Dororo

AUTHOR: Tezuka, Osamu

ARTIST: Osamu Tezuka (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Shogakukan (Japanese); Vertical (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1967-1968

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1981 (English translation, 2008)

Publication History

Osamu Tezuka began Dororo toward the end of his work on Astro Boy (1952-1968). The Dororo manga began as serialized chapters in Weekly Shonen Sunday, a boys’ manga magazine, in August of 1967 and ran into July of 1968. The final four chapters of the series were published in Boken-o, a rival shonen magazine. Dororo ended abruptly, with a final chapter noticeably shorter than previous chapters. Tezuka reportedly wanted to wrap up the series quickly so he could begin work on the science-fiction series Norman (1968; also called Prince Norman) for another publisher.

Dororo was not collected until 1981, when it was released in four volumes in Japan as part of the “Complete Works” line of Tezuka’s manga. In 2006, it was translated and released in France. The American publisher Vertical then acquired the English-language rights and released the series in 2008, publishing it in three volumes rather than the four released in other countries.

Plot

The story begins as cruel samurai lord Daigo Kagemitsu visits a temple containing statues of forty-eight Fiends. Daigo asks the Fiends for power to rule the entire country; in return they can have forty-eight body parts from his son, who will be born the next day. When his son is born, Daigo places the deformed child, Hyakkimaru, in a basket and floats him down the river. The child is found by the kindly Doctor Jukai, who teaches him how to use his psychic abilities to see, hear, and speak and crafts prosthetics for him so that he can look like a normal human. Years later, the adult Hyakkimaru is a wandering swordsman. He saves a “boy,” Dororo, from a group of bandits and then from a demon. Dororo resolves to follow Hyakkimaru and eventually steal his sword. Together the two travel the land, having adventures and confronting the Fiends.

The majority of the series is composed of unconnected, stand-alone chapters that fall within the common narrative structure of the “wandering samurai” genre popular at the time: Dororo and Hyakkimaru come to a new town or find a strange situation, discover that one or more Fiends are involved, confront them, and then leave to continue their journey. Often these stories end with the townspeople who have been saved by Hyakkimaru rejecting him, believing him to be just as monstrous as the Fiends he has slain, and forcing him and Dororo to leave.

In the story “Banmon,” Hyakkimaru and Dororo arrive in a town that has been divided in two by a massive wall. The northern town is ruled by Daigo and his son, Tahomaru Kagemitsu. Hyakkimaru meets Daigo, Tahomaru, and Daigo’s wife, the latter of whom tries to convince him that he is her son, which Hyakkimaru refuses to accept. Ultimately, he is forced to duel with and kill Tahomaru. Daigo sends his troops after Hyakkimaru for revenge.

Toward the end of the series, a multichapter story begins in which a bandit named Itachi, a former comrade of Dororo’s parents, finds and kidnaps Dororo. Before she died, Dororo’s mother tattooed a map on his back that shows the location of the fortune she and her husband stole, intending to use it to fund a full-scale rebellion against the samurai lords. Itachi, his crew, and Dororo travel to the secluded island where the money is buried, followed by Hyakkimaru. Itachi and Dororo discover the treasure chest, but there is no money inside; instead, there is a note from Dororo’s father explaining that he buried the money elsewhere to keep it away from Itachi. The group is attacked by the corrupt local magistrate and his forces, Itachi sacrifices himself to save Dororo, and Hyakkimaru and Dororo are reunited. In this story, it is revealed that Dororo is truly a girl.

In the final chapter, Hyakkimaru and Dororo again meet Daigo, who has enslaved entire villages to build an enormous fort for himself. Dororo leads a rebellion against the samurai’s troops. Hyakkimaru meets his mother again and tells her that he will not be her son until he has regained all his body parts. Ultimately, the rebellion is successful, but Hyakkimaru allows Daigo and his wife to flee. He then gives Dororo his sword and parts ways with her once and for all, seeking his destiny alone.

