Dammit Dororo , I was all set for Mob Psycho 100 to be the slam-dunk best show of the season. It was supposed to be simple. What are you thinking, being so fucking great?  Needless to say, this was not something I expected even to be thinking about – that any show could challenge Mob Psycho 100 for this season’s top spot was almost unthinkable.  That it should happen with Mob being every bit as great as projected was unthinkable.  But here we are.  Isn’t that a hell of a thing?

Watching this episode there were a couple of times that I almost got emotional, not because of events in the narrative (though those too) but just because of how great what I was seeing really was.  That happens to me sometimes, but only very rarely – that sense of being in the presence of something incredibly special, and being reminded of just how beautiful anime can be.  I realize that we’re only three episodes into the series – both for Dororo and Mob Psycho 100 – but the possibility that 2019 could see two series which genuinely demand consideration for an eventual year-end top spot is a heady feeling.

Cart before the horse, I know, but damn, this has been an amazing start.  As much as one must credit that Dororo is the brainchild of anime and manga’s most towering figure, Tezuka Osamu, this episode is a potent reminder of who’s directing (remember- you can’t spell “Dororo” without “Oro!”) and writing.  Furuhashi Kazuhiro nailed every choice in this ep (we’ll get to that soon), but the interesting part is that it was anime-original – the Jukai backstory is not a part of the original manga.  So a full-on shout-out to veteran screenwriters Kobayashi Yasuko and Yoshimura Kiyoko, because they delivered something truly amazing here.

A shout-out, too, to the incredible Ohtsuka Akio.  He’s great in pretty much everything, but he brings so much gravitas and pathos to the doctor who found Hyakkimaru and raised him that he elevates what’s already a stunning narrative even higher.  Jukai’s own story is pretty bleak, and Furuhashi spares us none of the details of the crimes committed in the service of a Daimyo named Shiba which he’s atoning for – crimes so terrible Jukai tried to take his own life in dismay at his involvement, diving off a cliff only to survive and be picked up by a foreign (Dutch or Portuguese, presumably) ship.  Having returned with them to their country and learned the art of prosthetics (a lot more artfully than real doctors of the time, it must be noted) he returns to Japan and begins a life of redemption, offering free medical services and prosthetic limbs to victims of war (and bloody-minded samurai).

Furuhashi chooses to tell Jukai’s backstory mostly in black-and-white, with only fleeting glimpses of color (cleverly tied in to Hyakkimaru’s peculiar way of seeing) and it’s a brilliant decision.  Somehow the gorgeous ink backgrounds look even more glorious this way, and it casts Jukai’s story in the mold of a slightly faded memory.  Jukai lives not to atone for what he’s done – for he feels that would be impossible – but because he knows that a peaceful death is too good for him.  Along the way he takes in an orphan named Kaname (Amasaki Kouhei, rightly one of the rising stars of the seiyuu universe), and the boy comes to love and support him.  But one day Kaname accidentally finds out the truth from the mother of a boy Jukai has saved from certain death, and the results are tragic.  Tragic in a different way than they might have been, but tragic just the same.

It’s almost hard to imagine Tezuka didn’t write all this, that’s how powerful it is.  One senses that Jukai’s life is continually touched by fate, because it’s sheer chance that causes him to find the adrift Hyakkimaru (the shot of Jizou, the protector of children, is not coincidental).  Jukai is horrified by the state of Hyakkimaru – all the more once he susses out the cause – but he cares for and educates (and names) the child.  Eventually he realizes that ayakashi are drawn to the boy’s power and that he must teach him to kill – still another regret to carry around on his broad back.

There are so many beautiful moments here, aesthetically and spiritually.  I loved how Furuhashi shows us Hyakkimaru’s vision of the flower he picks, and of its life force ebbing away in a shower of sparks.  He also shows us that for all his strangeness, Hyakkimaru is a human still, and capable of love – for it’s surely love that causes him to touch Jukai’s face at their parting, and to return his embrace.  It’s an indescribably powerful moment, a “sweet, beautiful sadness” to quote my own words of six years past, about Shin Sekai Yori.  We’re a ways yet from putting Dororo on that level, but based on what we’ve seen so far it’s clear that this is a series with the potential for true greatness of a kind not every anime year sees.  Now then Mob-kun, the ball is in your court…