Dororo (Anime)
Also known as どろろ (Dororo)
Dororo (1969)
Despite following on the heels of the full-colour Princess Knight (1967-68) animated television series, due to budget restrictions, Dororo (1969) was a black and white animated television series broadcast on the Fuji Television Network from April 6 to September 28, 1969, for a total of 26 episodes.
What it’s about
During the “Warring States” period in Japanese history, the warlord Daigo Kagemitsu forges a pact with 48 demons. In his lust for power, he promises each of them a piece of his unborn son in exchange, and so his son is born a malformed, limbless, faceless creature. Disgusted by the creature, Kagemitsu orderds the child to be cast into the river, however it is found and raised by kindly rural physician. As the boy grows, the Dr. Honma carefully crafts a set of prosthetics to replace his missing body parts. Once fully grown, the man now known as Hyakkimaru (百鬼丸), literally “One Hundred Demons”, sets off on a quest to slay the 48 demons and regain his missing organs and limbs. His adventures soon lead him to cross paths with a young orphaned thief named Dororo, and the two become inseparable as they cross the war-torn landscape.
Dororo finds some eyeballs
What you should know
In 1968, in order to pitch the series, Tezuka created a 13-minute full-colour pilot of Dororo. Although Fuji TV was interested in the project, because of the low budgets Tezuka was forced to return to black and white animation. Despite this setback, Dororo (1969) is still a great improvement over Tezuka’s earlier black and white television series, Astro Boy (1963-66) as the animators needed to capture the motion of combat and the elaborate supernatural monster designs. In fact, many consider the black and white animation adds to the overall eeriness of the series.
Creative monster designs
While reasonably faithful to the original Dororo (1967-69) manga, rendering each monster encounter in turn, and without shirking on the bloody battles and vistas of carnage and burning villages, the network was originally concerned that the series was too dark. To counter this, they insisted on the addition of a cute dog. They also objected to the original opening sequence, which featured Hyakkimaru and Dororo marching through fields of corpses to a doom-filled male vocal chorus. The original grim music was soon replaced with a new, and unforgettably catchy piece, with tongue-twister lyrics, but the contrast between this new theme song and the vistas of carnage proved too much, and the original animation was soon replaced with scenes of Dororo skipping playfully across village roofs.
As such, the 26-episode black and white television series debuted on the Fuji Television Network on April 6 and ran until September 28, 1969.
However, because the original manga series had been cancelled before Tezuka had a chance to shift the focus towards Dororo‘s “coming-of-age” story as he had originally planned, most of the plots revolved around Hyakkimaru‘s battles with supernatural monsters. As such, viewers unsurprisingly began to consider him the main character and from episode 14 onward, the series was retitled Dororo and Hyakkimaru to reflect the fans’ true loyalties.
The manga series early cancellation also meant there were not enough stories for number of episodes needed. As such, episodes 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23 and 25 are original stories developed for the television series and were not covered in the manga.
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