Review of Dororo

Dororo starts out promising. The story of a silent monster slayer followed by a comedic relief sidekick isn't exactly groundbreaking, but when done well, it can work. Hyakkimaru, in particular, had a lot of potential for growth, both as a character and as a fighter, thanks to the whole body part gimmick. And while I am usually not a fan of comedic side characters, Dororo is likable enough, or to be more precise, he doesn't make me want to kill myself, unlike the kid from Claymore, so that is a definitive plus. The presentation does leave a lot to be desired, both in terms ofanimation and especially music (the first opening is absolutely atrocious), but it gets the job done well enough and there is nothing that I would call an outright eyesore. The demon designs aren't exactly great either (Wow, an animal/insect but big, never seen that one before) but it's not a dealbreaker. In all honesty, while this show never had the potential to be a perfect ten out of ten, I can see how things could come together for a solid seven or maybe even eight. Thankfully, you don't have to take my word for it, since the first few episodes are very good. Sadly, the show quickly starts to lose steam and begins to suffer from two major issues. The episodic approach, and the Tahoumaru substory.

The episodic approach starts out well enough, but it quickly reaches its limit and fails to evolve into anything noteworthy. As a result, pretty much the entire show consists of one or two episodes long arcs, filled with one-note characters and ending in a battle with the villain of the week. None of these segments lead to anything even mildly interesting, and they have absolutely no lasting impact on either of our main heroes. This is in part because Hyakkimaru simply doesn't have a character (at least until the very last arc). He is the stereotypical 'greatest swordsman who has ever lived' and that's pretty much it for him. They tried to give him something with him having to adapt to his new body parts, but this gets almost immediately dropped. On the fighting side, things aren't much better. As already stated, Hyakkimaru starts of as the greatest guy ever and ends the show in the exact same place. What is even more bewildering is the fact that the story already had two built in ways for Hyakkimaru to grow. You can either have him get stronger as he regains his body and unlocks new moves, or you can have him get weaker as he can no longer rely on his sci-fi prosthetics to carry him through combat and any damage he takes on his real body will be permanent. For some reason, they decided to do neither and so him regaining his lost body is completely irrelevant. As for Dororo, there is little to say. The story fundamentally isn't about her, so she cannot progress anywhere and her looking for a new family is phoned in at best. She does get a backstory, but it's trying so hard to make you feel sad that it comes of as funny.

And now we get to the Tahoumaru substory, also known as the demon plot canyon. The basic premise of Dororo is simple: 'A Greedy lord summons a bunch of demons and gives them the body of his firstborn son in exchange for protecting his realm. The son survived because each demon can't devour more than one of his body parts.' This show really doesn't know how to handle the demons and so it defaults to making shit up as the story progresses, with no consistency or regard to how these changes will affect the story as a whole. This results in even the shows' most basic premise making absolutely zero sense. If I had to rewrite the premise with the knowledge I have now, it would look something like this: 'A Greedy lord summons a bunch of demons who were already there and gives them the body of his firstborn son, even though he could have given them literally anything else (the lives/bodies of his enemies included). In exchange, most of these demons fucked off somewhere else and some straight up decided to terrorize the lord's lands. Thanks to this, the land now prospers. The son survived because each demon can't devour more than one of his body parts except for the times they can.' Since the Tahoumaru arc is all about entangling this mystery, it suffers greatly. This isn't helped by the fact that everyone involved is a cardboard cutout with nothing redeeming about them. And then we get to the whole 'The deal was broken' part of the story. Just like anything else related to the demons, the deal made with them is also really poorly defined and constantly changes. And so we get scenes upon scenes of characters discussing the deal and constantly coming up with new, contradictory ways the deal works. Here are some from the top of my head: The deal is off because Hyakkimaru broke it. The deal is off because Tahoumaru broke it. The deal is not off but Tahoumaru may cancel it at any point if he so wishes. The deal is off, but it will be back if they kill Hyakkimaru. The deal was never on in the first place. The deal is still on, but it will be broken some day. This gets so bad that even Daigo, the guy who made the deal, straight up says that he has no idea how the deal he made works. What were the terms and conditions on the fucking thing? I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The story makes absolutely zero sense. Now that might sound pretty bad, but don't worry, the second half of the show is much, much worse.

Prepare yourself, because I am about to drop the most difficult moral conundrum ever conceived. Are you ready? Well, ready or not, here I come. Is killing demons bad? If you answered no, then congratulations, you have a brain. It would not be an overstatement to say that Dororo may be one of the most black and white stories out there. Hyakkimaru good, demons bad. For some reason, the second half of the season keeps on insisting that this is a morally gray situation with no clear good or bad guys. The show constantly beats you over the head with this ridiculous idea that demons killing random people is actually really good and that Hyakkimaru doesn't actually have any claim to his own body. Who the fuck wrote this? They even go with the 'Whose blood do you have on those swords' cliché two separate times and both of them completely flop. This isn't helped by the fact that they ran out of clichés to base their characters on and so the last few arcs consist purely of demon worshiping murderers whose only calling in life is killing innocent people. The presentation also takes a massive hit. I hope you like stills because that's what you're getting. And on the rare occasion a scene actually gets animated, it looks absolutely atrocious. And to finish the whole mess, the ending is so mindbogglingly retarded I think it gave me brain damage. When Hyakkimaru says the ol reliable 'You and I are the same', I nearly dropped the show right there. The only reason I finished the show was so I could write this review.