Review of Dororo

Dororo was a really interesting anime. It felt fresh from anything else I'd seen before. The beginning of the show kept me really invested with a horrifying backstory for the main character and a strong first few episodes but it quite quickly fell into filler episodes. I would say about half of the episodes in the first half of the show were filler and could've been skipped in favor of better pacing. Although some of these filler episodes (potential spoiler) allowed us to see Hyakkimaru getting some body parts back and slowly adapting to them (end of spoiler) and feeding into the greater philosophy ofthe show, i think they should've been handled differently as the episodes feel completely inconsequential. This happened mainly in the first half of the show with the second half only having one arc that I considered filler (the moth demon). The show does make the journey ultimately worth it as the end was wonderful; The end was very final and the story felt complete with no real room for a sequel, and I think this was the right way for the show to go. The last four episodes were absolutely 10/10 incredible and i would've liked to see more episodes like this. The show did a really good job of showing me a side of anime i'd never seen before: a Buddhist one. It felt very realistic and fresh and it wasn't just a lot of Buddhists character but the overall message and ending fit the Buddhist philosophy very well.
I think the deterioration of the art is worth mentioning as the show started off looking absolutely incredible with strong character design and good action but by the end the quality fell incredibly, especially around episode 15 where there was a still drawing of Hyakkimaru gliding up a hill and between trees, or the last episode where right at the start the Monk's mouth kind of faded between frames. A lot of these faults were badly disguised and clearly visible, and the overall quality of the art fell drastically towards the end of the show. This was disappointing, especially as some of the best episodes of the show looked quite aweful, but I found myself being able to forgive the problem due to being generally invested in the show. The voice actors of Hyakkimaru and Dororo (I watched the sub) did an incredible job and really sold me on the characters. I really enjoyed the character arc of Hyakkimaru in general but I don't want to spoil anything.
Overall I really enjoyed the show and thought it was one of the most unique experiences I'd had in anime, but it suffered from filler episodes and a drop in art quality. 8/10