DORORO (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Since I rated the mythicity of the live-action DORORO as more concrescent than that of the original 1967-69 manga series by Osamu Tezuka, I had some curiosity as to whether an anime series could achieve any similar feat. I had no access to the 1969 anime adaptation, but I did to this one from 2019-- which, from my partial readings, seems to have borrowed not only from Tezuka but also from a 2016 manga-reinterpreation of the original Tezuka material by another artist. I didn't attempt to re-read all of the manga iterations, but sampled bits and pieces from each series.

Because of that sampling, I noticed that the creators of the 2019  DORORO had a reasonably original take on the character of Hyakkimaru, the paraplegic samurai who shares top billing in the feature alongside his young (only apparently) male companion Dororo. As a child, Hyakkimaru's warlord-father Daigo sacrifices his own son to numerous demons in exchange for his realm's prosperity. Each demon takes a body part from the infant, leaving him no more than a lump of dying flesh. A highly skilled doctor not only saves the life of the discarded infant, he outfits Hyakkimaru with artificial limbs and trains him to use his psychic senses to perceive the world around him, in lieu of his lost sense-organs.

Now, when the two manga-artists depicted Hyakkimaru at the outset of each feature, the samurai is seen as being fully able to act the part of a normal human, despite having been deprived of his normal abilities. But the writers of 2019 correctly perceived that it should be almost impossible for a person lacking most of his senses to segue so easily into emulating the way normal humans interact. Thus, though the 2019 Hyakkimaru possesses the same motives as other versions--to slay all the demons who stole his body parts, in order to get them restored to his maimed body-- he shows so little affect as to make Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry seem like a bon vivant. The slow re-acquirement of his humanity from episode to episode is thus something that the acerbic Dororo can nurture while they ply their demon-hunting trade.

In addition to killing many diverse demons to restore his human attributes, Hyakkimaru is also drawn, little by little, into a conflict with the father who sacrificed him, and with the son whom Daigo did not sacrifice, Tahomaru. Tezuka's manga kills off the second son of Daigo in his only episode, so that the climactic confrontation is between Hyakkimaru and his father. The 2019 anime repeatedly pits the two brothers against one another until the climax and raises more ethical issues as a consequence. For instance, though Tahomaru is moral enough to realize that Daigo committed a terrible crime, that crime resulted in the prosperity of the warlord's realm, and thus Tahomaru feels that preserving the realm necessitates the slaying of the unfortunate sibling.

This series may be somewhat more organized than the original manga, but DORORO is still very episodic, and nearly none of the demons are memorable presences. One exception is a sprite who's capable of making humans speak and act in reverse of their actual intentions. This leads to some very welcome comedy when a young woman tries to talk Hyakkimaru into marrying her, and he, under the sprite's influence, agrees. Dororo, who's been crushing on her partner for some time (though she thinks he's been fooled by her boy-imposture), is of course enraged by this seeming betrayal.

In many ways, the demons' evil is eclipsed by that of humans. The lords and their samurai warriors are responsible for much suffering to protect their power, but people on the lower rungs of society are only intermittently more ethical. Tezuka's anti-war philosophy is conspicuous here, but I can't claim any of 2019's ruminations rise to the level of strong literary myths. The series' strongest trope relates to Hyakkimaru trying to retain his moral nature despite all the carnage he must wreak to regain his physical humanity. I can't say that these ethical moments ascended to a level I would call "mythic," just as the villainies of human beings are also fairly pedestrian. Still, the final episode of 2019 does give Dororo and Hyakkimaru a better closure than did the original Tezuka work.