Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro is an amazing fantasy manga by Hayashida Q, notable for being a studio assistant to Nihei before making the Maken X manga adaptation. The story starts off in a dimension called the Hole, which more or less is a very run down and dangerous world that looks like what San Francisco would if the nukes dropped. Kaiman and Nikaido, the two central protagonists, are attacking two people identified as magic users, those who can spray black smoke from their hands to cause an effect of some sort, although the particular usage of the magic smoke is unique to each user. After subduing one, Kaiman is revealed that he is immune to the effects of magic, and subsequently takes of his gas mask revealing that he has the head of a giant lizard. Kaiman then stuffs the magic user's head in his mouth, where inside he meets a phantasm like being who remarks that this magic user "is not the one." Kaiman pulls the user out of his mouth and asks him "What did the man in my mouth say?" Upon being revealed this information, Kaiman takes out a pair of knives and cuts the magic user into 4 pieces. It is revealed shortly after that Kaiman has no memory prior to the time he met Nikaido, and is staying at Nikaido's house until he solves the mystery of the ghost in his mouth, what his past was, and why he has a lizard head. The second magic user is able to escape from Kaiman and Nikaido, and returns to the home dimension of the magic users, the aptly named Magic User World. There the user, whose name is Fujita, reveals what transpired to a magic user named En, who controls a global conglomerate in the Magic User World concerning mushrooms. En, taking an interest in the matter, contacts his cleaners Shin and Noi, two extremely powerful magic users and his personal hitmen, to investigate. This is where the intricate, absurd, and fantastic story of Dorohedoro begins.

The story in Dorohedoro is very fun. If I could describe it with one word it would be adventure, and what I mean by this is that action is a device used to tell the story, the story taking up the bulk of the manga. For disparity, it is an opposite of a manga like Feng Shen Ji which only uses the story as a device to formulate the action sequences, which I would classify as strictly an action manga. Beyond that, Dorohedoro's story is just adventurous in nature, with main characters Kaiman and Nikaido as well as the En Family going all around the block and back again. Going into some specifics, I just really like the way character objectives and motivations are handled in this manga. In the beginning what drives the Kaiman side of the plot and most of the story by extension, is his quest to get his original head and memories back, but of course an extreme amount of shit happens between then and now. This is standard structure for an adventure story, but what makes it stand out just like alot of really good manga, is its execution. Not all manga actually come to the point that has been predisposed since the beginning of the story, or if they do the objective has been completely transformed by transpiring events. In the case of some manga like 7 Seed and Bastard!!, it will completely abandon various original objectives for the sake of continuation, which is usually a sign of not great writing. Some manga like Berserk, on the other hand, don't really change the overall quest at all during the story, rather the transpiring events are used as buffers for character development or simply filler. Dorohedoro on the other hand, can take all kinds of different plot lines and converge them perfectly without skipping a beat, and this doesn't come at the expense of other aspects of the manga either, but more on that later. There are other elements that drive the plot of course, a notable one being the characters that act it out. All of Dorohedoro's characters are great, to put it simply. Gary and Mary Stu, or whatever you want to call a generic archetype with predictable interactions and design, does not exist in the slightest. Every single character is quirky, complex, and with an original personality. In fact the manga is so alien in not just this regard but other aspects as well, that I have read about many people saying how it feels more like a western comic (please don't let this put you off, this is far from Spiderman.) Kaiman is jolly, simple minded, happy, and crazy, while Nikaido serves as a contrast by being more level headed. En's family particularly comes to mind when thinking of fun characters. En himself, while being a very powerful magic user, is still cranky and idiosyncratic to the maximum. Shin is a hitman with an interesting history, and while he looks happy and rather bright in most of his normal appearances, shows no mercy to his targets. Noi is an extremely tall and muscular woman, who is boisterous and infatuated with her partner Shin. Ebisu is an accompanying member of En's family who due to shenanigans with Kaiman early in the story, goes braindead and behaves ridiculously for most of the story, with Fujita constantly on her tail. Other great characters include Professor Kusakabe and his assistant Johnson the Giant Cockroach, members of the Cross Eyed Gang, mysterious Outsider Risu, and the Devils. The cast is vast and absurd, to such a degree that no other manga quite shares. I've talked roughly about how fun the characters are but I have a few other things I want to mention about them. Character development doesn't exist in the same way it does in more realistic manga, in all honesty it just doesn't belong in Dorohedoro. A character's personality changing is not necessarilly warranted in the first place, and I truly dislike this being a standard for good characters. Although I've said this, some character's personalities do change such as main character Kaiman, but not due to conventinal reasons that would be normally called character development. Dorohedoro does have development though, more specifically along the lines of cast development. Introductions of new characters happen all the time in Dorohedoro, creating pockets of plot and side stories all over the place while never actually diverting from the main storyline, in fact its woven in such a way that all plot lines are equally a part of the main story. On another note, there is alot of comedy in Dorohedoro, but make no mistake this does not stop the story from overall being serious. There will never be a moment when dramatic scenes are ruined in tone due to comedy bits. But when the comedy is shown is very funny. This is mostly due to how riduculous the world of Dorohedoro is and how quirky the cast is as well. To summarize this, Dorohedoro's story is mysterious and bizarre, and the characters that drive it are as exceptional as a manga could hope for, although prepare to abandon manga standards from works like Pun Pun if you really want to enjoy it.

