My hiatus was initially supposed to last for another couple of days, but I’ve been quite effective at both writing some posts while I was on break as well as writing my essays for university. I had this one sitting at the ready today and figured I might as well upload it. The Hesitant Hero will also return this upcoming Friday, as promised, the chapter is already done.
I initially wanted to talk about Dorohedoro as part of my – quite slowly progressing – series of “x years since” but I never got around to doing so and eventually I just decided to write a review of both seasons instead. Now I will say, I’m normally not one to like the more horror and gore anime like one, which is why the first season caught me so off guard back in the day. It was a very different show compared to anything I normally was but it managed to hold my attention really well. Before diving into season 2 I also went back and rewatched the first season since I did not remember much about what happened in the later episodes. With this introduction out of the way, remember that there will be some spoilers for the first season throughout this post and some mild spoilers for season 2 later on – but I’ll give you a warning so you can stop reading at that point. All set? Good, let’s dive headfirst into my hole.
I mean Hole. Hole is the name of the city where the majority of this show takes place. It’s a shithole of a place where humans live in fear of being practiced on by the sorcerers that live in another world. They used to be fully oppressed by the sorcerers, but have since then started fighting back against their oppressors which hasn’t stopped the sorcerers, it has just made it more dangerous for them. In this world we find our two protagonists, Caiman and Nikaido.
The core plot of Dorohedoro revolves around Caiman’s condition. An unknown sorcerer has turned him into a person with a lizardface and together with his friend Nikaido – who runs a gyoza place – he is trying to find the sorcerer responsible and undo the magic by killing them. There’s also a few strange things about Caiman alongside his changed face. For starters, he has no memories of any time before he got his new face, and when he bites on someone’s head, they will find themselves inside of Caiman’s mouth talking to a strange man that tells them “you’re not the one”.
The second half of this equation is the En family. En is a powerful sorcerer who has a group working for him referred to as “En’s cleaners”. They’re the de facto powerhouse in the world of sorcerers and they deal with all sorts of problems. They’re more of a mafia family than a proper government though and although the individual characters on En’s squad are fun and interesting, their impact on the world is violent and cruel at times, making it hard for anyone outside of their little group to have much love for them. In the very first episode we meet two of them, although one of this duo is murdered by Caiman before the first few minutes of the show are over. Fujita escapes and returns to En, which sets off the feud between Caiman and En’s people. Two of En’s most powerful cleaners are Shin – a half-sorcerer who wears the mask of a heart – and Noi – En’s cousin who wears a sort of gimp mask. This duo is incredibly strong with Noi having healing magic and Shin… well… he has a lot of violence in his heart. These two different parties interact with each other numerous times as their goals in this world end up colliding more often than not. It’s the characters of Dorohedoro that really sell the story for me. It does help that I love me some strong women and both Noi and Nikaido are at peak strength. Caiman is a blast with his silly personality, En is a psychopath but in the best way and Fujita and Ebisu – another sorcerer who has a bad time throughout this show – are a great duo with Fujita often having to play the straight man in crazy situations.
Before diving into the plot of season 2 – and going into some bigger spoilers – let’s talk about the animation, art and music. The glaring topic that hangs above my head is animation. The art is fine, it looks grimy and dark and the gore is well done but not so detailed that it puts me off. That might be a negative for some, but I’m glad that it’s all still manageable. Gore and horror are hard to pull off in anime anyway, just look at the numerous Junji Ito adaptations that look less than ideal. Speaking of looking less than ideal, the show chose in season one to make the characters with full CGI animation. And although the quality of the CGI is pretty good for its time, they stuck with the same strategy for season 2 and I don’t know if I like it. It definitely helps give Dorohedoro its unique look, but I’m usually more of a fan of classic animation styles over CGI. It could just be that I’m a boomer, but a part of me also remembers the era of CGI where everything looked totally awful due to the technology not being quite good enough yet.
To offset that, the music is fantastic. Headed by (K)NoW Name, a group of artists that have done some anime projects before including openings and endings, it is a loud and grimy soundtrack that really fits the atmosphere of the show well. And especially the opening theme for season 2 is absolutely fantastic, I had it playing on repeat for weeks after I first heard it. The vocals are very powerful and the metal sound is just music to my ears. Literally. Because it is music. And I use my ears to listen to it. Alright. I need some rest, this shit is terrible.
Please check out the first one or two episodes of this show. I think it’s one of those shows that you will quickly find out is or isn’t for you. If you don’t enjoy it by the second episode, I don’t think much it does later on will change your mind. With that in mind, if you’re still here for the review of season 2, please be aware that there will be spoilers from here on out. I will be talking about the plot of season 2 and what my thoughts on it are, so click off if you’re not ready to be spoiled yet. We all good? Good.
Season 2 is actually kind of hard for me to review now that I’ve seen the entire thing. I’ve enjoyed most of it, especially diving more into the En family and what happened with them and their feud with the cross-eyes. We also finally get a bit more lore about said cross-eyes and I have to admit I did find some of the former leaders being together trying to survive financially a very funny plot point. But once the tides changed I started to realize that the vibes were off. Especially with Dokuga and his belief in a boss who has ultimately been betraying them left and right, with whatever plans he might have. Going into this season, I really didn’t know how much content there was left in the original manga and I expected there might be an ending this season, but apparently there is still quite a lot to go. I’m definitely curious to see where it goes but for me this show lives and dies by its comedy and the more serious it got, the less interested I got. I will still absolutely tune in for future seasons, but I hope we get a bit more of the fun back that was sorely missing from the final few episodes.
I hope this way too long post has given you some insight into my hole, I mean the world of Hole and the craziness that is Dorohedoro. Please give it a watch if you haven’t already and decide for yourself if it’s the right level of silliness. And as always, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 