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REVIEW: Dororo GN 1-3

According to Vertical, Osamu Tezuka's Dororo is “a subtle allegory of the individual and society's struggle for wholeness in a world ruled by chaos.” Sounds promising, doesn't it? Too bad that it's the same as calling Naruto “a gripping narrative of man's struggle construct and maintain a complex civilization in the face of his entropic, bestial nature.”

In fact, Dororo was originally serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday, competitor magazine of such mainstreamest-of-mainsteam shounen standards as Weekly Shounen Jump and latter day home of Inuyasha and Kekkaishi, just to name two well-known recent manga series.

For example, it is basically a prototype of the sort of tournament manga Akira Toriyama perfected with Dragon Ball;

And as in similar, “Gotta Get 'Em All!”-type storylines such as Tsubasa (Sakura's feathers) or Inuyasha (Shikon jewel shards), getting 'em all could take a long, long time.

Presumably long enough for the series to cease to be popular—and in fact, the series ceased to be popular before Hyakkimaru manages to find all of his missing pieces: Weekly Shounen Sunday apparently canceled it abruptly, and Tezuka managed to get a few more proverbial strikes of the storyteller's hammer in at another competitor magazine (now defunct) titled, Boken O. Suffice it to say that if you're looking for conclusive endings, you should resign yourself to looking elsewhere.

The body count, both villains and “collateral damage,” is tremendous, and yet battles have about as much affective impact as watching Tom and Jerry bop each other over the heads with cartoon mallets.

Also, one wonders how Hyakkimaru is able to bend his prosthetic arms when he has steel blades inside them.

Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)

But instead, what you're really getting is something that would have been lost to the sands of time…if it hadn't happened to have penned by the Dearly Departed God of Manga.

Quote:

Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)

You really need to see some Princess Knight before saying that.

She basically said it was no different than your usual shounen fare. I actually think that most of Osamu Tezuka's work is.

I admit that I had the same reaction as Gatsu initially, but then I thought about the women in, specifically, "Ode to Kirihito." With the exception of the human dumpling (forgot her name), the women pretty much exist to wander around, get raped, and (largely) forgive their attackers.

Overly pretentious packaging not justified

Combined with your Astro Boy review, it just seems like you have a personal issue with Tezuka or something, which is kind of... I dunno. Funny?

And I repeat my question on what distinction is being made with "sequential art."

The emperor has no clothes.

In fact, Dororo was originally serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday, competitor magazine of such mainstreamest-of-mainsteam shounen standards as Weekly Shounen Jump and latter day home of Inuyasha and Kekkaishi, just to name two well-known recent manga series.

And although it was published way back in the late 1960s, many of the narrative features intimately familiar to shounen manga readers today are present in Dororo as well.

Yet even with that good advice foremost in mind, it's hard not to be vaguely irritated by the predictable plot and stereotyped characters—particularly female characters. (They're either maidens, mothers, or monsters; this is typical Tezuka.)

A lot of her reviews (of very particular series) seem unusually picky next to her more benign reviews, kind of missing the overall point of the series for the sake of grilling the sacred cow...

Moomintroll-- What you said about the sale of their Black Jack release I found really interesting. It's good more than a few fans are willing to pay extra for high-quality releases. I have yet to order either the hardcover or softcover, which is kind of embarrassing, since I fell in love with the VIZ release a long time ago, and I'd like to see Black Jack completely now. It's hard enough to get stuff from Vertical in my area, though. I tried to get their translation of the Ring series, and I kept getting older, cheaper copies from the order system, and many of their titles just don't show up as an option for ordering, part of the reason I only have 1&2 of Dororo despite liking it a good bit. I'd be happy with either version, frankly. Buddha and their Aranzi craft guides are the only ones I can seem to find easily, oddly enough.

No, no -- see, Ouran High School Host Club plays it completely straight, Honey and Clover promotes weak-willed and incapable Japanese females, and Me and the Devil Blues is totally racist. Casey and her world view NAILS them.

I think Tezuka can be problematic when it comes to his women, but I think he has a wide enough range (no, not just mothers, maidens, and monsters) that I would feel uncomfortable labeling him misogynistic.

Read these and other pearls of wisdom here.