The next main thing I want to talk about with Dorohedoro is the art and design of the manga. In the beginning of the review I mentioned how Hayashida Q was once an assistant to cult sci-fi mangaka Tsutomu Nihei, who is pretty famous for his work Blame! and his bizarre art style and tone. Putting it simply, Hayashida Q and by extension Dorohedoro inherited this style. The art of Dorohedoro is reminiscent of the style of works like Blame! in a few ways, although do not make the mistake of thinking the art style is a "rip off." An overall sketchy style, crazy enemy designs, and detailed backgrounds are all things they share in common. One difference is that Q's artstyle of humanoid characters is generally more realistic and overall more pleasing to the eye than Nihei's style, which is mostly used on inhuman designs. Character design of Dorohedoro is particularly very awesome going off of that. Almost every character or enviroment design is notably original or cool in some way, and I am quite understating the gravity of that. The worlds of the Hole and Magic Users have all sorts of bizarre land marks, and they are just overall very unique in conceptualization. The people of the manga have many unique designs as well, with some notable examples being Shin and Noi. Shin being a tall man wearing a rugged screwed up black suit, a backwards heart mask on his face, sneakers, stitched together fingers, and a shed hammer as a weapon. Noi an extremely tall and muscular woman, who uses a strange blue mask with the vines on it and a similar suit. The character of En has bright red hair, a mask that only covers his mouth, and clothes that usually go with the fashion mood he is in. Most of the magic users have a particular style and mask that they use to identify themselves, although there are several magic users and regular humans that are exceptions to this rule, and by far its interesting character design. Some other cool designs are the already mentioned Johnson, Kaiman himself, and the Devils, which are mysterious beings that screw around with humans and magic users alike, with a unique wit and style to each one. There are a variety of less humanoid designs as well, such as some hulking monsters, and Kirukage, a cat like creature that wears a leather wrestling mask and wooden stumps for limps who can bring people back to life with little restriction. Overall its a fantastic art style that notably improves both technically and as a style.

In conclusion, I would say without a doubt that Dorohedoro is one of the best of the best when it comes to manga. It's bizarre biopunk/fantasy style leaves little to be desired in originality, with a great story and quirky characters to go with it. It is terrifying, unique, extensive, interesting, and hilarious, and you should definitely give it a try.

I think it was around 2005 or 2006 that I first heard the term "anime". One Piece started airing on Portuguese television, and it claimed to be "the best anime since Dragon Ball", in school all the older kids in my class started talking about this new edgy anime on TV called "Hellsing". And when I got into high school, with everyone obsessing over the Big 3, I finally started to get into the medium, but due to lack of a decent internet connection I ended up opting for a static, black and white version of the stories that everyone was watching. Manga. For people who know me in 2020, I'm a full blown manga fan, one that respects the animated part of this culture, but stays away from it. Over the years I've gotten pretty familiar with the genre, styles and tropes of manga, specially those of Shounen and Seinen. And a year ago, I was finding myself still enjoying the stories the media could tell, but had been well over 5 years since I had one manga that I truly could call a favourite that wasn't written by some of my long time favourite mangaka, Asano and Urasawa.
But then, in January of 2019 I saw a picture of a man in a full body suit and mask with a ghost on his shoulders and this picture was just... so hypnotizing, so grotesque, yet beautiful. It's the kind of thing that I, as a Silent Hill and Alien and whatever fan, love. And in the corner it said the word "Dorohedoro".


