Pain and anger are very powerful fuels.
Summary:
- Mystery only begins in the anime.
- How this story turns into something dealing with social problems.
- Further anime adaptations need to be done.
Dorohedoro manga spoilers ahead!
The manga by Q Hayashida first feels like a regular overly violent fantasy story with a mysterious premise, but over the course of the series it transforms into a social commentary on classism and elitism.
Colorful action is not the only thing it excels at
The anime adaptation ends at chapter 40 out of 167, so there's a lot of stuff happening after the show ends: it only serves as a prologue, establishing the vibe and the general feel of the story. We meet the main characters, some mysteries are hinted at, but mostly we just get used to the art style of Q Hayashida, replicated in an animated form, and the cruel world it paints.
The main characters are seemingly embarking on a journey to understand why Kaiman, the lead of the series, lost his memories and now has a reptile head. The way this mystery unravels is insane. The amount of twists in this story, the additional characters that get thrown into action, the moments that are funny in a very disturbing way and the moments that are deep in a very unsettling way — that's what happens in the chapters that have not been adapted yet.
Blood is a nice backdrop for a deep story
Dorohedoro morphs from a series focused mostly on colorful violence into a series focusing deeply on the classism coming from the local power scaling system. If you think about it, in our world the power scaling system is capitalism: the more money you have, the more powerful you are. In the world of Dorohedoro, the power system is bound to the amount of smoke the magic user can procure: the more smoke you can make, the more powerful you are. The smoke is produced by a special organ in the magic user's body, one that regular humans lack. Those who have this organ but cannot produce smoke in a sufficient amount are banished to the Hole, a world where magicless humans live, and are experimented on by more capable magic users.
This creates a lot of classism-fueled tension in the world, and ultimately leads to a huge conflict ignited by no other than Kaiman — though it happened before he became Kaiman. And suddenly the show that felt just like a dark fantasy filled with fights turns into something deeply existential and even revolutionary.
That's why we want Netflix and Mappa to continue adapting the manga, and we are eagerly waiting for any news about it.