Dororo 2
Posted: August 28, 2008 Filed under: Dororo 8 Comments »While reading through this volume, I couldn’t help but notice that this reads sort of like Astro Boy advance. It’s got some elements which have been simplified, it’s got a lot of action, and it’s got some of the same weird and somewhat antiquated pacing devices that Astro Boy uses. But while reading Astro Boy is sort of a chore, I really enjoy reading Dororo very much.
I had a much easier time accepting Hyakkimaru and Dororo’s situation now that I was just sort of dropped in the middle of it here. It’s a real shame that this series wasn’t longer, because this volume has most of what I could see being the guts of the series… stories where Hyakkimaru wanders into an area where a story plays out around a demon that he eventually slays and gets one of his body parts back. It’s a great formula, and I wouldn’t mind a lot more of it.
In addition to the above story meat, there is also some plot development for Hyakkimaru concerning his family. There’s a great story in this volume about a city which has been split in a border dispute, and the residents on either side of town are now locked in an extremely bloody battle. Both Hyakkimaru and Dororo get drawn into the struggle fairly deep, and while Hyakkimaru has more of a stake in things, something fairly shocking happens to Dororo as well. Even though it’s a story about wandering samurai and demon slaying, I’m always kind of surprised by how violent it is. It’s not gory or anything, and not even what I would call excessively violent, but Tezuka uses the violence to make a point, and that makes it a lot more effective in the context of this series.
Hyakkimaru seems to be changing a little bit personality-wise as well. At one point, he sends Dororo away for no really good reason, but to be fair, Dororo doesn’t really have a good reason to follow Hyakkimaru around in the first place. Their relationship is sort of rough after that, and while they both seem to be watching out for each other, they don’t get along as well anymore. It’s sad, especially when it’s plain that Dororo looks up to Hyakkimaru so much. A character from last volume comes back and suggest Hyakkimaru stick with Dororo to help Dororo with a quest his parents left him with, because Hyakkimaru may lose the will to live once he’s finally gotten back all his body parts. This hints at an extremely dark ending, especially since Hyakkimaru is now pushing Dororo away. I would have loved to see it play out.
It’s wonderful stuff, and I liked it a lot more after this second volume. I’ll be interested to see what kind of resolution will be in the third volume, which should be available right now.
I liked the first volume, but was really surprised by how much more I liked volume 2. The last one just arrived on my front porch today, so I’ll be reading it soon.
I am really curious to see how it ends, or if it has an ending, or if it’s just left open. I’m going to try and pick volume three up in the comic store this week. I liked it so much I actually also ordered the Playstation 2 game based on it, too.
David Welsh wrote about it recently and I get the impression it doesn’t actually have an ending, which was news to me. Granted, I shouldn’t be surprised, since Hyakkimaru’s nowhere near getting all his parts back at the end of volume 2.
Bummer. I was sort of hoping it would cut a bunch of stuff out and just jump to Hyakkimaru with all his parts doing whatever it is he has to do later.
Harg!!! Je suis énervé vu que vous l’avez vu vous le dororo 2 moi je n’ai vu que le 1, si vous saviez comment je l’attand juste pour savoir la suite esqu’il va reussir a tuer tous les démons pour enfin devenir humain, et va-t-il y avoir une belle histoire d’amours entre nos deux personnage principaux…
Unfortunately, the story is sort of incomplete, so it doesn’t quite work out as nicely as it seems, but the story does continue to be pretty great all the way to the end of the third volume.
I actually liked the story so much I played a Playstation 2 game based on it (it was called Blood Will Tell in English, but Dororo in Japan). The Playstation 2 game was really fun, and wound up following the original manga very closely, but the game had all the demons and a wonderful ending for the story. I recommend it if you like the story and find yourself a little dissatisfied after finishing the manga.
I just finished reading v1 and 2, and discovering that there was only one more volume (and, from the hints above, not a totally satisfying one at that) is rather disappointing – I thought v1 was a little jerky at the beginning, but then got good, and I really liked v2. I’d happily read many more volumes along similar lines. I like the tension in it between the rather over-the-top premise, and the depressing, violent setting; Hyakkimaru’s great, and Dororo is endearing.
I do like the art as well, now that I’ve settled down into it – lots of action, with some very dramatic set-ups, but also some nice effects (or whatever you call them) – there’s a bit in v2 with a flashback where the panel breaks up into lines, a bit like seeing something through Venetian blinds, and it transitions between the past and present in a very nifty way. Also, I’m curious about the fourth wall breaking/references to the readers – standard for the time, or something Tezuka put in? I actually really liked the bit where Dororo’s illiterate father gets the readers to read the ransom note for him, but it feels a bit different from the author comments in some of the more recent manga.
I wonder about the breaking of the fourth wall, too. It’s something Tezuka does off and on, especially in his younger titles. I thought it might have been a carryover from the more gag-oriented manga days, or maybe a technique used in manga for much younger children. I like Tezuka’s way of commenting on the story, even if it is breaking the fourth wall, a bit more than modern author comments only because it is kind of funny when the characters comment, and it’s pretty easy to disregard the gag in the context of the story when it moves on from it after a panel. I do like that about his stories, it’s just so strange and endearing, but it gets distracting in some of his more serious work… especially Phoenix.
I liked how sophisticated the art was in Dororo, too. I’m not exactly sure of the gap between Dororo and Astro Boy, but the latter is far less experimental than Dororo. Dororo feels like a good transition into his later works. I do love the way he plays with panel borders and composition in strange ways during the stories, too. There’s a scene that people like to point out from Ode to Kirihito with one of the characters going mad, but there’s also one that sticks in my mind from one of the space volumes of Phoenix, where the panels split apart on the page in four separate sections to represent the four characters being in different parts of the ship and still communicating. He did some pretty amazing stuff with his panels when the mood struck him.