A monstrously sized book filled with monsters of all shapes, sizes and forms and those who would stand before them.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Osamu Tezuka
Translation/Adaptation: Dawn T. Laabs
What They Say
Daigo Kagemitsu, who works for a Samurai general in Japan’s Warring States period, promises to offer 48 body parts of his unborn baby to 48 devils in exchange for complete domination of the country. When the baby boy is born, Daigo has him thrown into a river, hoping the boy will die. A kind sage, however, finds him and adopts him. The sage fits out his poor son with prosthetics.
Time goes by and the baby grows into a boy who calls himself Hyakkimaru. Every time Hyakkimaru eliminates a devil, he retrieves one of his missing body parts. Hyakkimaru meets a boy thief named Dororo and together they travel the countryside in search of the devils who possess Hyakkimaru’s parts. Throughout their travels, they face monsters and ghosts.
Technical:
For this release Vertical has chosen to produce the title in a way that really calls attention to it when it is sitting on a shelf next to more traditionally sized US manga releases. To begin with Vertical chose to make the volume bigger than the average manga fare in physical page dimensions as it stands along the same dimensions as their release of Black Jack, though given its omnibus release its page count dwarfs most manga books with its weighing in at an impressive almost 850 pages of demon slaying goodness. Vertical also chooses to uses a bit of a thicker stock cardboard like cover to contain the action that provides stability but that is supple enough that one can read the volume with minimal care and completely avoid the creases that can come with many other companies (much smaller page count) omnibuses as well.
The cover itself is a brilliantly executed concept that uses some fantastically detailed and colored illustrations of various cross sections and internal organs of the human body (a detail which plays a huge role in the stories contained) that wraps around the spine of the book and goes to about ¼ of the back. To keep people from possibly mistaking the intent of the book Vertical includes 11 different images taken from the work and places them in rather bright color over the body illustrations while including the name of the work and author in circles along with the volumes status as both an omnibus and the materials status as an Eisner award winner to keep that information from disappearing into the detailed background. The back of the ¾ of the cover are devoted to the copy at the top and some quotes praising the work from various media sources as well as a short biography of Tezuka for those who may not have encountered his work- or at least known who did the work- before.
To compliment this release the paper used is a nice quality though it doesn’t quite hide all of the ink lines used on its opposite sides all the time. It is a very small flaw but the paper is of sufficient thickness to allow most of the ink bleeding that occurred to be mostly unnoticeable unless one is very sensitive or one really looks hard and the book also has some nice and tight binding. For the translation if a word or concept needs to be explained as it doesn’t have an analogous word in the English language, an explanation is jotted in the margin between panels. While the choice was made to set honorifics aside and to make the book more of a natural style of flow for the English speaking audience, this isn’t a terribly big deal in this book for the most part though honorifics could at times demonstrate exactly how a given speaker feels about the wandering pair.
The art is pure Tezuka when it comes to character designs so large eyes, prominent noses and the occasional exaggerated facial expressions are to be expected as well as some more comical switching of character designs. Those familiar with Tezuka’s other works recognize though that while the characters may be somewhat simple in design (comparatively), it certainly wasn’t because of any lack of talent on the authors part which he demonstrates in the detailed and intricate lines that he uses to create the environment his characters live in. This is a feature that the size of the book really shows off as some of the finer lines might blur together in a smaller format but they show up really clearly and concise and don’t make the reader feel like anything was lost in this publication.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally having started its run in Japan in 1967 and finishing up in 1968, Dororo is a short but none the less fairly masterful little tale about a cursed boy who fights demons to regain his humanity alongside his orphaned thief companion whose goal is to become the greatest thief in Japan (a nod to this is in the very title as the TL note explains “Dororo” is a child’s pronunciation of “Dorobo” which means thief). As the two travel along their path they will encounter many demons and those who are indistinguishable from them as Hyakkimaru attempts to break the curse upon him and Dororo attempts to obtain Hyakkimaru’s sword (obsessively).
The plot of the series is fairly straight forward at first though its origin may be one of the darkest one can imagine. The story takes place at some point during Japan’s past when a feudal lord named Daigo literally makes a deal with the devil (or devils in this case as there are 48 of them) that in exchange for his soon to be born child the demons will grant him the power to rule the land. When his child is born the contract is shown to be fulfilled as the child is missing 48 body parts including his limbs, eyes, nose, hair and various internal organs. Despite his wife’s wishes the lord has the child placed into a basket and sent down the river, leaving the boy’s life up to whatever force in the universe may care.
Luckily for the boy while his father may have abandoned him to demons and the fates some other more benevolent power has not and the child is found by a kind and impossibly skilled doctor who crafts prosthetics that allow the child to pass for normal. The child is also blessed in that he has an impossible ability to sense what is around him through a sixth sense as his five normal were sealed through their loss and he also has a telepathic ability to communicate.
Unfortunately for the boy his curse continues to attract demons to him and there comes a point where the doctor has to part ways with him, but not before giving him the gift of a sword which he attaches to the youth’s torso and places a fake arm over it so the youth can defend himself. The kind doctor also gives the boy one last gift, the name Hyakkimaru. The boy also fortunately receives two other gifts of fate when he learns that by slaying the 48 demons who posses his body parts he can gain those parts back and then he makes the acquaintance of a blind monk who convinces the boy that he should seize the opportunity before him rather than just give up and wallow in pity.
