Dororo
(Reviewed on 08/29/2007)
The Searchin' for Something
ROSSMAN
Dororo is one strange flick. It's fun as hell, fast and ninja-bangtastic, but strange. It's got elements in it that've been done to death (by ninja!) in previous Japanese movies, but the mixture of everything (uber-powered protagonist, goofy sidekick, quest for vengeance, dickheaded, supernatural enemies, and ninjas!) in Dororo is done just right. Even more righter than the original Azumi in fact. Oh yeah. I went there.
I'll cut right to the chase and slice my way thru the plot now. Things start off a few hundred years ago during Japan's Warring States period. General Daigo (of the losing side of pretty much everything) makes a pact with a bunch of asshole demons: He offers these 48 hellspawn his unborn son's body (or at least a piece of it for each demon) in exchange for their power to annihilate his enemies and help him rule the world. Well, the kid (Hyaki-maru) is soon born (without eyes, ears, limbs, his chakra, and various other body parts), and Daigo's wife, determined to let the poor fuck live despite all odds against him, puts her torso of a son in a basket — ala Moses — and sends him down the river to hopefully a better life... Really, what was she smoking?
Then this shit gets weird. Hyaki-maru is found by this doctor/mystic guy, and as luck would have it the baby-finder knows how to boil dead body parts down into their base elements and somehow grow them on people who lost a limb, an eye, or 48 various body parts to demons before they were even born. Thanks to this, and years of living in a tank of water and eating through a straw, Hyaki-maru actually grows up slightly normal... except for his strange extra-sensory senses and the swords hidden within his arms.
Anyway, 20 years after Daigo made his pact with the demons and Hyaki-maru learns his life's mission from his foster father: He must hunt down each of the demons that has a piece of his flesh (or chakra) in it and kill it, thusly retrieving whatever part of himself was taken by said fiend. Using the special Japanese demon-slaying blade in his left arm (which he can reveal by just shucking off his forearm and hand like a corn husk), Hyaki-maru plans to do just that (slay the demons).
But of course his quest is far from that cut and dry, because that would be boring. Along his journey, Hyaki-maru encounters a... A feisty... Ummm, no, how about a real firecracker of a... No... Hmmmmm...... He encounters a mildly retarded female pickpocket who thinks she is a man. It is this character in fact who becomes known as Dororo ("Dorobo" being the Japanese word for "thief," and this character thinking that Dororo is cooler sounding, yet close enough).
Eventually Hyaki-maru and Dororo kill a bunch of the 48 demons that he was hunting, and soon they stumble upon Hyaki-maru's younger brother, mother and father. A veeeeeeery awkward encounter indeed. Then the big fight and finale fly by, and then the fade to black in preparation for Dororo 2 and 3 (which are both already in development of course).
See, even my description makes this thing sound kind of bland, but you have to believe me, Dororo is a fun ride. Yes, the special effects are sometimes the equivalent of the made-for-the-Sci-Fi-Channel movies of the week (featuring very unbelievable giant sharks, gators, snakes, dragons and dogs), but they're fun cheezy, and not shitty cheezy (like the Sci-Fi movies). Dororo doesn't even pretend to be something that it's not; it doesn't try to take itself too seriously (like those awful, awful Sci-Fi Channel movies whose creators should just erase their hard drives of anything else they've been working on and commit seppuku all together [the old fashioned kind, with daggers through the bellies, then up to the ribcage]), and the chemistry between Hyaki-maru and Dororo is very amusing to watch. What more is there?.... Just fucking check it out.
The MEGAPURAYUBOYU
Word up, my bitches and hos! Dororo was all that, and a bag o' crack. Any movie that has demons, ninjas, throwing stars, ninja swords, and body parts just falling off crazy people is dy-no-MITE! Who the fuck would have thought that something so bad-ass could have come from Tezuka Osamu — the homie who gave us Astro Boy and Speed Racer and those mice from Voltron! That's like getting a kick-ass movie featuring David Bowie as the main bad guy, tons of creepy, little goblins running around, and a hot chick with huge tits as the lead, and finding out that Jim the fucking Henson made i-... Umm, well, I guess.
Anyway, cracker packers, I like ninjas, and thusly I likes movies about ninjas, even when their sidekicks are one slight knock to the head away from paralyzing amentia. I even likes me some ninja movies with cheezier than should be allowed special effects, and some overacting on the parts of half the cast, with underacting performed by the other half. It's all good, G. Fa-shizzle my drizzle, and pa-goodle my poodle.
The ROBOT of PEDRO
C-c-c-c-c-cr-cr-cr-aziness! R-R-R-Robot Pedro unable to f-f-f-f-f-f-fight it. It is programmed into Robot-t-t-t-t Pedro's core functionality that he g-g-g-g-g-g-gives two th-th-th-thumbs up to any movie featuring ninjas.
Th-th-th-th-th-this is difficult to compute... What is even m-m-m-m-more difficult to acertain is wh-wh-wh-when this counterproductive functionality was inst-st-st-stalled in the first place. This prime directive might cause Robot Pedro's own demise! For example, flesh bags, what if R-R-R-Robot Pedro found himself in a battle with n-n-n-ninjas, and this battle was being recorded, and yet the only way for Robot Pedro to delete the ninj-j-ja presence would be to force his two thumbs down into their eye cavities, and thusly-ly-ly stab their terrible Oriental brains in? Robot P-P-P-Pedro smells conspiracy! Beedee beedee bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-beedee.
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