This wasn't the first time I heard about this manga, Dorohedoro exists since Q Hayashida started it in 2000, and it was ongoing until September of 2018 and throughout it's run it was always decently famous, culminating earlier this year when it finally got the anime adaptation it deserved. But that was the first time that I REALLY felt like reading it, and I did as soon as possible. I was expecting a gory, horror manga, maybe trippy, with some steampunk elements, and to be fair, Dorohedoro is all of this, but as I found out, it's also much, much more.

To dive in the story of Dorohedoro I should probably start with the setting. Here we have two dimensions, one is The Hole, a horrible, horrible place where humans, like us, live, and the Sorcerer's or Magical User's world where... well... sorcerers live, there's also Hell, where devils live. What makes Dorohedoro amazing from the get go is that the concepts of what is a devil and sorcerer is completely unique to this setting, you never seen anything quite like it. It does thinks different enough that a manga about "magical users" still manages to feel novel and unique. But this story is about Caiman, Caiman is a human from Hole who has a lizard head which has a human head inside him and to boot, he has amnesia so he is as confused about this plot as you are right now. And we follow him as he tries to figure out why him, out of all people, managed to get stuck with this bizarre head. With him is the ever reliable Nikaido, restaurant owner and overall badass girl who helps him around to try to solve this mystery.
It's early in the story that they talk about a powerful family of sorcerers, called The En Family, ruled by, well... En. Look, the names in the manga are very straightforward.

I was expecting En and his family to just be your run of the mill villains, but then you actually start following them as much as Caiman and Nikaido and I think this when I started noticing the strength of this manga: The characters.
This is my all time favourite cast of characters in any medium, see, you don't get a hero and a villain in here, you get factions, each of them with their unique cast of marvelously and hilariously crafted characters, each of them with their goals, and ambitions and stupid behaviors, but it's not separated that they are great, it's together, it's how they interact with each other that truly makes this worth a read.
You see, Dorohedoro has a depressing, dark and edgy setting, one that is enhanced even more by Q Hayashida's rough, messy and beautiful artstyle. But the characters on the other hand are all incredibly fun and wholesome. They are always having the time of their lives and in return they make me have the time of my life. It's a contrast that should not really work, but Hayashida does it in such a flawless way that it looks so easy to pull off, but I think only her could really write this.


Dorohedoro is a mystery, it's an horror, it's a comedy and it's a slice-of-life with a weird small baseball arc in the middle, and never really feels like the mess it should be. It manages to have a bit of everything for every one and have it done well. It's an experience I never really felt in manga before or after.

If I'm pointed a gun at point-blank and forced to say a negative point to Dorohedoro, I would possibly say that it got dragged a bit, the last arc is around a third of the entire manga. It got extended longer than the author intended for, and I assume that was because it changed magazines near the end twice, and I assume magazines wanted to have it run at least a bit more in their pages, but since things around the mystery of Caiman do get a bit convoluted midway through, the length of this last arc actually helps explain everything in a digestible way that I'm not sure it would have otherwise.


The term genius is thrown a lot to describe some mangaka. Urasawa's thriller manga are definitely works of a genius, and One Piece's Oda has to be one too to write the story he's writing for so long and make it all connect so flawlessly, but Hayashida is a different kind of genius.
Dorohedoro isn't the most complex and well realized thriller mystery, it's not the most complex of worlds either, but Dorohedoro is, to me, the definition of a fun, enjoyable manga.


In my 13 years of watching and reading things in this medium and in my 27 years of being alive and experiencing movies, series, books, comics, games, music, and even wrestling storylines, I didn't expect it to now have the best experience in storytelling ever in my life so far. But I did.
I love manga because of how varied it is, and how much fun and passionate and incredible some stories are, there's manga that makes me feel so much stuff, like happiness, anger, sadness and horror and I love feeling those emotions, but Dorohedoro? Dorohedoro makes me feel ALL of them. This manga is the embodiment of why I love this medium and why I'm so passionate about it.

