If you ever needed proof of the power of traditional storytelling – especially in a fantasy setting – Dororo is all you could ever ask for.  This show is pure and straightforward brilliance, in many ways very simple in design despite the subtlety and complexity of the story.  You don’t have to reinvent or revolutionize to achieve greatness in anime – you just have to be great, and Dororo is great.  It ranks considerably ahead of any 2018 series for me, and if the second cour is on par with the first (or Goc help us, better) 2019 is going to have a very hard time topping it.

Unfortunately we’re looking and a one-week break before the second cour starts (hardly unusual), so we’re going to have to chew on what happened this week for a while.  Once more the narrative structure here is as traditional as it gets – the first cour was used to introduce all the players in the game, and set up the board.  We now understand exactly what’s at stake here, and mostly understand the people whose lives hang in the balance.  The second cour is the reckoning, when everyone will have to live with the decisions they’ve made, and irreconcilable desires will clash violently.

The first cour closes with everyone coming together in a dramatic crescendo, the blast wave sending them all flying once more in separate directions as the second starts.  The Banmon gate sits at the heart of all this – the dividing line between Ishikawa and Asakura, between Sukeroku and his family, between this world and the next.  It symbolizes the contract Daigo has made, and its impact in the human world.  It’s more than merely fitting that the first meeting in 16 years between Hyakkimaru and Daigo – and yes, Oka as well – should happen here.  It’s impossible that it could have happened anywhere else.

There’s no question that Tezuka is playing hardball with the moral ambiguities here, up to and including Daigo’s choice (though I have very strong feelings about that, personally).  Dororo has many roles in the story, but in this respect I think she represents a kind of survivor’s nobility.  For Dororo there’s no time for philosophizing – she’s only ever had time to worry about staying alive.  She has a clarity that stands out like a sore thumb in this setting, as when she and Sukeroku are taken prisoner by the Asakura patrols.  Sukeroku has seen the ruins of his village and believes his family dead.  The other Ishikawa prisoners are content to wait and hope that the divine protection their land seems to be under will extend to them.  But Dororo relentlessly fights to live on, whatever it takes.  That – and loyalty – are the beacon which draws her forward at all times.

As I mentioned last week, Tahoumaru is the veritable tipping-point state here.  If it weren’t for the impossibly raw deal his brother has gotten in life, it would be easy to feel sorry for Tahoumaru – he didn’t ask for any of this, and clearly has the moral compass to realize that what his father has done is an obscene miscarriage of human decency.  But Daigo is as relentless in manipulating his son’s loyalty as Dororo is in surviving – he paints it in no uncertain terms, to side with Hyakkimaru is to seek the destruction of the lands Tahoumaru was born to protect.

There’s a seductive quality to Daigo’s evil, no question about that – consequentialism always relies on that seduction as its strength.  The choice he made has forced his second son into an impossible decision, and made the existence of his wife a constant misery.  I don’t blame Tahoumaru for the choice he makes here – it’s disappointing but probably inevitable.  The only question for him, really, is whether allowing himself to be forced onto the side of evil has made his own soul irredeemable.  We saw what Daigo’s decision did to Oka – living with it will only destroy Tahoumaru slowly from the inside, too.

Acting as a sort of Greek chorus through all this is Biwamaru, who sees with the wide perspective no one else in the cast can share.  He sees Tahoumaru and immediately realizes he’s Hyakkimaru’s brother, and all the pieces are really in place for him now.  The fact that Biwamaru, with his wisdom and deep sight, can see no way out of this tragedy is telling.  He has no illusions that he has any power to undo or rectify what Daigo has wrought – it’s a terrible destiny for all involved and as to himself, Biwamaru notes that it may be his destiny to observe it.

To me, there’s no more soul-crushing moment here than the tiny smile Hyakkimaru allows himself when he thinks of the mother he’s seen for the first time.  And no more uplifting one than the resolution of Dororo, who single-handedly injects a drop of hope with her unwavering resolve to stay by Hyakkimaru’s side.  As to the choice Oka makes, it too may have been inevitable the moment Daigo made his.  Even she realizes she cannot be the one to bring ruin to her land by helping her son – all she can do is atone by offering her own life, whatever value that may still hold.  It’s a brutal way to end things, but it’s not unfitting that Daigo should be given a small taste of the pain he’s inflicted by his literal deal with devils.

Sukeroku, at least, is reunited with his mother – a small miracle in this world of brutality to see innocence rewarded.  And hovering over all of this is the Kyuubi, a mysterious presence which I’m more convinced than ever is not Hyakkimaru’s enemy, or a force for evil.  It’s Daigo who should fear it – and indeed, I believe he does, almost as much as he fears the son he sold to fuel his own ambitions.  I have no doubt that we will see many more tragedies befall good people in the second season of Dororo, but I also believe that Daigo will face a reckoning in the end, and the dangerous worldview he represents will be repudiated.