It is during this period of traveling to slay the demons who cursed him that Hyakkimaru comes across the young thief Dororo who is being hounded (justifiably in most cases) for the actions the young thief commits. When Dororo happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (or right, depending on one’s point of view) and sees Hyakkimaru slay one of the many demons that practically liter the landscape a relationship is formed. Initially Dororo claims to be following Hyakkimaru just to get the sword the demon slayer possesses much to Hyakkimaru’s dismay, but as they travel together the two may discover they have a bond between them as pasts are revealed while loyalty to each other is displayed. What happens when two individuals who may appear cursed to the rest of the world unite and decide to embrace the damnedable cards they have been dealt and forcible fight to change what looks to be fate? Is there enough power in these two youths to fight the demons of the world- both supernatural and far more human- and to carve out their own future as they see fit?
Osamu Tezuka is often called the god of manga and in some ways part of the argument could be made that it is in part due to the shear breadth of scope to the works he created over his life and the caraters he breathed a form of life into. Certainly it is difficult to have missed his Astro Boy as the recent film may have brought the character to a younger generation but the animation adaption his Kimba also aired on US television in the 80’s (and one can argue in a 90’s feature film from a certain major movie studio as well). These characters were hardly the extent of the geniuses work though and, maybe frustratingly slowly to some fans, an number of his other works have been finding their way to the English market and no small number of them have come from the publishing house of Vertical, Inc.
With Dororo Vertical brings a work to the English world that maybe unlike any one from Tezuka some fans have seen before and while its far more supernatural theme and its somewhat younger audience aim may cause those who prefer his more realistic and older audience aimed works to take a pause as they are only losing out in the process. While the series is far closer to Astro Boy than Black Jack in a number of ways Tezuka doesn’t abandon many of the themes he worked on throughout his career just to play down to his audience. While the introspection of humanity isn’t as center stage in the spotlight here as it was in Black Jack it is still there, at times in the background and at other times subtly standing in the front of a scene in a manner that almost screams for attention in the way the author carefully constructs the setup around it while making it seem that the limelight is actually focused on a different aspect.
To this end Dororo plays like a story with a number of important messages that the author wishes to convey that he then dresses up in an outfit that will draw in the eyes of an audience that may not sit still for a philosophy discussion that is just presented to them but that are willing to listen and absorb as long as the author can deliver it while also feeding their desire for entertainment. Tezuka also shows respect to his audience by not acting like the concepts are beyond his intended audience, even if he simplifies some aspects a bit more than he would in material aimed at an older audience, he never tries to “dumb it down.” As such, even an older reader can find pieces of philosophy and events that can cause them to ask their own questions in this fanciful tale of monsters and goblins and the two young children whose lives are brought together in part due to these beings.
Perhaps the greatest part of this series is the multi-generational appeal as one can buy it for the younger child they may have in their life who will love it for the fanciful adventures of the main characters as they fight all manner of supernatural creations. Meanwhile the older reader (including the child as he grows) can read and discover all the intricate relationships that Tezuka has created in the story, including some parent-child ones that it may be fair to say are almost Shakespearian in terms of the conflicts and twists that occur along the way, as well as the role that society as a whole plays in the stories and many of the aftermaths.
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That isn’t to say there aren’t going to be perceived flaws in the series as there are a whole lot of coincidences that pile up and at times the narrative has trouble creating a sense of danger for Hyakkimaru. His curse has the side effect of making him almost impossible to kill which does undercut the tension a bit though it adds a rather unique touch with the young man fighting so hard to become mortal and in many ways more vulnerable given he was sacrificed in pursuit of power and a type of invulnerability. That the series doesn’t cover more than the handful of chapters that it does may leave some feeling they don’t get a full payoff and though it doesn’t really have a lot of closure at the end the of the material. Despite this the journey itself makes up for some of the possible perceived weakness in the final destination and it creates a richness during the trip to help balance out the somewhat anti-climactic end.
In Summary
Dororo feels like the absolute best kind of book- one that plays on a multitude of different levels and which allows the reader to revisit it over the course of time as they grow and then discover even more possible messages found within the seemingly (mostly harmless) little adventure tale of a young boy versus demons. While it isn’t going to go down as my favorite Tezuka work (at least now, in a few years who knows what I may discover when revisiting its pages after gaining even more life experience) it definitely is one that holds up well considering it roots lie over four decades in the past and include a major trip across the Pacific Ocean. For those who have a relatively young child in their life who has a bit of an interest in some somewhat scary at times material (though not overwhelmingly so ), the presentation here is done in a rather easy to digest manner (though some help may be needed for some of the Japanese terms for the younger readers) and one can do incredibly worse than buying this title which different generations can share together, though the older reader will find a good deal of complexity kept just slightly behind the supernatural adventure veneer.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Vertical, Inc
Release Date: March 20th, 2012
MSRP: $24.95
