Week 10: Dororo


This week I read two volumes of Dororo by Osamu Tezuka. I had heard of it through the release latest anime adaptation, although I had never read or watched it before and didn’t quite know what it was about. I initially meant to read only one volume, but it was so enjoyable that I breezed through two. Prior to this assignment, I had been interested in Showa manga for a couple of years and have a cursory knowledge of various gag manga from the time.
Tezuka’s art style is clearly inspired by European and American comics and animation, with a lot of his background characters looking like they would fit in Popeye or Asterix. Even so, the drama and action of Dororo is palpable and engaging. Hyakkimaru finding out that Tahomaru is his little brother right before he has to kill him is made effective by Hyakkimaru yelling “I didn’t have to know!” If he didn’t know beforehand, he would have had the excuse, but knowing that Tahomaru is his brother made it even more upsetting to kill him. Dororo’s reaction to meeting his mother is to go and cut up grass in a field because he can’t fathom why a mother would give up her child, but he doesn’t know that it was his father who made her give him up.
I expected Dororo to be pretty serious in tone, but there were actually many moments where it was quite goofy. The titular character Dororo often makes pop-culture references and 4th-wall-breaking jokes, which is odd because it is set in samurai times. The Dororo character references Showa-era author Shigeru Mizuki, author of a personal favorite of mine GeGeGe no Kitaro, and has nods to Tezuka’s other works like Astro Boy. A panel depicting a war has a visual reference to another Showa manga, Little Ghost Q-Taro by Fujiko Fujio. It’s fun to see Tezuka, who is often regarded as the “father” or “God” of manga, referencing his friends and competitors.

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