Review of Dororo

What can i say about this show? Well, the first episode had me hooked immediately. The protagonist and a spunky little kid running around and looking for demons? Trying to get back body parts? I was invested! It kept going, for I say about 15 episodes, then the anime started to resolve things; while this is not a bad thing, the reason why I didn't like that aspect will be touched on in a little bit. but first, let me just talk about everything I liked. All the characters were beautifully orchestrated, from the blind old man, to our main cast, to the loving mother who missesher son. Everyone in this anime had a role to play and did it well without being a nuisance to plot development.

the story is based off an old story, so we pretty much got a contained story that still works to this day.

the art is absolutely beautiful, the animators were not lazy. from the eyes of our characters to the scenery, every penned-in line told a story.

sound isn't much to write home about, your basic run-of-the-mill japanese-Chinese score with classical eastern instruments. not amazing, but it did fit.

So what did I not like? Well, 2 things:

1. the needless sacrifice of characters. I won't go into detail on where it happened that annoyed me. But I really hate the trope of "we must make the stakes high, sacrifices must be made" in order for writers to tell a good story. I think it's needless and only serves to frustrate me. It was fine sometimes, but overall when you have 5 characters being sacrificed, I feel like your not trying that hard anymore. I can understand how some people like this, so I won't hold it against the show.

2. I wanted it to be longer, like.. Inuyasha longer. I say Inuyasha because I really thought the journey bouncing off the characters in that show made it enjoyable to watch and slog through 160+ episodes. I felt this anime could have been that... but unfortunately, as I said before:

It's based off an old tale. So BOTH my criticisms are invalid. The wrap up at around episode 15 was something I had to deal with because of the restraint.The original story had sacrifices. so changing that would have been dishonest. And making it longer would have been impossible.

But overall it was well enjoyed. I would highly recommend this to anyone.