also point out that whilst Tezuka's attitudes towards women are sometimes flawed by modern standards and are in conflict with his overall message (things that are certainly worth pointing out), they're actually decidedly progressive for a Japanese man born in the 1920s. A reviewer doesn't have to like what an artist says or stands for but they really ought to evaluate the artist in the context of their time and place and make allowances accordingly.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:09 pm Reply with quote
Moomintroll wrote:
Read these and other pearls of wisdom here.


Is that supposed to be Ms. Brienza's blog?

All I can say is... Wyrd Sisters was not the first Discworld book to feature female leads. There was Equal Rites (featuring the world's first female wizard) and Sourcery (the daughter of Cohen the Barbarian). Not reading these in order, I take it? I'm up to Wyrd Sisters myself on a re-read right now. I love Discworld. Smile

(edit: I know, this is getting off topic...)
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