Dorohedoro

Eh. This anime wasn't actually bad, but I really didn't enjoy it at all. Objectively, the story was OK, animation was solid, and overall universe was kind of neat. However, a couple of glaring issues combined with personal taste made it hard to finish for me.

My main problem was the complete lack of any consequences for anything in the show. Someone dies or is on the edge of death? Doesn't matter, Noi or Kikurage will just heal/resurrect them. Literally, probably half or more of the main characters at some point die or are mortally wounded, only to be instantly fine within minutes. Why even ... bother?

Another issue I had was the characters. Who is Nikaido? Well, she makes good gyoza and she likes Caiman, I guess. Also she can skateboard. But she has no personality of her own. Caiman is better, he's funny at times. I really hated Noi and Shin, mostly because they're just OP and constantly should die but never do because plot armor.

Lastly, what has changed by the end of season one? We're basically no closer to knowing anything about caiman other than the whole mushroom exposition video and Risu. But we're basically back to square one - Caiman and Nikaido are hanging out again, no one important died, and the En group is after them.

I don't really like the whole surreal dystopia genre with people just dying left and right, especially when the main characters are all plot immune to said danger. So that probably colored my enjoyment. I could see liking this show, it was fairly decently done (I even recommended it to a friend of mine who I think tends to like this genre) but for me it wasn't good.

Let me the voice of dissent and declare that Dorohedoro is crap! I mean it.

Every episode is filled with stupid "comic relief" and absolutely unessential character interactions which do not help the series at all. About half the things that go on in the show has no connection to the main plot. No story whatsoever, only glimpses of a promised plot that never really makes it into the show. I don't know if the studio was having money problems or not but I think they forgot to hire a character designer. None of the characters have any real motivation and their choices are plain irrational. ... Terrible world-building, if there is any world-building at all. As for the plot it started out original, then got stale from the 3rd episode, and by the 8th episode was all over the place which is how it stayed till the end with some new info crammed into the last episode so we tune in for Season 2. I'll pass.

About the violence and gore and stuff it is just for show and only skims the surface. Watch some 70's anime if you want violence and gore. Despite its hype I failed to notice any original or dark themes. "Ohhh some evil people are killing us and we have to fight to survive, while figuring out what is going on"- is almost every anime ever.

People going on about how good the animation is has no clue about animation. They just saw an unique look and feel and went Woaahhhhh! The fight scenes are plain disgusting. Btw similar visual tones can be found in so many older anime- check out Paprika, Devilman, Blood+, Kagewani etc.

No matter how good this is or how good people claim it to be, the 14fps CGI gives me eye cancer, I just can't watch this. At least it's not Berserk 2016 level of bad, but still, sigh, it's kinda disappointing that Q Hayashida’s legendary comic wasn't able to receive a worthy adaptation. Characters or moments which were supposed to be met with horror or shock are met with "heh, look at that lame cg model". Aside from Houseki no Kuni, most CGI in anime is just bad and dorohedoro sadly is not exception

Also, the way it keeps alternating between 2d and the crap 14fps ... CGI removes all sense of immersion and enjoyment, it just becomes weird

Just read the manga or something if you really want to see this plot through despite having a hard time with the animation

If you only watch this anime, then it's at most, a 6.5/10. if you compare it to the manga, then this anime adaptation is a 2/10 max.
While Dorohedoro is considered by many to be an iconic manga, I would still consider it pretty niche, the chances of an anime adaptation were really slim, and when the only chance came around they absolutely ruined it. Do yourself a favour and read the original work.

My Enjoyment and Overall score are strongly tied to the art direction, this left a bad taste in my mouth. I loved the manga, so this adaptation get's me depressed and I ... can't give it more than a 2/10.

ART: Terrible. Absolutely terrible. If you've only seen the anime then you might think "well, the CGI wasn't that bad, I liked it". If you've read the manga, this animation style is a total disservice to the general artstyle of Dorohedoro, which is incredible unique, rough and dark.
The amazing paneling seen in the original work gets changed a lot in this adaptation, iconic scenes get censored by zooming in on the picture, and other moments get redone in different angles that feel lazy, uninspired, and lame. The character models are stiff and inexpressive, the clothing is specially rough. Some characters that get quite a bit of screentime don't even have a 3D model, they're always 2D. This clash of 2D and 3D goes to show how lazy or underbugdet this adaptation was, aesthetically displeasing to the max. I don't even want to get into how bad the fight scenes are.

