manga - Dororo

ANIME TIME, the moment we’ve all been waiting for 

Well Jesus Christ, was I NOT ever expecting to be writing about good ol anime for a college assignment. My younger 12 year old self is giving me a pat on the back right now saying “this is it, this is what you were training for” and finally many like myself have a sigh of relief knowing all that time wasted in middle school reading shojo, all those days after high school scanning the internet for the newest translation of your favorite manga and drawing terrible giant sparkle eyes was not for nothing. May all this pointless knowledge I have on magical girls and super robot dramas be actually useful! 
However I’m not going to pick your average popular series (as much as I would love to rant about inyuasha)  or even one of the more popular Tezuka mangas.
As a 12 year old who would grow up continuously willingly to be bombarded with anime, I felt the need to educate myself on every piece of it I could find. It really helped having a teacher back then who had recently gotten back from spending a few years in japan. She gave me a decent history lesson in comics and was excited to show me her classic Tezuka mangas. I remember laying eyes on the rounded super characters for the first time and opening up to what looks super cute to an action packed series. Needless to say, it was awesome. Getting this assignment inspired me to go back and revisit my old Tezuka favorites and check out his other stuff, but I always came back to my favorite which was the story of Dororo. 
The story of Dororo is about an emperor who wants to be immortal and powerful. He promises his first born son to 48 demons. When his son is born, he is born with nothing but a head and waist, nothing else. They sail his disgrace down a river where the strange disfigured baby is discovered by a doctor who ends up raising him. The doctor constructs limbs and body parts for his mysterious son. He grows up entirely blind but can sense and see the demons in the world that contain his actual limbs. Within his prosthetic limbs are swords to use against the demons. He sets out to defeat every demon and regain his body and goes by the name of  Hyakkimaru. On his adventure he obtains a little scrappy side kick named Dororo who is a descendant of famous bandits and is also running from demons. Dororo contains a mysterious and important map on his back which leads them both on a wild and heartfelt adventure that intertwines their lives forever. Hyakkimaru doesn’t defeat every single demon until he is an old man. 
The ink work in this story is so profound and a beautiful depiction of the feudal era in Japan. It just so happens to be very bloody and contain many Classical Japanese demons. 

I think it’s one of Tezukas best pieces and it’s a manga I still highly recommend to manga readers, new and old. 


I really wish this series was put up on the course site, I think it would be a great piece to have in class. 

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