Review of Dororo

A kid exiled from their parents' warmth, only to deliver a harsh payback years later. A man meditates on top of a mountain, only to find out everything he was praying for had already faded away, stories of redemption, regret and overcoming hardships like these give off a strange nostalgic vibe of a rainy night, embraced by your grandmother as she tells you about some urban legend whilst you're sipping from your warm bowl of soup, holding on to her on the rough parts of the story, waiting for the conclusion to drop so that you can fill up the lost bits of the story on your own later, probablyas you dream hoping it doesn't turn into a fever hell. “Grandson/Granddaughter, shall we start?”, “Yes
Granny, what are story are you going to tell us today, is it the bunny one?!”, mysteriously ignores you as she proceeds
into her storytelling; “A long, long time ago, demons existed, and a boy named Hyakkimaru was born...”

A modern take on an already pretty established series, “Hyakkimaru” get mass attention from the fans on its airing
season, reviving its old forgotten stories, it founded a great following from both returning old and brand fresh new
fans. A show like nothing we're used to especially lately, with gloomy colors, heavily traditional, and aggressively
dark and controversial for its airing time.

- Story (8.5/10):
In a world where demons have the superstitious upper hand, corruption is the common language, wars everywhere, famine
every day and genocide is a solution for everything. A samurai ruler sacrifices his newborn son for the demons in order
for his land to nourish, as his ruling mind convinced him that sacrificing a potential heir is a small price for his
people's salvation. Several demons reacted, each of them consumed something off of the poor little kid, and it just
happens that one of them fails at consuming whatever was left from a rusty skeleton and a mush of rotten flesh, no
eyes, no ears, no limbs and not even a healthy mind.
Given all the odds against him, he still survived under the care of a monk-looking doctor that has taken from providing
prosthetic limbs for the dead and the sick a profession, a weird flex, but it only gets weirder from here on.
Hyakkimaru was the named given to the cursed poor kid, he had spent plenty of years under the care of the doctor until
it was time for him to leave and walk his own path of restoring what was taken from him, defeating demon after demon,
until that one day he met a mysterious kid. enter Dororo.

- Art (8.5/10):
It was visually interesting, to say the least. It feels as if Dororo took the same old school art style every other show
used back in the day, added in some seasoning by none other than the kitchen donkey himself and threw it on a plate for
consumption and that was probably the best thing to do for an old series such as it was, it definitely helped make it
easier to watch through episode by episode.
For a seasonal series, it's disappointing how it lacked a definitive consistency through its serialization, some episode
were just the best out of all airing shows, whilst others did not scale up to the same standards, almost as if you were
watching a different show altogether.
The animation was, at the hight of it, breathtaking. For an action show, you bet you're getting a fight at least once an
episode, and for the major ones? Enter movie quality scenes, even for a couple of seconds. The hand to hand and
swordfight feels natural and exciting, no such reusable snaps or slacking low-rate frames to drag down the rest of the
production.

- Sound (9/10):
Let me get this right off the way first, the opening and ending songs in this show are party bangers, every single one
of them. And I'm confident enough to call the first opening as the best in the crown, really inspiring and with great
vocal cords, something you definitely don't see in every Anime. The ending theme songs are probably the least spoken
about on every show, and you can't help but understand why seeing how most people see them as skippable extra topping
that is just there to fill up the 24 minutes mark but not with “Dororo”.
The voice acting in this show is a little bit weird, I don't know if it's just me, but I can't help but feel a very old
school vibe from it, it's almost visible to the naked eye how for example, Dororo's voice feels like it was recorded two
decades ago, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just worked so well with everything else.

- Character (8/10):
From a newborn to a full-on adult. It feels like you've been raising a child on your own for decades, mostly because of how
frequently Hyakkimaru's personality changes as he wins something of his back, he may have never experienced hearing in
his life, but when he finally hears something, it just changes him, it flips his world, it influences his fighting
style, it even alters his behavior and interaction to the world, and that was just an example of what a single sense does
to him, and you can only imagine how different of a person he is at the end of the series from what he started off as in
the beginning.
A lot of minor characters come and go, pulls off some plot-changing decisions and then disappear until they face the
consequences back.

- Enjoyment (9/10):
This was definitely one of those shows that makes you feel empty after you finish it, you get too interested on a weekly
basis, and then suddenly it's the end. I'm not a big fan of how it ended, but I can think of a lot of other ways it
could have been bad, so I'll suttle with how it turned out for the sake of being faithful for what it set out for.
I really enjoyed the fights, I enjoyed the characters, I loved the songs and the visuals, I wrote theories, I basically
had a phenomenal experience with the series, I felt connected, concerned, mild feelings of anger, happiness, and sadness, it was one
heck of a rollercoaster.

- Overall (8.6/10):
As someone who hasn't seen the original series yet (as of writing this review), I was definitely hooked. If I remember
correctly, it was around the 5th or the sth episode were it all clicked for me, but going back, the first episodes were
very high quality too. I would definitely recommend diving into this series, especially for fantasy/mystery/action fans
out there, watching the original does not really matter, it takes nothing out from the experience, and I would probably
guess that it's the proper way to experience the series.