Volumes

• Dororo, Volume 1 (2008). Collects the chapters “The Inception,” “Hyakkimaru,” “The Monk,” “Kanekozo,” “Bandai,” “The Face Tumor,” “The Misery Chronicles,” and “The Possessed Sword.” The first chapter tells the story of Hyakkimaru’s birth and childhood, while “The Misery Chronicles” depicts Dororo’s early life.

• Dororo, Volume 2 (2008). Collects the chapters “Banmon,” “The Fair Fudo,” “Sabame,” and “Hell Screen.” The chapter “Banmon” details Hyakkimaru’s first meeting with his father and the duel with his brother, Tahomaru.

• Dororo, Volume 3 (2008). Collects the chapters “The Two Sharks,” “Shiranui,” “The Cruel Cape,” “Midoro,” “Donburi Belly,” “The Four-Turned Bonze,” and “Nueh.” The first three chapters tell the story of bandit Itachi and the treasure map on Dororo’s back.

Characters

• Hyakkimaru is a tall, strong-looking samurai with long black hair and bare feet. His father, Daigo, makes a deal with forty-eight Fiends. As a result, the Fiends take forty-eight of the infant Hyakkimaru’s body parts, but he survives thanks to Doctor Jukai, who gives him prosthetic limbs and teaches him to see, hear, and speak with his “mind’s eye.” Every time Hyakkimaru defeats one of the Fiends, he regains a body part.

• Dororo, a “boy” with unruly hair, is the self-proclaimed “greatest thief in the world.” He travels with Hyakkimaru, hoping to steal his sword. He is the son of two bandits who attempted to lead a rebellion against the samurai lords but were killed. Dororo is eventually revealed to be a girl, though it is unclear whether she deliberately hid this fact or had been raised unaware of it.

• Lord Daigo Kagemitsu is a tall, cruel-looking man with a hawkish profile and a cross burned into his forehead, a symbol of his pact with the Fiends. He hopes to rule the entire world, and to that end, he bargains with the Fiends for power. Later in the series, he is shown to be a brutal ruler, beating and enslaving his people.

• Tahomaru Kagemitsu is the son of Daigo and his wife, making him Hyakkimaru’s younger brother. His right eye is always closed in a squint, and his black hair sticks out in eight points reminiscent of a spider’s legs. He is Daigo’s lieutenant and intended successor. Angry, arrogant, and hotheaded, he clashes with and ultimately fights and is killed by Hyakkimaru.

• The blind monk is a wandering lute player (biwa hoshi) and skilled swordsman. His back is twisted into a hump, and his milky white eyes are set in an old and gnarled face. He appears at various moments in Hyakkimaru’s journey, occasionally acting as a mentor or guide. His name and backstory are never revealed.

• The Fiends are demonic monsters who strike a bargain with Daigo: the life of his son for great power. Each of the fiends takes one of Hyakkimaru’s body parts, and Hyakkimaru later regains one body part for every Fiend he kills. The Fiends appear in a variety of forms, many based on figures from Japanese mythology.

• Doctor Jukai is a wise healer with a heavy black beard, a bulbous nose, and a perpetually stern look. He rescues Hyakkimaru from the basket and raises him. He appears only in flashbacks.

Artistic Style

In general, Dororo shows the same high level of Artistic quality as the rest of Tezuka’s work. His lines are fluid, his layouts are both innovative and clear, and he makes great use of different styles of shading. Tezuka’s distinctive style was fully developed by the mid-1960’s, though he continued to experiment with new tools and elements throughout his career. Dororo may not be his most experimental manga, but it does show the hand of a master at work.

The series demonstrates Tezuka’s command of cinematic elements in his manga. Battle sequences make use of both long shots and close-ups, often alternating between a large panel showing multiple characters in conflict and many smaller panels, each showing a single sword cut. There are also cinematic “zooms” that follow a character as he or she moves toward or away from the “camera,” emphasizing distance and space. However, Tezuka also manipulates images in ways that only comics can allow. For example, a character may fall through a panel border as if falling through a floor or point out something happening in the adjacent panel, his arm reaching over the panel gutter.

