How Dororo Inverts the Classic Hero’s Journey

You’ve seen it a million times across a million stories: The hero starts his journey weak but slowly overcomes challenges of increasing difficulty one after the other. By the climax of the story, he is strong enough to challenge the big bad guy–something that would have been unthinkable at the beginning of his tale. But while heroic stories have followed this pattern since antiquity, Dororo inverts it.

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This season’s Dororo is an adaptation of the classic manga of the same name. Published across 1967 and 1968, it is one of the seminal works of the legendary Osamu Tezuka–the man who is responsible for the existence of anime to the extent that he is commonly known as “the God of Manga.” And while this is not the first time that the story has been animated (that would be the 1969 version), it is likely the first time that many a Western anime fan has even heard of the story.

Be it 1967 or today, Dororo stands out as an interesting twist on the classic hero’s journey. In a standard heroic tale, a hero is strengthened by his journey–overcoming the increasingly strong enemies in his way. However, in Dororo, Hyakkimaru’s journey doesn’t make him stronger; it makes him weaker (at least in the physical sense).

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The plot of Dororo is simple: Hyakkimaru’s father sells his soul to demons, offering them anything that he possesses in order for him to lead a prosperous fief and eventually rule the world. What they take are 48 parts of his newborn son–everything from his arms and eyes to his nervous system and skin.

Yet despite this (and his father’s attempt to kill him for being a malformed wretch), he survives long enough to be found by a doctor who specializes in making prosthetics. This doctor then, over the years, builds Hyakkimaru a prosthetic body and teaches him to fight. Now Hyakkimaru is on a quest to kill the 48 demons who butchered him–and for each he kills, he regains one missing part of his body. And herein lies the twist.

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At the start of the anime, Hyakkimaru is all but invincible. The vast majority of his body is fake. Some parts are just cosmetic–like his face mask–while other parts hide weapons–like the katana blades hidden within his forearms. Any damage he takes can be repaired easily and with the lack of a nervous system, he doesn’t even feel any pain even if one of his more fleshy bits is hit. The only way to kill him would be to completely destroy all of his prosthetics–and he is far too good a fighter for even the strongest demon to pull that off.

Yet, as he goes through his journey, killing off the demons one by one, he starts to regain his normal human body parts. One time it’s his nose. Another time it’s his right leg. But then comes his nervous system. Suddenly he can feel pain for the first time in his life. In the midst of battle when he used to be able to fight on relentlessly no matter the damage, he can now be blinded by pain.

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Even body parts that you’d think wouldn’t have as much of an effect are devastating. Regaining his ears grants him a sense of hearing for the first time. But even ambient noise in the depths of a deserted forest is enough to leave him curled in the fetal position, unable to move. It’s only the sad song of an impoverished girl that gives him any kind of solace–and even then it takes him weeks to become accustomed to the constant noise of life.

In a very real sense, with each step, Hyakkimaru takes towards his final victory he becomes weaker. His human body parts have limitations that his prosthetics did not–and the sense of pain just adds another layer of weakness. The addition of his five senses likewise clouds his world with additional, extraneous information distracting him from the clarity of his goal.

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This raises the stakes dramatically. Every time he regains a bit of his humanity–learns about the beauty of life and love–his next step is all the harder. So even as we root for him and revel in his victories, we fear for him. Especially as it becomes more and more clear that it’s not just his life on the line, but his very soul.

Luckily, he has young orphan Dororo by his side on that front–and Hyakkimaru could ask for no better teacher to learn about the best and worst humanity has to offer.

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