Dorohedoro is by far my favourite manga series.
ART 8: the dark, sketchy, grainy style reflects so well the tone of the story and although it can be hard to follow panels because of it, the gory pictures just look so much better with a darker less, conventional cheery manga look.

CHARACTER: Dorohedoro has so much character, not only because of its weird and wacky setting, but because of its story telling and use of character designs.

STORY: You aren't treated like a baby and you are not spoon fed every little plot point, which I appreciate a LOT however because of that, it does make it hard to follow sometimes, and I found myself checking the wiki here and there to clear up my understanding of what happened, but even without understanding every single detail, its still a really well flowing story with so many moving, intricate details.

Enjoyment: I couldn't stop myself from reading it, its a huge breath of fresh air given how different it is from anything, and because i personally love weird character designs, m and post-apocalyptic settings it was perfect for me.

Overall: 9.7 IF you like the genre. I can completely see people who don't like gore or weird settings not enjoying the series, or finding the art style hard to get used to, but if you just hop along for the ride, it will probably deliver for you.

Dorohedoro is a masterpiece.

The story is convoluted, unpredictable and one-of-a-kind.

The characters are written in such a way that the reader feels affinity towards almost all of them. You become drawn in to each character and their individual story and the part they play in the greater plot.

The writing is executed perfectly and the dramatic story is interspersed with humor, sometimes quirky and nonsensical, but always well timed.

The art is, in my opinion, fantastic. Sometimes it looks more like a rough sketch from a schizophrenic's art book but that is part of this manga's charm. There are also some lovingly colored portions that look like they were done with a mix of watercolor and ink. It's fantastic.

If you had a friend getting into manga, this is one of the mangas that should be near the top of the pile that you give to that friend.

10/10.

A gritty, dark comedy with action to boot and incredibly eccentric but lovable cast of characters. The "villains" and your mains share a lot of the spotlight, meaning you get a large cast of very well-developed characters to get attached to. Plus the art is extremely detailed and interesting from panel to panel. The worldbuilding is also done spectacularly and is easy to immerse yourself into.

Dorohedoro is an ultra-violent, action packed manga but can still take the time to have a heart and provide some truly tear-jerker and even heartwarming moments.

I'd give this a few chapters to see if it's for you, but as for me, it was hard to put down once I started reading. Overall, it's become one of my all time favorites with a lot of reread potential, and it even has a satisfying ending.

In this series, magic users are beings born with a certain organ in their bodies that allow them to use magic in the form of puffing out smoke, be it from their fingers or mouth. On the other hand, you have the regular humans who live in a place called the Hole, which is shown to be a ghetto-ish area. The story thus follows two main perspectives, the first being that of Kaiman and Nikaido having their little adventures in the Hole. The second focuses on Shin and Noi, two magic users who are tasked with tracking down Kaiman. This is later expanded to include En’s family and the inclusion of several other factions and groups. As the series continues, the viewpoints begin to converge as the different characters meet and interact and yes, this is a manga with a relatively huge cast of characters.

According to Wikipedia, Dorohedoro is serialized in Ikki, a magazine that “specializes in underground or alternative manga”. And it indeed is alternative for it is hard to find a manga as quirky and stylish as this. Trying to write a review to explain why this manga is just so addictive is rather difficult as much of its charm lies in its visual styles.

Really, trying to categorise this title under a genre is not easy. Manga Updates tagged it with a Biopunk, but it too has the elements of Gothic in its ambience. The only way I can succinctly describe Dorohedoro in one sentence would probably be that it is akin to what it would be like if Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino collaborated to produce a manga. It’s not the best description I’ve got, but I think the analogy fits pretty well. In the Magic Users’ world each Magic User are obliged to wear a personalized mask to mark their identity. Throw in the fact that you have manifestations of curses, devils and death god flying around and the place is like a much more macabre mash of Halloween Town and Beetlejuice. And then you have En’s family and his estate. En’s family being clad in suits make it a like the mafia in a Halloween party. In fact, when Shin and Noi first turned up, I was strongly reminded of Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction. The whole imagery is bizarre, but it is also freakishly cool.

