Review of Dororo
Dororo is actually the second anime adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's classic manga series from the 1960s focused on a ronin swordsman named Hyakkimaru trying to reclaim his body parts from various demons and accompanied on his journey by a young orphaned thief named Dororo. The series at the start reveals that the loss of Hyakkimaru's limbs are due to a pact that his father, the feudal lord of a territory, made with a number of demons in order to maintain his land's prosperity against disaster. As I'm not completely privy to the 1969 anime adaptation (though plan to get around to seeing it at somepoint), I'm not gonna judge this between the older adaptation and instead will judge this on its own merits.
Dororo 2019 explores Hyakkimaru's journey to reclaim his body parts from various demons, as he comes upon towns affected by the demons in varying capacities, while Dororo accompanies him to navigate him to various locales since he lacks the ability to see or hear beyond sensing a nearby presence by seeing the color of a living being's soul. As their journey presses on, Hyakkimaru learns more about his past and what led to the loss of his various body parts as this leads to a moral dilemma over the morally right choice to make for those connected to Hyakkimaru between restoring the boy's humanity or sacrificing it to ensure the survival of his family's territory. Members of Hyakkimaru's family are also aware of the morally questionable choice they made to ensure their land's stability and make different stances on the matter in regards to acknowledging Hyakkimaru's humanity. Dororo's presence in Hyakkimaru's life serves as the boy's moral compass to prevent him from completely losing his morality as he tries to regain his body parts, especially as he does later come at odds with his family and their followers when they try to kill the boy off to ensure their land's prosperity.
A number of the episodes during Hyakkimaru's journey to hunt demons also lead to other morally ambiguous elements explored in some of the towns he visits. Much like the situation with Hyakkimaru's father, some of the demons he encounters have brought some sort of happiness to people of the lands he visited, yet at the cost of someone else's suffering or life. These episodes help add more to the question of whether Hyakkimaru's journey is a justified one or not.
Moral delving on Hyakkimaru's journey aside, Dororo is not without its issues. The titular character of the series does have his character fleshed out at points throughout the series, though has some elements of his character unexplored that could have provided some interesting exploration on how feudal Japanese society regards gender identity and how this affects Dororo on a personal level. Plus as the series focuses more on Hyakkimaru's struggles in later episodes, Dororo does gradually get shafted in focus as a result which does result in a rather unsatisfying ending with Dororo's place within Hyakkimaru's character development.
Issues with Dororo's character aside though, the series was still a mostly engaging one that offered some interesting moral ambiguity in regards to the choices made by Hyakkimaru and his family with ensuring their own prosperity in spite of the sacrifices that their decisions would result in. It does have me tempted to want to dabble into the 1969 anime series at some point to compare the two considering Osamu Tezuka's historical contributions to anime. Regardless, fans of anime dabbling into Japan's feudal period and supernatural lore should give this series a viewing at least once.