OP2: “Dororo” by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION

I always enjoy season premiere weeks (though they’re exhausting considering how many posts I write).  But ultimately, you know it’s going to be hard for any new series to one-up what’s at least an even-money bet to end up as 2019’s #1 series.  I definitely missed Dororo during its week off, as busy as I was with travel and first impressions, and it’s great to have it back.  You don’t have to use any qualifiers when you’re writing about this show – it’s just plain superlative in every respect.

Dororo in fact returns without missing a beat – not that you’d have expected it to – with an episode that reminds us that the title of this series is what it is, and not “Hyakkimaru”.  One could ask who the true protagonist of this story is but I think it’s a bit of a false question, or at least an unnecessary one.  Not surprisingly given that the author is anime and manga’s foremost literary voice, this series presents a true dualistic narrative as few others do.  Hyakkimaru and Dororo complement each other perfectly as people – that much is obvious.  But they also do in narrative terms, with Hyakkimaru’s arc driving the story, but Dororo’s giving everything that happens context and perspective.

If you’ll forgive me waxing a tad poetical, Hyakkimaru represents the body of the story and Dororo the soul – or if you prefer, Hyakkimaru’s life is the canvas and Dororo’s is the painting.  In a very real sense Dororo, child though she is, has undertaken no less than the task of teaching Hyakkimaru how to be a human being.  He’s literally a blank canvas, and she has an image in her mind of the person he truly is (or will someday be).  And we can already see evidence of this, a personality emerging in Hyakkimaru as well as a voice.  It says something for Dororo’s strength that as much as she’s suffered, she still takes it on herself to perpetually try and lift Hyakkimaru’s soul away from the pain his cursed existence causes him.

It’s obvious that Hyakkimaru has been hurt badly by the encounter with his family, to the point where he’s not sleeping and refuses to do anything but search out youkai to destroy.  Dororo notes that no body part was restored after the battle with the Kyuubi, which only cements my belief that it’s not Hyakkimaru’s enemy and in fact, is trying to protect him.  As fortunes seemingly turn for the better for Daigo even as his family suffers in the aftermath of their meeting with Hyakkimaru, Dororo desperately tries to get Hyakkimaru to slow down and respect his ever-more human limitations – ultimately lying about a monster’s presence to get him to agree to visit an onsen in the mountains.

The story of the faceless Buddha is part of Tezuka’s original, though in quite different form than it’s presented here.  Because Dororo is a more assertive presence in the anime, things are fine-tuned to give her more of a role in this week’s storyline, which now features a stone-carver whose vengeful spirit is tethered to the faceless Buddha statue behind a waterfall.  A carver who wants to make statues with the kind face of the bodhisattva, a war-torn world which wants the face to be the angry visage of Fudo Myo-o – if there’s a metaphor for the Sengoku period you want, you’d have to look long and hard to find one better.

It’s quite fitting that the Onryou of the carver of a faceless Buddha should have the ability to change faces at will, and it’s the face of her mother that he shows Dororo (that the name “Okaka” sounds so much like “mother” can be no coincidence).  This is quite gut-wrenching stuff in its way, because there’s still an innocence to Dororo that we see glimpses of in moments like this.  Dororo connects with the spirit in a way none of its earlier victims has – it’s the purity of her spirit and her desire to see her mother again that reaches him.  After the evil he’s committed there can be no redemption for the carver now, surely, but what Dororo ends up giving him his solace – one last reminder of what it was that he was trying to impart on his art in the first place.

That it’s in the smiling face of a child that a carver should see the true image of Buddha is certainly fitting, and it makes me hope fervently that when Hyakkimaru’s eyes are finally restored, it’s Dororo’s face that he sees first.  I fear for Tahoumaru, as the stain of Daigo’s evil is probably so great that everyone around him is forever tainted, but Dororo’s relationship with Hyakkimaru is another matter.  It represents hope in the darkness of this story.  And while I don’t know if it’s truly a map that we see on Dororo’s back in the hot spring, it would be entirely fitting as it was, as she’s the beacon he’s following to find his way out of that darkness and into the light of his humanity.

ED2: “Yamiyo (闇夜)” by Eve