Is Dororo Worth Your Time?

Hello everyone and welcome to our shelter! 🙂

I don’t really have an introduction for you today, yeah… Things are completely the same compared to yesterday! Ah, wait! Almost forgot! Dororo First Impressions is part of my Ultimate Guide for the 2019 Anime Winter Season. A guide with more than 100 pages with a first impressions to every Anime coming out in the Winter Season. You can get your own here (it’s free!).

Title: Dororo (MAL Page)

Alternative Titles: Dororo to Hyakkimaru

MAL Score: 8.42

Genres: Action, Demons, Historical

Number of Episodes: Unknown

Broadcast: Mondays (JST)

Studios: Tezuka Productions, MAPPA

Source: Manga

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R – 17+

Synopsis

In order to be the country’s leader, Daigo Kagemitsu, a samurai lord, decides to bargain with 48 different demons. He askes for the demons’ power, giving anything they want in return. This way, when his first child is born, the boy is missing 48 parts of his body. Surprising enough, the baby is alive and Daigo sends a maid to dispose of him. The maid, out of pity for the child sends him down the river inside a boat.

Many years later, Hyakkimaru is still alive and was able to have a foster father who gave him lethal prostheses to be able to defend himself from the demons following him. Every time he kills one of the demons who were present in the bargain he gets one of his missing body parts.

Hyakkimaru ends up meeting Dororo, an orphan kid who makes his living by selling stolen goods. Both enter in a trip together where Hyakkimaru will try to get all the missing body parts.

Story

Dororo was first released as a manga in 1967. This way, the story may seem pretty straight forward. I mean, the story will be more or less Hyakkimaru killing all the demons, regain his full body and then, probably, face his father who was responsible for his lousy life.

Yeah, it’s true that may be straight forward… But, it’s good! There is really no other way to put it! 🙂 I think the main reason for such a story to work is its pace. We clearly get those vibes of calmer days back in the day, but, at the same time, we also get those action scenes where Hyakkimaru fights against the demons.

It’s not that the story alone makes the Anime worth it by itself. But, the conjunction of a nice premise, good conversations, good characters, and a very nice historical surrounding, creates Dororo a very interesting World to watch and story to follow.

Characters

How can you talk about a character who is not able to feel, see, hear, or talk? It’s difficult! At the moment, Hyakkimaru is still not able to understand what is happening around his surroundings. He’s only able to understand what is a foe and what is not! Basically, he fights and walks by instinct.

On the other hand, Dororo, although cute, is still just a huge brat as any others.

So, it just seems the characters are not great. Well, that’s how things get tricky! I love the interactions between those two. And, although we still weren’t able to see much of it, I’m pretty sure it will become a very nice friendship to follow! 🙂

Animation

Well, we can’t really compare the Animation of Dororo with its original Anime, right? I mean, the original aired in 1969! However, I have to say that, from what I’ve seen, the characterization is still there! You can see that both Dororo and Hyakkimaru have an enhanced design from the originals, but their traces are still there!

The overall animation is more adult, but that’s what we can expect (and what works) in this sort of genre. You get the vibes of the feudal Era very easily and the animation is very well made. When it comes to movement, all the fights which happened until now are very smooth, exciting, and entertaining to watch.

Basically, Dororo has a good Animation overall.

Audio

Most of the audio is great!

I love the intro music! I’m not very good explaining why I like music, but it just speaks Dororo! It’s kind of gloomy but energetic at the same time!

When it comes to the Anime itself, props go for the sound effects and not so much for the score. Not that the score is bad, but the sound of the surroundings, or when a person does something, is just amazingly well done! 🙂

The only thing I don’t like is Dororo’s voice acting… I’m not going to speak more about it, but if you want, you can read my rant about it!

Final Verdict

Dororo is one of the best Anime shows from the season! It’s a classic and I love that it received a new adaptation!

If you like either action, supernatural, historical Anime show, basically any genre that has to do with Dororo, watch it!

Even if it seems not to be your type of Anime, I still advise you to try one episode and see if it’s for you! I can’t say is a masterpiece, but it is really interesting!

If you completely hate any of the genres above – don’t watch it!

Final Score: Good!