When violence goes hand in hand with love.
Dororo spoilers ahead!
Dororo is a 2019 dark fantasy anime series that follows a young boy, Hyakkimaru, whose father made a deal with demons in order to save his land and gain prosperity. In return, he promised the demons something of his, and their choice was his son's body.
Hyakkimaru was born without various body parts, including his skin and nervous system; he can't see or hear and is missing limbs. If not for a kind man that finds the boy and provides him with prosthetics, Hyakkimaru would have never survived. But he does survive. And now he's eager to take his revenge and get back what was taken from him.
Although Dororo doesn't sound like an anime about love and bonds, this is not entirely true. We can't deny that a story with such a depressing premise was meant to be a cruel and violent one. But the beauty of Dororo is that it can do both: it can portray an absolutely hideous and brutal scene and then surprise you with an endearing moment.
Hyakkimaru is the main protagonist of the series, but it's no mistake that the anime is called Dororo. Dororo is a charming thief that the boy meets on his revenge journey. While first presented as a small boy, Dororo is later revealed to be actually a girl, who's been trying to hide her identity in order to protect herself in a world this cruel. These two's bond is what drives the story forward and makes the main protagonist more human.
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Even though Hyakkimaru saves and keeps protecting Dororo physically, the girl is the real savior in this story because she is that lever that doesn't allow the main protagonist to sink into the darkness of his suffering. She brightens his journey and makes him feel loved and cared for: a feeling that the boy hasn't experienced much in his life.
Dororo's kindness and charm can melt even such a seemingly emotionless character as Hyakkimaru. There's no doubt that their attachment to each other is a very crucial point for the story: it plays a huge role in both of these characters' development.
Dororo, however, is not the first person who's ever shown kindness to Hyakkimaru. As we've mentioned earlier, the man that saved him, Jukai, was also very important. Due to the demons' curse, Hyakkimaru was left without a family, his hatred towards his biological father had made it impossible for him to ever go back to them. Jukai became a father figure for the boy, and even though the latter didn't really know how to speak earlier in the story, and was a stranger to words and concepts, he calls the man his "mama" later, realizing that Jukai is like a family member to him.
Dororo and Jukai have become very important to Hyakkimaru, and they were the ones who helped the boy keep his darkness under control and give him a chance for a better life.