Tezuka is known for his “star system,” in which he treated his manga characters like actors. Characters appear in different works in different capacities but with similar personalities and roles. For example, a scheming, disingenuous character would generally “play” villains, while a bearded wise man would “play” doctors, mentors, professors, or similar parts. However, Dororo stands somewhat apart from the star system; few of Tezuka’s best-known characters make an appearance, and the characters in Dororo have appeared only rarely in other works.

Themes

As with much of Tezuka’s work, Dororo places a strong emphasis on social justice, concerning itself with the plight of those crushed under the heels of the elite, in this case the peasants serving the samurai lords of feudal Japan. Although Hyakkimaru fights monsters and demons, the worst cruelties are often committed by humans, those who exploit others for their own gain. However, humans are capable of redemption, while demons are not; some of Hyakkimaru’s enemies show genuine repentance and are spared, while all demons must be slain.

Dororo also demonstrates Tezuka’s disgust with the horrors of war, another common theme in his works. The town of Banmon is divided into two by a massive wall—a deliberate reference to Panmunjom, divided between North Korea and South Korea after the Korean War. As a result, children are kept from their parents, innocent villagers are killed as suspected traitors, and visitors are attacked by mobs of townspeople on the suspicion that they work for the samurai lords. In Dororo, Tezuka does not shy away from depicting cruelty and evil and places a large share of the blame for evil acts on the aggressive nature of mankind.

Hyakkimaru is the quintessential outsider: He saves lives and brings order to lawless places, but he is never accepted by those he saves. This theme is common to many of the “wandering samurai” stories. Hyakkimaru is also a cyborg, a person who is both less and more than human because technology has been used to restore parts of his body. Tezuka tackles both of these character types again in his series Black Jack (1973-1983).

Impact

Although period dramas (jidaigeki) about samurai were common in post-World War II Japanese film, Dororo ranks among the first manga to take on this genre. It generally follows the conventions and tropes of the genre—the wandering protagonist, the constant fights against new villains, the greedy and corrupt local government—and adds some supernatural elements. The “collection” aspect of the story—Hyakkimaru searching for his stolen body parts—may have inspired later manga with similar elements, such as the series InuYasha (1997-2008), in which the protagonists travel through a fantastic version of feudal Japan in search of fragments of a magical jewel. While such series may not have been inspired directly by Dororo, it was among the first manga to use this concept.

Dororo retains the humor and occasional metafictional elements common in Tezuka’s works but includes depictions of violence that are far beyond what one might expect from the creator of Astro Boy. Dororo was certainly not the first, or the most experimental, of Tezuka’s adult-oriented works, but it heralded a trend toward manga for adult readers that would continue to develop throughout Tezuka’s career, both in his works and in manga in general.

Films

Dororo. Directed by Akihito Shiota. Asahi Shimbun Newspaper/Dentsu/Hokkaido Broadcasting Company, 2007. This live-action film stars Kou Shibasaki as Dororo and Satoshi Tsumabuki as Hyakkimaru. The film differs from the manga in that Dororo is much older and obviously female, and its ending is a significant departure from that of the comic. The film is reportedly intended to be the first of a trilogy.

Television Series

Dororo. Directed by Gisaburo Sugii. Mushi Productions, 1969. The title was changed to Dororo and Hyakkimaru after episode 14. This animated series stars Minori Matsushima as the voice of Dororo and Nachi Nozawa as the voice of Hyakkimaru. With the exception of adding a puppy companion for Dororo, the series is extremely faithful to the manga. The episodes are usually near-verbatim adaptations. Several episodes are original stories that were not present in the manga. The series was produced in black and white for budgetary reasons.

Further Reading

Koike, Kazuo, and Goseki Kojima. Lone Wolf and Cub (1970-1976).

Sakai, Stan. Usagi Yojimbo (1987- ).

Tezuka, Osamu. Black Jack (1973-1983).

Bibliography

Inuhiko, Yomota, and Hajime Nakatani, trans. “Stigmata in Tezuka Osamu’s Works.” Mechademia 3 (2008): 97-111.

McCarthy, Helen. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. New York: Abrams, 2009.

Schodt, Frederik L. The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.