STORY: If I had to review the story as a whole then the score would be higher, but as this anime only covers the first 2 arcs, it's only fair to give it a lower score in my opinion. While the starting point is interesting, the plot is still in a progressive state and it can get a little bit boring. This plot definitely has it's highs and lows ,and the starting arcs are more on the lower side unfortunately. This doesn't mean it's bad at all, it's a good introduction, and if you're faithful with Dorohedoros original story, then you can't go wrong. Great world building and concepts.

SOUND: The voice acting is good, the deliveries are on point and most characters voices fit them really well. Regarding the OST, it's quite good, and the ending changes from time to time while the opening stays the same.

CHARACTER: Nothing much to add here. Dorohedoros characters were amazing in the manga and so it would be weird if they weren't in this adaptation. My only problem is with Nikaido, which isn't as expressive as in the original work, everything else is okay and the Caiman-Nikaido dynamic is still great.

Save your time, watch paint drying or anything else.
Unique story in a way that it's badly designed. This anime has no idea what it wants to be and neither do we as viewers. 2 compelling characters and rest generic weird trash. Nobody makes any sense, it relies heavily on gore to illustrate maturity but constantly tries to push funny moments that always fail and just become pure cringe. 8 episodes in and I have no what the fuck this isi all about, premise is clear but it is so absurd that it's bad, and not like gintama, this just sucks.

In a world so foreign that no parallels may be drawn against reality, the viewer finds herself watching a trilogy beginning from its 2nd installment. As such, despite the interesting visual and aural elements, Dorohedoro comes off as confused, disorganized, and uncanny. Often while watching the series, the viewer will see something interesting and stop to consider the fantasy world at large. However, because Dorohedoro never discusses context outside of the superficial concerns of its main characters, the viewer gathers so many questions that her immersion into the fantasy world becomes impossible.

All in all, it may be that Dorohedoro the animated series was not adapted ... well to a video format. However, based solely upon the animated series, it may just be that the source material is also confused, disorganized, and uncanny.

Humor, even, is lost upon Dorohedoro's fantasy world. Its common joke, albeit slapstick, is always gruesome and lacking creativity. If anything, its gore filled "humor" further alienates the viewer by solidifying within Dorohedoro's canon a type of humor which is simply incompatible with the neurotypical viewer.

I want to be honest about this review. THIS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS TO SOME.

I was actually excited to watch this anime since it only has 12-13 episodes that will be perfect for me. The first thing you will notice once you watch this is the animation. it's CGI stuffy I guess? I wasn't used to it and I'm not the type of person to drop some anime because of its animation... it doesn't bother me. but the animation is really weird, but it's tolerable. that's why I gave it a 4 for decency. Now I dropped this anime within the 7th episode due to ... these reasons:

- it's not boring but it's not interesting either.

- it's confusing.

- rather than boring it's more like "why am I watching this?"


I tried so hard to actually get into this anime but I still can't do it. it's my opinion, and people have different opinions sometimes. in terms of story, it's basically caiman trying to find where his head was. there are these sorcerers and cleaner, I got it. I understood but it's not enough for me to make it feel like this anime is worth watching. the story is not interesting enough. the art is tolerable, but it's weird. I gave it a 4 for being decent enough. The sounds were okay. for the character...... in my opinion, I don't think any of them were THAT interesting I'm so sorry. but they were fair enough. in terms of enjoyment, it was decent. this is supposed to be some comedy or dark anime but besides on how gore it is... that's all I could get.

would I try to watch it again? maybe, but.... I'm not gonna waste my time on something I can't really get into. overall it's a 4.8 for me. for anyone who is thinking of watching this, I'm not stopping you from watching it... please do give it a try.

I can't believe people are recommending this anime to Chainsaw Man fans, it's not even close lol. This is an absolute snoozefest. Incredibly beautiful environments, worlds and character design but incredibly average story. This anime tries to be mysterious and unpredictable and it does it well (in the beginning). But usually, you end up getting your questions answered by the end... well not in this one... It's just a bunch of random plot points stitched together. I have never read the manga, but it seems like anime skipped a lot of it. The characters spawn in random places and do random things with no explanation. ... It's like watching 1 minute of some anime and then skipping 1 minute of it and so on... So many things don't make sense. There is so many unanswered questions regarding power system/magic, the world/planet they live in, the mushrooms, the masks etc..

As for the characters, no one is really interesting except Nikaidou and Ebisu. The "bad guys" do have some fun interactions. Caiman who is supposed to be the MC is your average 60 IQ dense lienear dude who only cares about food. A 10 year old could have written a better character, there is no actual depth to his character except the main plot point that's supposed to carry the whole story (and it fails miserably).

