DOROHEDORO - The Netflix Anime You Need To Watch!

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It wasn’t a surprise to me when my social media newsfeed was teeming with people elated about Ghibli films finally finding a place on Netflix to stay, whilst Dorohedoro – well, whilst it stayed lost somewhere in the dark, nowhere to be heard of on any Facebook posts, or anywhere in the many anime forums that I’m a part of. The only thing that got my attention was one of those small promotion windows that one views when already on the Netflix site – with the image of a slaughtered head lying on the grass with open eyes and mushrooms sprouting out of it. Sadly, I haven’t managed to find the frame anywhere on the internet, so just my words will have to do for now - but you get me by now, I believe. As a matter of fact, this is where I think, Dorohedoro’s magic lies – in making the grim so appealing.

Dorohedoro - En and employees

The series itself is based in a fantasy world with sorcerers and humans living in different environments with an obvious conflict of interest, as the central character – a person with a lizard head, seems to be amnesiac and searching for whoever (a sorcerer, because they used humans as test subjects to try their magic on) did this to him. And very much like the characters of the series that have clear conflicts, belonging to opposing camps despite living in a very grey world, much like ours, the style of the work, too, is clearly very conflicting, yet complimenting. The environment itself is a surreal one – with toilets that use flame to burn excrements instead of using a water flush, to sorcerers – clearly the ones with a power advantage, appearing in public with masks, as their victims, literally have their heads replaced with something else altogether. Then there are En’s mushrooms, black smoke leaking out of fingers, baroque buildings, lavish parties, demons seated on ornate inverted crucifixes as the sun rises. On the other hand, the series which begins media res, progresses like a noir film. As a matter of fact, a clearly interesting role reversal between the real and the surreal lies in the fact that the sorcerer’s world is so full of colors whilst Caiman’s dreams (specifically the one from the tenth episode) are styled like the narrative of a person trapped in a crime thriller from the 70s.

Manga page

Q Hayashida, who was clearly the genius who came up with the conception of this intricate world where even sorcerers sometimes feel worthless despite their powers, however, had a very different styled work with her manga (or so it would seem because of the lack of color in the manga – literally). Undoubtedly, her work was bold, but to some extent, I found the dimensions very limited in the manga – for both the lack of space and movement (which, in my opinion, are added advantages in a fantasy narrative) of the comic medium when compared to the anime along with the lack of color – which was what gave this series its surreal cyber-punk vibe in a narrative that kept alternating between downtown Hong Kong after an apocalypse and wonderland. After all, if a bold visual style was all that mattered, then I wouldn’t be able to set aside this work from Baki or Kengan Ashura, both of which are pathetically dry before this work.

Another interesting aspect to this series was the complete character representation that it provided, as a way of balancing out her subscription to the usual trend (in many popular Japanese works ranging from Tokyo Ghoul to One Punch Man – just think of Puri-Puri-Prisoner) of presenting hyper masculine, or extremely effeminate homosexual men as a way of getting a few laughs. In a nice act of balancing the presence of such a character who was clearly very powerful and clingy towards the antagonist, we see a cast of characters ranging from a clearly dysfunctional, petite young teenager wearing a skull mask to an overpowered muscular woman with her unmarred sexual appeal (Miss Noi) with a rather polite personality, and very emblematic of the female powerlifter Reika Saiki who’d recently won many hearts with her Chun – Li (Street Fighter) cosplay. As a matter of fact, Miss Noi, despite her rather unconventional build, has clearly emerged as the most prominent sex symbol of the series – as can be learned from the many doujinshi (self-published manga – often lewd in nature) that feature her as the central character.

Puri Puri Prisoner

Doujinshi Miss Noi
In essence, Dorohedoro is very much like those beautiful red doors that the sorcerers opened to leap into their beautiful world – a series, you’ll find really difficult to distance yourself from, as I still feel with the first season ending with the lines, “Everything is still lost in chaos, AND THAT IS DOROHEDORO”. Things are just as dark and unprecedented as they were when the series began, but with a lot of development in between – a lot of the past uncovering itself slowly and much room for a renewal which the series director Yuichiro Hayashi has said, can be expected from Netflix. Let’s just hope that the next season has the very people on board, as it had, whilst the studio MAPPA doesn’t back out (a lot of love for the great work they’ve always done).

                                                                                                            Anirban Chakroborti

                                                                                                            07/06/2020


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