The main protagonist, despite the fact that the manga title points to the orphan Dororo, seems to be Hyakkimaru. In order to conquer the country, Hyakkimaru’s father made a pact with 48 demons that he’d offer each demon a part of the yet-to-be born Hyakkimaru’s body in exchange for the fulfillment of his wish(doesn’t sound so clichéd, eh?). As a result, Hyakkimaru is born with 48 body parts and internal organs missing. His mother, when she realizes what has befallen his son, puts him in a basket and releases it in a river. The formless infant is then found by Dr. Honda who believes he’ll survive and raises him. As he grows, Hyakkimaru learns to move about by crawling on his stomach and even learns to speak from his stomach. But soon he is haunted by weird demons looking for his soul and Dr. Honda decides he must leave.
Dr. gives him prosthetic limbs inside each of which he attaches a separate weapon such as swords in his arms and a skin-burning spay in one of his limbs.
He then sets off to slay the 48 demons and finds company of the young thief Dororo(who is later revealed to be a girl even though she herself does not believes it). Together they help villagers ger rid of demons and gain Hyakkimaru’s organs one by one.
The overall manga is a very good one considering the time it was made in; however a major drawback in it is the way it ends. We never clearly get to know what exactly happened except a line that mentions “Where Hyakkimaru went from there, no one knows. It is said that fifty years hence the flames of war burned down the hall of hell that housed the 48 sculptures.” And Dororo only calls out to him from a distance..But Hyakkimaru never turns back. I think that I would have liked to see a few more pages describing what happens in the near future but the manga is good as it is maybe.
A good read for Tezuka fans. The art is vintage-kind so ignore this one aspect :D
