Product Description

Tezuka's classic thriller manga featuring a youth who has been robbed of 48 body parts by devils and his epic struggle against a host of demons to get them back. Daigo Kagemitsu, who works for a samurai general in Japan's Warring States period, promises to offer body parts of his unborn baby to 48 devils in exchange for complete domination of the country. Knowing the child to be deficient, Kagemitsu oderes the newborn to be thrown into the river. The baby survives and, in time, searches the world for the 48 demons. Each time he eliminates one, he retrieves one of his parts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58683 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Customer Reviews

Classic 1960s comic book series from the "god of manga"
`Dororo' tells the story of Hyakkimaru, a traveller born with no body parts, and Dororo, a pesky child who he meets that follows him on his journeys. While essentially not much different from your typical manga series about travellers, the strengths here lie in its engaging characters and interesting back stories. On the art side, Osamu Tezuka's drawings are beautiful from beginning to end. The art is as imaginative and playful as anything else Tezuka has drawn, but at times is also incredibly strange and eerie. Overall, it's a solid and enjoyable read for fans of the classics.

Tezuka's ghosts, demons and swordplay epic
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.