Review of Dororo

Dororo is an anime that represents something that I am very excited about, it represents the willingness of studios to adapt older manga to animation, bringing the older stories to a modern audience. MAPPA have previously given Banana Fish and Ushio and Tora this treatment, both working brilliantly as modern anime. So, how did Dororo work as an anime in 2019? Overall, excellently. One of the keys to this anime’s success is its director, Kazuhiro Furuhashi. Furahashi has previously worked on the entirety of the Rurouni Kenshin anime, including the Trust and Betrayal OVA, which is considered by many to have the best samurai actionscenes in all of anime. Giving him an IP such as Dororo, a series sharing similarities to Rurouni Kenshin when it comes to both its setting and appeal, was a very clever decision. Some of the fights in Dororo were genuinely some of the best that I have seen in anime, Furhashi didn’t hold back in the slightest. There was also a nice surprise in Osamu Kobayshi making an appearance in the first ED, and in his direction of episode 15.

To discuss the overall production of Dororo, it was pretty solid. The animation ranged from outstanding to slightly subpar at times. But the visual direction was always good enough to make up for any problems with the animation. The background art was consistently great throughout, and did a fantastic job of both bringing the setting to life, and capturing the tone of the series. The colour design was overall, really good, but had moments of sheer brilliance. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has seen any of Furuhashi’s work, the colour design in anything he works on is always one of the strongest aspects. He truly has an incredibly strong grasp on how important colour design is when it comes to selling the mood of a scene.

I understand that Dororo’s anime shared many of its characters with its manga counterpart, and even some plot events, but is overall considerably different from its source material. I have not read the manga, so I can’t pass any meaningful judgement on what version of the story I think is better. I can say, however, that I thought that the anime’s script was overall very good. It had some low points, but also some very high points, so I finished the series feeling satisfied with the story that I was presented with. Some episodes, like episode six, stood out to me as being some of the best episodes of anime in recent memory. Hyakkimaru and Dororo were a good leading duo, and were a crucial aspect to my enjoyment of this show. Hyakkimaru’s change in character across the course of the show was handled very well, and led to the show feeling very easy to watch, as you could feel that the story was always progressing. Dororo and Hyakkimaru’s character dynamic was also very nice.

Overall, I was expecting to really like Dororo as soon as it was announced, and I was not disappointed.