Zatoichi? Blind swordsman? Pah! How about a blind swordsman with no arms and no legs either? That would be the condition of Hyakkimaru, his father, samurai general Lord Daigo having forged a deal with forty-eight demons, offering each of them a part of his new-born son in return for bestowing great powers on him. The deformed child is abandoned, but is rescued by a maverick Black Jack-like doctor who creates prosthetic limbs for the child. On discovering from one of the many supernatural creatures drawn to this unusual child that to regain his missing body parts he must find and destroy each of the forty-eight demons, Hyakkimaru becomes a wandering swordsman with weapons in place of his missing limbs. On one of his journeys he encounters Dororo, a fearless child and beggar thief with an equally troubled past.
Dororo has an intriguing storyline, one that draws effectively from Japanese ghost and demon mythology. Anyone familiar with Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo will find those themes and the cartoony clear-line drawing here instantly recognisable as owing much to the style of the master Tezuka in Dororo. The tone is also similar, Tezuka having tremendous fun with the possibilities afforded by the plot, the characters and their encounters with various demons, taking this sometimes into dark places, but also making it a consistently entertaining work.
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