In general, I am not a fan of gore. Titles such as Berserk and Gantz are far from my preferred types of manga and I tend to be averse to manga that displays excessive amount of gruesome disembowelment like Shigurui for example. However, I do like me som dark comedy and Dorohedoro pretty much struck a chord with me despite the display of characters getting brutally murdered – hell, there’s even a character whose magic is all about disemboweling bodies. Yet within the bleak setting there is sufficient amount of well executed comedy. The gratuitous amount of stylised violence as well as the general nonchalance in attitude towards its delivery by the cast of eccentric characters means that although the tone is grim, it is at the same time funny. The humor style is more towards the dry sort though.

Now, simply having great visuals is of course not enough for me to consider this as one of my favourite. The characters too need to actually be interesting. Since this is after all a rather Gothic story with some rather grim setting, it should come to no surprise that trying to categorize them into “villains” and “heroes” is rather pointless. Heck, considering that the different groups get their own share of characterization and screen time, it is also not easy to distinguish between some of them as “protagonists” or “antagonists”. In other words, despite the large cast, the core characters remain interesting while the other supporting characters too get their fair share of spotlight. The result is that even though the characters are supposed to be opposing against each other, I can’t help but root for some of them all the same. Lastly, not to forget the trippy elements that goes in several parts of the manga. For the most part, the story is pretty straightforward, but as the plot progress, or rather in the recent volumes, there are certainly quite a fair bit of mind screw going on – the macabre art style definitely helped in enhancing the effects.

In a way, one of the things I like about Dorohedoro is also what made me took a liking to Narita Ryougo’s works in the first place: the inclusion of multiple viewpoints and what is at first glance seems like a very chaotic story, as nicely summed up one of the characters in Baccano!, “Depending on who you place in the same situation, the characteristics of said incident change kaleidoscopically. In other words, there is one incident. However, there are as many stories explaining it as there are people involved in it.” — Gustav St. Germain (aka that guy voiced by Norio Wakamoto).

On the whole, Dorohedoro may take a while to get into and feel comfortable with its surreal style, but once you do, what you have here is one wickedly engaging manga. Definitely worth the read.

The world of Dorohedoro is one of the rarest and most original that I have seen in a manga: it is violent, dark and visceral, without falling into the common topics of this kind of stories.

Personally I think that would be its main characteristic: Dorohedoro can use elements such as magic, satanism with demons or steam-punk aesthetics, but in such a way that when using them as material to build their history and lore, they end up Feeling fresh and differents.

In short, the author Q Hayashida has a gift for making the grotesque and bloody something fascinating, enjoyable and interesting. For that reason, Dorohedoro is a very good story, which I could easily recommend to anyone who enjoys this world.

PD: I want to eat Gyozas!!!

My very first experience with DRHDR was through twitter, when a good friend was talking about the characters. I was curious, and decided to check it out, and I'm glad I did, because I found probably one of my most beloved - if not the most beloved - mangas of all time!

The premise sounds simple enough - an amnesiac lizard-faced man tries to recover his memories by biting sorcerers so they can answer him what the man inside him said, then kill them afterwards, all with the help of his companion, Nikaido. It's not that simple later on, though, but the mystery surrouding Kaiman's identity is rather interesting. In hindsight, the first volumes make good re-read material to connect the scraps we get early on and such. It's a strange story, with twists and what not, but a very interesting one to digest.

Speaking of the premise, my favorite thing I love about this manga is the world and, specially, the cast of characters - everyone feels like they have their own quirks and personalities that stand out, as well as designs that make them recogniable. It's a dark and crazy world with equally crazy characters, all while balancing the violence and gorn with lightheartedness and dark comedy.

The art is rough at first, but surely fits the setting our protagonists live in - a dark world, divided in two main areas the story takes place in. The later artwork and colored pages, in particular, are outstanding while still keep the essence of the series.