Most of the reviews seem to put main focus on if CGI/OP/ED is good or bad. Who cares? The story is boring. The story is the most important thing. Hopefully whenever the second season airs, they actually focus on storytelling instead of eating gyoza in every episode and and spawning characters in random scenes doing the most random stuff and hoping the viewers will spend the next 1 hour googling why someone did something. No one ever travels anywhere and says what they will do next. In one scene you have a dude eating some shit food, few seconds later, he is in another dude's palace???? There is no actual timeline.

Well, this is why I hate to listen to the Anime community or the Overall of the score... I had high hopes for this anime due to the many high reviews but in the end I got bored...
This anime is in high ranked (currently at rank #433) and it doesn't deserve it...To much Hype and to high score for this Anime and I really can't understand why!
Let me explain myself.
The story is decent BUT with a lot of problems. The main problem of this anime is lack of consequence. The story put ... a lot of mysteries in so it can keep the audience but never explains them (at least not all of them).
Sorry to tell you that but the anime doesn't have an end, no closer.
The story begins with Caiman who want to get his memory back and find who put a spell on him but in the entire 12 episode story we don't get to see any informations about Caiman...His Character is funny but its just that nothing more...
Also the anime doesn't give any informations about the characters except for Noi,Shin and En...
For example who is Nikaido what her backstory? We don't get any informations for that either and that leads us to the second problem. Dorohedoro doesn't build the characters so you can't relate with them...
Another problem is the PLOT ARMOR and we do get to see that alot in Dorohedoro. The to "villains" Noi and Shin always get severe injuries but they don't die, in fact they heal in the next couple of minutes. SO the characters luck danger.
And I said it doesn't have a closer after 12 episodes the anime is again of square 1 and I mean it!
Do not LISTEN TO THE REVIEWS HERE they are misguiding you and I dont get to see why.OK it has some splatter so what?
I Highly suggest NOT to watch it...

Dorohedoro is on paper a show I would love because it’s dark, violent, everyone is an anti-hero, and there are no schools. And, truly, if it was only those things I would love the hell out of it. Unfortunately, there is a lot of random nonsense coming along with those elements which end up making me not care.

Let’s start with the most obvious detractor. It’s in CGI, which mean 90% of everyone is not going to watch it because of the uncanny valley effect. It is far from awful, since very few things can be as bad as Ex-Arm, but let’s not pretend it’s going ... to be easy for most people to sit through this show. I wasn’t bothered much by it, but I would definitely prefer if it was hand drawn. Something which can be said about everything that is CGI. That aside, yeah, the sceneries are very detailed and add to the dark atmosphere. If you are part of that special 10% of humanity that can look past that pivot then you will love the looks of the show.

Now let’s move to the second detractor, which is the plot. Or better say the lack of one, since everything is loosely connected and most of the times there is no continuity. It’s random ideas held together by duct tape and it can get confusing very fact. Here are some zombies, here are some dinosaurs, here are some enchanted stores. How do all these themes connect? They don’t, they just call it magic and that’s the end of it. There is a lot of spell casting, done all the time, and it can pretty much do anything you can imagine, resulting to nothing having consistency. When there is a spell for resurrecting the dead, traveling in time, or transforming people to animals then anything is possible and nothing can be taken seriously, so I stopped caring early on. I mean it is very creative, but you hardly feel there are limitations and thus no matter what bad thing happens to a character you know there is a way to undo it very easily and you get desensitized.

Then it’s the bottom of the barrel character objectives. The only thing the good guys want is to find out who turned the protagonist’s head into a lizard, and the only thing the bad guys want is to punish the protagonist for attacking their organization. They constantly do a lot of reality altering spells and murder hundreds of people for these petty reasons, so good luck caring no matter what they are doing. On top of that, almost everything they are trying to achieve has no result. Most arcs end with everyone going back to square one only to try again next time where even more people will die and more random magic nonsense will happen. It feels completely pointless.

And I can even explain why it feels pointless. Because the writer makes sure that every time they are about to learn something new something happens at the last second and they don’t learn anything. If it’s a witness, he will die right when he’s about to reveal something. If it’s an assassin he will escape with his face conveniently not showing. And even when the main characters witness the truth they will be always getting amnesia so they will never remember the revelation. It happens so many times it becomes obnoxious. And I know the writer does it deliberately so the story can maintain its mystery and the audience can keep watching, but what exactly is that important that needs to stay hidden? It’s just about who turned the protagonist’s head into a lizard, so who could possibly be biting his fingernails while expecting to find out the answer to something so petty?

To sum it up, you might enjoy the dark setting or the violent anti-heroes or the creativity in magic, but if you care about anything other than that Dorohedoro is not for you. It’s random nonsense with barely any plot continuity, constant delays of really unimportant mysteries, and worst of them all it’s not hand drawn, so you most likely won’t watch past the first episode. And that’s why it’s a hard pass.