Another work by Osamu Tezuka! I’ll get to the bottom of his popularity if it’s the last thing I do… is something I never said, but I am more than a little curious to find out why he’s called the godfather of manga. Is it just because he was the first to get popular or did he actually have something more to his fame? With Dororo I’m a little closer to the answer, because this was actually pretty enjoyable. Here’s the summary:
A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son’s organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics – lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan.
The greatest thief is the one called Dororo. Our samurai pal is actually called Hyakkimaru, which means something like Hundred Demon Boy, if I recalled correctly. The original manga is 3 volumes long, which is how I read it, but I just found out there’s an omnibus version as well on Amazon, all three volumes in one. That’s probably the space-saving, economical way to get it. There’s a (Japanese-only) video game and a 2007 movie as well, none of which I care to explore, but it just goes to show that this is one of Tezuka’s better known and more popular manga.
Which isn’t to say it’s particularly good or anything, but after reading trashy potboilers like Ayako and amateur dreck like Lost World, it’s nice to encounter something that at least has potential and that might actually have been groundbreaking and exciting 50 years ago.
Right now it’s just a so-so buddy movie kind of story – the hardened veteran and the plucky rookie kind of thing. Hyakkimaru and Dororo build up a nice friendship over the course of the series as they learn to trust each other and work together… which just makes the ending where Hyakkimaru leaves Dororo behind and walks away never to be seen again rather maddening. Especially since it’s been shown time and again what a crappy world they live in where the poor are trampled on repeatedly and everyone falls prey to hungry demons all the time. Dororo was probably safer with Hyakkimaru but, well, the author clearly wanted to stop the series and couldn’t figure out how, so this is the best he could come up with. Remind me why Tezuka is considered a genius again?
Still Dororo (the series) does have moments of excitement and emotion, like when we learn Dororo’s backstory, or the whole adventure on the island looking for the treasure Dororo’s father left behind. It’s never dull either because there’s always some demon-rustling action going on, whether it’s setting traps for demons or luring them out or just plain hacky-slashy action, it’s all good.
There’s a lot of blood splashed around on every page but otherwise the action isn’t very gory (no entrails and stuff). There’s no sex or sexual violence either and not too much bad language outside the b-word, if I recall correctly. I recommend it for: fans of demon-slaying period pieces, fans of cheap tragedy tragic heroes, fans of buddy movies and anyone who likes series where the heroes travel around killing various monsters of the day. As long as you’re not looking for any proper conclusion or you’re fine with filling the gaps with your own imagination Dororo makes a good one-off summer’s day read.
