Dororo 1
May 16, 2008
Meh, this series gets serious points for an amazing idea, but something about the execution put me off a little. Not much, just a little. I still enjoyed it quite a bit more than your average Shounen Sunday series, but not as much as, say, Ode to Kirihito. This could have something to do with the age range, because that seems to greatly affect my enjoyment of Tezuka’s series.
Much like every other of his series released by Vertical, for whatever reason no plot summary gave me an adequate idea of what the series was about because it’s just so… out there. I mean, I could tell you that an ambitious man sacrificed his firstborn son’s body parts to 48 demons in exchange for power and this is the son’s struggle to get them back, but would that make any sense to you? The logic in the story is pretty flimsy (the boy was born a lump of flesh since all his body parts were stolen and must talk and see telepathically. He was taught to fight and outfitted with working appendages and a face by a skilled… puppetmaker?), but it’s perfectly acceptable, I suppose. This character is Hyakkimaru, the “Dororo” of the title is a little kid thief that follows him around and says he’s going to steal his sword.
The plot itself is a lot more awesome than most of the series I’m reading now. There’s some very obvious calculation to this, and I feel a little bad with how much I liked Hyakkimaru’s weapon arrangement. Like I said, the puppetmaker gave him a normal-looking body, but when he fights, he pulls his normal-looking arms off and fights with two sword arms, and at least one of his legs is a gun or cannon of some sort, I think. That’s the sort of thing little boys go nuts over, and… like I said, the explanation for this didn’t make much sense to me, but the thing itself was pretty awesome all the same.
We do get some action. It seems like we didn’t, since a lot of what was in this volume was the setup to the story and Hyakkimaru and Dororo flashbacks, but body parts are recovered and demons are slain. It makes me wonder about the structure of the rest of the series, though, since there are supposed to be 48 body parts recovered and I don’t think it’s all that long.
It’s fun, but I feel like the first volume was too much exposition for me to get a feel for how things will go for the rest of the series. I am looking forward to the 2nd volume, though.
May 16, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I’ve heard Dororo isn’t as deep as the rest of Tezuka’s stuff, and I wonder for someone who hasn’t read anything of his yet, would this be a better place to start than MW or Kirihito…
May 17, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Hm, you might be right. It seems to avoid some of the Astro Boy problems of a heavy-handed and out-of-place message, plus it’s a lot more entertaining than Astro Boy so far. It probably is a good entry point, but it does have a touch of… mm, shallowness or blandness to it that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s still pretty good, though.
May 18, 2008 at 1:16 pm
[...] Adventure to be pretty good despite being a kids’ comic written to a formula. Connie reviews vol. 1 of Dororo, vol. 2 of Battle Royale (ultimate edition), and vol. 19 of Eyeshield 21 at Slightly Biased Manga. [...]
May 18, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I dunno, I liked it. It does not fall into a lot of the holes Tezuka’s work usually does, namely pacing and legitamacy. Ode was a good book, but there were things-Tezuka specific things-that made me cringe: where, in the Middle East, are you going to find a giant bowl, enough cooking oil to fill it, tempura, and a giant spoon, all in a matter of moments just so some crazy asian lady can perform one of the silliest circus acts ever introduced to the printed page. And could the victims of Dr. Rape’s sexual rampage please not either fall in love with him or pretend it never happened? At least Dororo had a swamp monster that disolves flesh down to the bone. I don’t think Dororo is going to be a deep zen experience; I think it’s meant to be a sword-arm chop fest with over 40 demons to disembowel.
May 21, 2008 at 3:59 am
The rape victim’s fascination with the main character in MW did bother me, because as much as I can suspend my disbelief in other things, that one just didn’t compute. I really wound up hating that girl.
Yeah, I suppose it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the ride for Dororo. The premise is one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard, and so far the action has been excellent.
May 26, 2008 at 1:56 am
I’ve just finished Dororo. My review is here: http://www.flaminggeeks.com/swanjun/?p=444
May 30, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Woah. This is out already? (Heh. And this isn’t the first time I’ve made of comment of this vein…At least you’re keeping me up-to-date, Connie.) Well, I guess I’ll get around purchasing it soon (considering that it’s a paperback…I still haven’t read “MW” because I’m waiting for a softcover release. I’m too cheap and poor to be buying hardcovers).
Even though Tezuka does throw a lot of outlandish stuff into his stories, I somehow am able to look past this stuff and I’m actually pretty fussy about these sorts of things in general. I guess considering that most of his work is solid in so many other ways, I’m able to forgive those things.