Review of Dororo
Dororo is an anime that could have been a masterpiece, but critical logic flaws towards the end of anime knocked it down a few pegs. It was truly an entertaining anime, and the ending wasn't even bad, per se, but it just didn't hit like it could have if they weren't trying to push an ending narrative that didn't fit the tone the story set through 90% of the show. Dororo, as you know, is an anime about a child, Hyakkimaru, who was sacrificed to demons by his father, Lord Daigo, in order to bring prosperity to his famine and drought stricken land.The demons fail to eat all of the child, and he ultimately works to regain what the demons took from him as an infant. In the process of doing this, he meets Dororo, a lovable character who, while the titular character, is really just his sidekick.
In this regard, the anime was amazing. Following Hyakkimaru and Dororo as they go from place to place taking down demons was very entertaining. But, things really kicked up a notch once Hyakkimaru's hunt takes him back to the land from which he came, and he begins to interact with his family. Those were very dramatic and emotional moments, and all the characters rose to occasion. A side note: The voice acting in this anime was tremendous.
The arc of the story seemed predictable, and in trying to avoid that predictability, this is where the anime faltered at the end.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
The predictable ending for an anime like this is obvious from halfway through it: Hyakkimaru kills all the demons, kills his brother and father, lets his mother live, and gets his body parts back, and then goes off into the sunset with Dororo, where they live happily ever after.
It's like the creators knew you would expect this ending, so they tried everything to avoid it, to the point of where it created glaring logic gaps. I knew there was going to be trouble when they broke the logic of the anime by having Hyakkimaru team up with the horse ghoul. Hyakkimaru has had a one track mind the entire anime: "Kill the demons." So, why would he not kill the horse? Why would the horse team up with him instead of trying to kill him like all the other ghouls did? Totally illogical. You could look past it, but you knew there was going to be trouble.
And trouble there was.
The root of the trouble was that the anime had some kind of obsession with keeping Hyakkimaru from killing anyone of note from the house of Daigo, himself. Daigo's favorite spy? Killed by the horse. Mutsu and Hyogo? Also killed by the horse. Which was particularly irritating, considering how often they fought Hyakkimaru with Tahomaru. Killed by a random horse? Come on.
But, the later deaths were even more irritating. Particularly Tahomaru's death. There was literally a "Martha? Why did you say that name?" moment. Where Hyakkimaru and Tahomaru are fighting to the death, and suddenly, Hyakkimaru notices that his little brother is missing something. What that is? Who knows. Why he didn't notice it before, during the multiple times they were trying to kill each other? Who knows? But, in the final confrontation, he notices it, declares Tahomaru a "human just like him" and decides not to kill him, and then Tahomaru decides to just give up and give Tahomaru his eyes back.
Now, Tahomaru this entire time, made a conscious choice to put his realm and its people about his older brother. He just lost both of his childhood friends to his brother's...horse. But, now, he's just deciding to rip out his eyes and say: "Meh, screw the realm, I lost.", because his brother, who was maniacally carving people to bits just minutes before, saw a hole he didn't understand and decided to chill out. It makes no sense. And then Tahomaru dies anyway in the fire, that also kills their mother and Hyakkimaru's adopted father, who decided to run into a burning castle just to give Hyakkimaru a statue of a goddess. Alrighty, then.
Which brings us to the next issue with them trying to keep Hyakkimaru's hands clean from killing anyone of actual importance in House Daigo: The final confrontation with Lord Daigo. This was problematic in itself, because the final fight that was between Hyakkimaru and Tahomaru, should have been between Hyakkimaru and Daigo. That would just make more sense. But, instead there is a final conversation between Daigo and Hyakkimaru, where Daigo literally tells Hyakkimaru that he would sacrifice him again, he made a mistake in not killing him as a baby himself, and that he will now proceed to sacrifice other humans to the demons. He was literally goading Hyakkimaru into killing him. But, instead of doing it, he stabs his helmet, and leaves him with the only keepsake he has of his adopted father; the statue his father literally died to give him. Okay.
They didn't want Hyakkimaru to kill his family, or even his family's friends. They wanted him to keep his hands clean of this so he didn't turn into a demon. Just one problem: The dude was literally a murder tornado and killed hundreds of Daigo's grunts, many of which were guys who were forced into the army by Daigo. Trying to keep his hands clean of killing anyone with a name makes no sense, when he's decapitating people left and right on the back of a horse ghoul. They just wanted to do something different than what you expected and threw out all common sense to make that happen.
This even applies to the final moments of the show, which were the most head scratching. Throughout the entire show, Hyakkimaru makes it clear, that when all is said and done, Dororo will be by his side. He's counting on her to be his family, because his own family is terrible to him. Again and again, "I have Dororo.", "Dororo will be with me.". And, when it's all said and done, for some inexplicable reason, he just leaves her. For years. "Hey, thanks for all the help chick, but I got what I came for. PEACE!". Great way to end it. He just ghosts on the only family he has, without a word, with no particular mission or anything to do that we know of. This is the guy who literally tracked her down across half the countryside when Itachi kidnapped her, and the guy who killed countless people when she was kidnapped again. And he just abandons her without a word for years. For a split second at the very end of the anime, we see Dororo grown up and running towards him as he comes back on a pier. Why did this nonsensical thing happen? Because you guessed they would stay together, Dororo would grow up, they would start a family and build a nation on Dororo's money. That's why.
The ending of the anime was full of needless swerving for swerving sake. That always brings an anime down.
Again, the ending wasn't terrible. You understand what they were trying to do, and it made sense when knitted together within the framework of the final episodes (except for him leaving Dororo), but it just didn't make sense within the framework of the entire anime.
For that reason, I have to score the anime less than I would've liked to, before the final episodes. I also have to knock the terrible animation quality in some of the episodes, as well. Dororo has kind of a throwback animation style, but some episodes were too much of a throwback. Like a throwback to the days of poor studios having to reduce animation quality because of low budgets.
Still, I did like 90% of this anime. And I really liked Dororo. She was a great character. Intelligent, crafty, precocious and cute. She had to be a great character seeing how for most of the anime Hyakkimaru couldn't talk. The moral quandary issue of deciding if one man is worth an entire realm, and the drama from the family squabbles were also highlights of the anime.
Overall, this was a good anime that could've been far better. I would recommend watching it, but you may feel a bit deflated by the ending. At least I did. But it's far from a waste of time.