And hey! We get a guy with a lizard head who really loves his gyozas! :p

What we learn from this manga:

1. Comedy and Gore can become a good combo
2. An awesome protagonist doesn't have to be handsome
3. Heroine too can kick ass in an action manga
4. Nakama power isn't limited to "Heroes" only
5. Every character can be given proper air time without any difficulty
6. Magic isn't limited to Harry Porter only
6. Weird art does not mean Bad Art
7. Even in a weird series you can show emotions
9. If you are original, you may not get popular but you will always be awesome
8. Female mangaka can handle a fast action packed Seinen

All of this and more ....
In the most chaotic shambles

That is DOROHEDORO

Dorohedoro, as a series all about the plot twists, is kind of hard to describe easily. It takes place in a gritty magic-punk dual world: The high-class world of the magic users, and the slum-like Hole, the world of the non-magic users. The story centers around Kaiman, a man with a lizard head and no memories. He hunts down magic users, eats their head, and then the person inside his mouth evaluates them, looking for someone. And that description does absolutely no justice to the series.

Q Hyashida loves 'er plot twists. Yes, this series is filled with twist after crazy twist, but, and this is a big but, it feels coherent. In some series you get the impression an author came up with a cool premise and then basically made things up as they went along, but Dorohedoro, in all its twisty madness, feels like it's going along a very purposeful route.

It helps that the characters are great, and really hold the whole thing together. Despite Kaiman and his friend Nikaido ostensibly being the protagonists, the series spends about equal time with all of the important characters on the various different sides of the central conflicts. They're all well-developed and lovable, and you'll likely find yourself not quite knowing who to root for during the battles.

Now, the word people often use to describe Dorohedoro is "gritty" and, well, it is, yeah. Especially in the art, which is thick and dark, with lots of cluttered environments and greys everywhere. It might take a bit of getting used to, it's a somewhat unusual style, and some of the anatomy is a little weird early on, but once you do get used to it you'll grow to love it.

The series is gritty and violent, but it's not as bleak as you might expect. It's cut through with a REALLY goofy sense of humor to give things balance. I've always liked series that balance dark and light, and Dorohedoro pulls it off really well. Another slight break from traditional grittiness is that the characters are pretty much all lovable. They're pretty much all anti-heroes, but almost everyone has a good/adorable side to them. There's no real mopey angsty types or bad-ass murderers whose only thought is murderification. The creator describes it as "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it," and I can't really put it better.

Over all Dorohedoro is definitely one of my favorite manga series. If you like unusual worlds with cool art and an interesting story, definitely check it out. Apparently it's ending fairly soon as well, so that's something to keep in mind.

If you like a large cast of characters that have enjoyable and fun interactions, an intriguing mystery that is both haunting and complex, and have the stomach to handle gore then this is the manga for you.

There are no good guys. The best way to describe it is that the morality scale is incredibly gray. Almost everyone does something bad, usually with violence. Despite that the characters are still lovable and have humorous interactions with each other even in serious moments. There's also some subtle romance, mostly from Noi and Shin. Sometimes hinted at with the main pair, Nikaido and Kaimon, because their relationship is built upon a close friendship that is very apparent throughout the story. They care about each other a lot so shipping or just platonic friends can go whichever way you want.

The gore in this manga appears consistently in each chapter and is always incredibly brutal. But the overall read is definitely worth sitting through all that. At most the gore is just body horror and sometimes there are dead bodies getting mutilated but everyone seems to come out okay from it because... magic. It's pretty easy to ignore it as you read. But it's impossible to avoid if you're still iffy about it.

It gets a little psychological horror-ish especially when we get closer to answering the mystery of Kaiman's identity and his origins. But not as bad as Silent Hill or Oyasumi Punpun or anything else in that genre. The gore is much more bearable because of that.

Art is pretty messy from the beginning but like most manga, it improves. The color pages look pretty nice too. Nudity warning because of female fanservice and also some from the male side of the cast.

The story is incredible. That's all I have to say about it. It's complex and details are fed to us every chapter as we get closer and closer to the end. The world-building is good and very nearly everyone gets a chance in the limelight, even though Kaiman is the main character. It might be a little confusing but hey, that's what a mystery is. If you want to find out the truth, you have to read. If you want to understand better, you have to read.

The BIGGEST NEGATIVE thing I have to say about it is... that it's not complete and that you have to wait at least a month for a new chapter. But that's pretty normal isn't it? If you choose to read, I wish you luck and patience when you read to the latest chapter :))