Anime Sols delighted a lot of old school fans when they started streaming Dororo after getting it crowdfunded, but with the company closing its doors in May, that left a hole in their hearts. It looks like they’re going to make out better in the end though as Discotek Media has picked up not only the 26 episode TV series, but also the special that served as the pilot for the show that’s based on the work by Osamu Tezuka. No time frame or pricing has been set for this release yet.
Originally airing in 1969, it was directed by Gisaburou Sugii with Osamu Dezaki serving as an episode director and with Yoshiyuki Tomino working the storyboards for it.
Plot concept: The setting is the middle of the Muromachi Period, during the 1470s after the Wars of Onin and Bunmei. The story begins in the Noto Peninsula of the Hokuriku District. The main character, who lacks as much as 48 body parts, obtains a fake body and eliminates 48 monsters that were made from his body to retrieve his missing body parts. The 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 23rd and 25th episodes are original stories for television, not part of the original story. Half way through the series, the title was changed to “Dororo and Hyakkimaru” because Hyakkimaru was more prominent than Dororo, the boy thief, and viewers inevitably regarded Hyakkimaru as the main character when the story evolved around eliminating monsters. Unlike the pilot, this was done in monochrome only, probably due to tight budget. As it turns out, the monochrome made the monsters look much eerier.