Manga has been a constant source of inspiration for Japanese movie-makers, long before the American deep dive into the Marvel universe. Red Shadow had brought a 21st century live-action feel to the work of one of the godfathers of the manga, Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Dororo takes a similar live-action approach to one of the most inventive and complex stories of Osamu Tezuka, arguably an even more significant figure in manga history, and makes an interesting contrast to the earlier movie. While Red Shadow had been more openly playful and humorous with its source, Dororo makes a deep dive into Japanese fantasy with the use of CGI while also tracking a complicated story of revenge and a search for a real human nature.
Dororo is translated as “little demon” and is the name adopted by a pickpocket who crosses paths with a wanderer called Hyakkimaru, though that will ultimately turn out not to be his real name. Hyakkimaru’s father Daigo had made a pact with 48 demons to give him the power to conquer all of Japan in the Warring Clans era in return for the body of his first-born son. A shaman in the wilderness finds a limbless doll-like body floating in a basket on the river and proceeds to rebuild the figure into a regular boy, using limbs and organs molded from the melted bodies of other dead babies and bolts of electricity which he alone can master, like Frankenstein making his monster.
The boy goes on the road when the shaman dies, with sword blades inside his detachable forearms, blind still like Zatoichi but like Zatoichi able to sense any dangers and other people around him. Each time he kills a demon, he regenerates a part of his body, but he will not become fully human until he kills all 48 demons.
Fortunately for dramatic purposes, we don’t have to see all 48 demons killed. Nevertheless, we meet a full range of strange Japanese demons, with spiders, moths, talking dogs, flying dragons, giant silkworms, etc, a large collection such as we haven’t seen since the Yokai monsters era.
Like Doctor Who, Hyakkimaru goes through an agonizing regeneration after killing each demon, but of only one part of his body, sometimes something external like a foot or an ear, sometimes an internal organ he has to spit out.
Dororo is actually a woman who has spent all her life disguised as a man, after her parents were killed by Daigo. Each time Hyakkimaru kills a demon, it explodes, showering Dororo in blood as a running gag, but Dororo keeps hanging around because she wants the enchanted blade that will fall off when Hyakkimaru’s left arm finally regenerates so she can exact her own revenge.
The pair eventually wander into the home territory of Daigo, who is constantly building an ever taller and more precarious castle. There Hyakkimaru meets Daigo’s son Tomoharu, who turns out to be his younger brother who was given the same name, his mother who recognizes him because a mother always knows, and his father, who decides to kill him as he should have done originally. A spectacular, athletic duel ensues, but Hyakkimaru still is not completely human and continues on his journey with Dororo following and 24 demons to go. (If there were any sequels, I haven’t been able to find any notice of them.)
In the original manga, Dororo was drawn as a boy. The character is so short compared to the others that it is possible that the goal was for her to be a boy in his early teens rather than a young woman in disguise. There is certainly no suggestion of a romantic attachment and we never see a bath scene or anything similar that might officially tell us the stage of her womanhood. However, as played by Ko Shibasaki, she projects all the most irritating attitudes of the Japanese tough guy stereotype usually found among the yakuza, loud-mouthing insults and posturing aggressively; this is presumably intended to be cute, as was often the intention with Tange Sazen’s “son,” but coming from what is to us an obvious actress just makes her seem more obnoxious.
The movie often suggests the mix of comedy and derring-do that accompanied American block-busters like Star Wars and the Indiana Jones franchise, though Dororo’s comedic touches are not as effective in translation as they might have been to the original audience. Star Wars in particular comes to mind when we reach the duel with the Darth Vader-ish father, but this had become such a universal structure in movies since Star Wars that it just automatically pops into mind as we watch rather than reflecting a conscious attempt to imitate American movies. The demons and the live characters and the pacing are thoroughly Japanese in origin, conception, and presentation. Nothing could be more firmly Japanese than the promise of the young Tomoharu to simply care for the kingdom until his older brother has finished his mission to become completely human and can return and inherit the kingdom properly.
Brief moments of gravitas and sincerity are provided by old hands such as Mieko Harada as the long-lost mother and Yoshio Harada as the shaman, while Satoshi Tsumabuki does what is asked of him with skill. Screen tints change often, and the mix of CGI and “real” demons is generally effective.
The portion of the manga universe that has attracted Americans, in translated comics and in movies, is the weird and often wonderful world of exotic fantasy, but as I have discussed in many of the earlier posts, the manga since Tezuka began his career has evolved into an extremely complex field, attractive to and read by all ages for more than monsters and super-heroes. Dororo looks back at the time when those changes were beginning, like Red Shadow paying homage to its roots while attempting to find a way to bring a classic of the genre into a new society. Because there is no hint of sexual attraction anywhere (though there is a weird dance routine for a group of barely clothed women in a bar), Dororo has that odd feel of so many Japanese fantasy films that seem to be aimed at children but also carry such an obvious big budget and length (over two hours) that says it is a spectacular epic aimed at a more adult audience.
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