This Week in Anime

What the Hell is Going On in Dorohedoro?

Steve
Well Nick, I just finished watching the first season of Dorohedoro about an hour ago, and I've got exactly one thing on my mind:

I can practically feel the grime seeping between the pixels in my monitor. It's the best. Love this Hole.

So I'm very thankful I've been able to take advantage of this column and proselytize about a lot of anime and manga I love, but Dorohedoro is quite possibly my favorite manga of all time. While I used to dream up potential anime staff who'd be able to translate its bizarre appeal onto the screen, I never really expected it'd actually get an adaptation. But here we are!

And to cut to the chase, I think they freaking nailed a lot of it.

It's certainly garnered quite the cult following among my fellow weirdos during its 18-year run, and I think a lot of us were similarly apprehensive about anyone actually pulling off an adaptation. Mangaka Q Hayashida's style is both very rough and very detailed, on top of being used to depict surreal ultraviolence and reality-bending magic powers. Like, this is how much visual information can go into a single joke panel:

And in that respect, arguably the anime's ace in the hole is getting Shinji Kimura as the art director. He's worked on a lot of stuff, but he was art director for the Tekkonkinkreet film and Blood Blockade Battlefront, and that's pretty much all I needed to see on his CV to be convinced he'd get the job done. Dude knows how to make sure cities look beautifully filthy.

Yeah, even the characters/character models tend to look dirty and roughed up, to roughly approximate Q Hayashida's scratchy style. I can tell the staff understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, and that's a rare, precious thing.


Also, seriously, what a wonderfully disgusting toilet.

Yeah, one of Dorohedoro's cleverer moves is including a main character whose magic specialty is healing, so everybody has permission to get their bodies busted up as gnarly as possible. And Dorohedoro does not let those opportunities go to waste!

Yes that is (or was) someone's face.

That to me is Dorohedoro's secret sauce. A much lesser work would take its violence and aesthetics in edgy, grimdark directions, but Dorohedoro just has fun with everything. It's a love letter to goofy B horror flicks, with a full cast of lovable homicidal weirdos you legit end up caring about even as they constantly try to murder each other.

Ebisu is normal for the first 30 seconds we know her and then spends the remainder of the show with permanent brain damage. Relatable for sure.

I think Hayashida does a pretty remarkable job balancing the over-the-top murder antics with the comparatively more droll moments when they're off the job and just hanging out with each other. There's a lot of tonal whiplash to be sure, but that's a part of Dorohedoro's strangeness that appeals to me.

Oh I can't tell you how happy I was to see them fully adapt the baseball chapter.

I DARE you to find another story featuring a giant sneaker-wearing cockroach.

Or just enjoying the Dark Souls PVP experience.

I'd consider backstab fishing part of the authentic Dark Souls PVP experience. Dude didn't even do the duel bow first smh.

For as wild as its characters and aesthetics are, the central plot of Dorohedoro is a very long, very slow burn with a lot of red herrings and a surprising number of moving parts. There are actually incidental details here that become relevant later, but things only start fully coalescing later in the manga, well past what one cour of anime is able to cover.

Yeah I definitely won't be surprised if that's a common sentiment among anime-first viewers. For what it's worth, I think the core mystery does a good enough job maintaining momentum, but there's pretty much zero closure on anything this early in the story lol.

Q Hayashida also likes to dole out her worldbuilding one small piece at a time, and often in inscrutable, shitposty ways. But that, too, is Dorohedoro! And there's actually some really neat and subtle stuff here. Like this one line from En both informs a little bit about the customs of Sorcerers and informs a lot about Fujita's personality.

If you look, you'll notice that Fujita keeps wearing his funeral shoes for the rest of the show, to demonstrate that he's still in mourning for Matsumura. Plus, they look just like clown shoes, which is funny.

They do make a perfect couple, and hopefully they'll be able to formally notarize their bond as partners next Blue Night, provided Ebisu doesn't get the runs again.

Gotta watch out for those street meat pies.

That's why she's good!

There are lots of little interwoven details and quick gags that add so much personality to Dorohedoro and its characters. Like, En would be just another stuffy mob boss if not for all the silly vain art projects that keep popping up in the background.


The man loves his mushrooms.

Judas' Ear is precious and that's all we need to know. And I suppose I've been dancing around this long enough, but the real actual number one reason why Dorohedoro is the best and why everyone should love it is: girl big

It's okay, not everyone can possess a brain as big as mine. And Dorohedoro's first episode is honestly brilliant in that regard, because it begins by introducing Nikaido, who loves to fight, kicks ass, and makes a mean plate of gyoza.

And then it ends by introducing Noi, who's even bigger, built like a freight train, and able to crush dudes' heads with just the palm of her hand.

In fact, across all genders, Dorohedoro is a smorgasbord of beef.

I suspect foul play in that particular instance, but the show certainly does keep upping its beefy ante.

Zero cowardice here.

Indeed! It goes hard for everything from legit spooky horror imagery

To ensuring that literally every character wears kicks.

Dorohedoro contains multitudes, and I love them all.