Dorohedoro – 03 [Night of the Dead]

When this show’s OP dropped, featuring Nikaido preparing the meat for her famous gyoza, the catchphrase “Dorohedoro is a cooking anime” started to make the rounds. It probably existed even before that, when the manga was the only available version of the story. I get the humor behind the phrase – the show is so ambitious, so violent, and so unpredictable that referring to it as a cooking series is a fine bit of irony. But upon further reflection, Dorohedoro is as much about food as it is about anything else. How many meals have we seen the characters eat in just three episodes? Caiman and Nikaido’s relationship is built on food, and the cleaner duo of Shin and Noi relate to each other best when they’re eating. Sitting down and sharing a meal is the one real-life practice that made its way into the potpourri of madness that is Dorohedoro, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When Shin talks about his past with Noi over lunch, or Caiman helps Nikaido buy that meat grinder she’s been eyeing, we’re reminded of how closely they resemble ordinary people. If Dorohedoro is a three course meal, the humanity of its cast is the main dish.

With that acknowledgment of its well-built characters out of the way, let’s talk about how nuts this episode was. Dorohedoro is the kind of show that’s not satisfied with just zombie massacres, duels where the protagonist gets his head ripped off, or creepy power outages during medical examinations of said head. It has to combine all three ideas into a single installment, and leave enough time to tease next week’s show, too. Truthfully, I felt like this episode would have been better served by splitting itself in half and dedicating each part to a single story. Perhaps the inspection of Caiman’s head could have been saved for episode 4, and this one could have been devoted entirely to action. As it stands, there were some quick transitions between “chapters” here that made the show’s manga roots too apparent. For example, the zombie uprising ended with a wide shot of three zombies disappearing in the sunlight, and a line of dialogue from Doc that it was “about time for them to finally die.” Then the show blows right past the aftermath of that life-threatening plot when he spots Caiman and Nikaido collapsed in an alley. Linking the end of one huge story so closely with the beginning of another isn’t the most natural move.

Thankfully, the “Night of the Dead” section of the episode was detailed in plenty of other ways, especially during the minute before the OP. Images of shuttered residential buildings and exterminators readying themselves for battle set the mood quite effectively. The touch I liked the most was the hands-only shots of the zombie killers, allowing us to focus on their preparations themselves rather than their identities. It really started the massacre plot on the right foot, giving it a sense of ritualism that suits the city of Hole to a T. The wasn’t a lot of tension to the zombie uprising itself (all of Dorohedoro’s main characters are too combat-ready for that), but the atmosphere was great thanks to the show’s groundwork. As far as real danger goes, Shin and Noi posed plenty of it during their trip to Hole, swiftly locating Caiman and Nikaido and beating the crap out of them. The duel was swift and brutal – just the opposite of the drawn-out, monologue-heavy theme dumps that so many anime call fights.

That’s not to say we didn’t learn anything significant from the encounter. Understanding just how powerful Shin and Noi are is important, but the much bigger revelation was that of Nikaido’s sorcerer blood. The moment when she conjured the Monsters Inc. door and fled the scene with Caiman complicated the series in a major way. In Dorohedoro, magic users are the enemy. They use the denizens of Hole for human experimentation, and cause hazardous climatic phenomena as a result of their smoke output. One of them robbed Caiman of his memory, or so we’ve been led to believe – that’s why he and Nikaido have been searching for sorcerers, and killing them once they prove ignorant of his situation. Taking all of this into consideration, there was no guarantee that Caiman would continue to associate with her, but looking back on it now, his acceptance of her magical ability seems appropriate. The guy is a total sweetheart (if you can overlook his habit of biting people’s heads), as evidenced by his purchase of the meat grinder that Nikaido was interested in. That she can immediately use it to repay him with a tasty meal makes it a beautiful two-way olive branch.

Then there’s the Hospital Lizard Head Examination scene, which I’ll just mention briefly because I wasn’t too jazzed about it. Short story even shorter, somebody stole the head during a power outage, which Caiman sort of handwaves in a short monologue near the end of the episode. It’s implied that the glitchy presence who took the head is related to whoever or whatever lives inside Caiman’s body – they were voiced by the same actor. How is that possible? I have no idea, and until the show gives me a more pressing reason to care about lizard man’s true identity, I’m content not to overthink it. As things are now, I’m enjoying the show for plenty of other reasons: the character relationships, the meticulously ugly setting, and the unlimited sense of possibility.