I have loved the anime genre for years…twelve years ago, however, I rarely watch it, but accurately. In one of the reviews of animated series for high school age, I drew attention to Dorohedoro (2020), where on the cover a pretty girl was hanging out with some kind of lizard. I decided to check it out and immediately got involved. The name can be translated as “Dirty dirt”, but this should not scare away real Otaku.
The good old ultra-violence reigns here. Cutting off or swallowing heads, skinning, ripping up bodies and other dismemberment. And all this is shown uncensored and without blurring juicy and bloody scenes. However, all this outrage looks easy and without affecting mental health. Anime is flavored with funny jokes, gags, black humor. “Dumplings!” – exclaims the formidable Caiman and thereby shows his weakness for cooking, which is given special attention here.
Literally the first scene of the movie
The creator of the manga Kyu Hayashida (she has been drawing it for 18 years) did not care about the feelings of believers and had fun to the fullest. The adaptation of the manga into anime was handled by MAPPA studio, director Yuichiro Hayashi carefully approached the original and kept all the right atmosphere.
Nikaido is a girl with seductive forms, as well as a good fighter and cook. Nikaido’s diner is called Hungry Bug and then we will meet the living embodiment of such a name. The Caiman does not live in Africa, but in a Hole, and this crocodile not only swallowed the sun. Sin walks with a hammer like an Oldboy, and Noah flaunts in a tracksuit, as if having escaped from the TV series Brigade: quite a Tarantino couple, they wear masks and love fights. The main boss of the En magicians looks like the leader from Mad Max Fury Road and he is also Lenin-Mushroom. Ebisu with a potsherd is a 13-year-old suicide bomber, and Fujita in a stupid hat and a mask with a long nose is an unlucky Pinocchio who could not master the alphabet of magicians.
Magic in general looks like a hallucination. It’s not like “Casting spell number one”, but just black magic smoke appears and what a magician is capable of happens. I remember bad black smoke flying in the air in the TV series “Lost: Stay Alive”.
Fujita, what's wrong with your finger?
There is a Hole – the human world, which is a slum, and the World of Magicians is a much more well-groomed world, in some areas it looks like a gingerbread house. And then there is Hell with its colorful inhabitants. Humans and magicians confront each other and compete in outright cruelty. It’s hard to say which one is worse.
There are a lot of characters in Dorohedoro, both primary and secondary, and they are all closely intertwined. There are no antagonists and protagonists. It is impossible to say which characters are negative and which are positive. They all have good and bad sides. Everyone has their own story, and for many it is sufficiently disclosed. There are also hints of love lines, but when someone asks the characters if one is in love with the other, they are terribly embarrassed and blush.
The most kawaii character, Kikurage
This is a dirty and cruel world, where there are still real values – friendship, love, respect. And the heroes sometimes show them in the most unexpected moments. When, for example, a magician is ready to kill a person, but suddenly recognizes in him the one who once saved his life, laughs and immediately gives him a hand, stopping the fight.
(K)NoW_NAME – Dorohedoro Opening
Everything is mixed up here: people, magicians, zombies, demons, devils. This is a fun horror and fascinating detective. Cyberpunk with fantasy elements. Eclecticism in the best anime traditions. Season 1 of 12 episodes of 25 minutes each and a small OVA with 5-minute sketches are available for viewing.
