Dorohedoro is making it really hard to construct these posts around particular themes. The show is so inventive, and covers such a wide range of topics every week, that it’s hard to know how to structure my discussion without the copout of chronological order. I shouldn’t have blown the food connection last week, because there was an actual recipe for roast duck in this one. Granted, the duck turned into a doppelganger after being basted with Shin’s smoke and veal stock, but assuming the transformation was simply cosmetic, the doll was composed largely of duck meat. I’m surprised Ebisu didn’t start chowing down after Shin punched a hole through its chest and the juices began to leak from its gaping wound.
Let’s back up for a second and talk about the sorcerers’ realm, since this episode spent most of its time there. Like last week, the show divided itself into three segments, each with different titles corresponding to different manga chapters. Two of them took place in the magic users’ world, which is much brighter, cleaner, and more technologically advanced than Hole. The opening scene depicted En and Shin flying their brooms over a lakeside European city, densely populated with steepled buildings. Later, the characters accompanied the aforementioned doppelganger on a modern-looking train, before following him to his apartment. Said apartment was located in a significantly less affluent city; its houses were graffitied and overgrown, and its inhabitants were shabbily dressed. A handful of them prayed to a devilish bull state in the town square – for “solace,” if Shin and Nao are to be believed, from their weak magical abilities.
What is the magic users’ realm, exactly? Part of it looks like 19th century Earth, but as we moved away from the city, the patchwork vibe was ratcheted up. Things got more modern, but also dirtier, poorer, and more spread out. Is there a possibility that this world is an alternate version of Earth, and Dorohedoro’s sorcerers are humans who somehow gained access to magical abilities? The script (or some anon’s translation of it) has referred to sorcerers as a distinct, non-human race, but they obviously resemble us. The primary difference between the two beings seems to be the tumors behind the magic users’ eyeballs, which take the shape of devils and can even be revived to give life to the dead. I can imagine a history where part of humanity gained access to these eyeball demons, opened the door to another realm (Hole), and banished non-magic users to live there. Given the show’s habit of visually associating wealth with magic, it’s not hard to imagine the class lines along which those abilities were distributed.
Now that I’ve talked myself into believing that Dorohedoro’s world offers a bit of social commentary, it’s time to talk about Caiman. Although he only appeared in the last of the episode’s three stories, we learned a lot about him during the other two. The whole doppelganger plot is based on Shin’s memory of the man inside him, who once resided in the magical world. His massive stature and the severed head they find in his apartment matches Nikaido’s story of finding a six foot tall headless corpse in an alley. The cross marks around his eyes, too, match those on both Caiman’s lizard head and a sorcerer from the episode’s second part. That sorcerer is a seller of black powder that enhances magical ability, which factors heavily into that story. An important and easy-to-overlook detail here is that the powder salesman isn’t alone – he says the organizers of the party he’s attending are “our customers.” There may be a faction of magic users with similar eye markings whose primary business involves that drug, and Caiman may have been one of them. Perhaps someone from a rival faction killed him, or maybe there was bad blood within their group. Whatever the case may be, I’m much more invested in lizardman’s backstory now than I was before.
The episode’s final six minutes or so return to Hole for a trip through a doctor’s seemingly haunted home. Dorohedoro really loves these genre tropes – zombie uprisings, occult gatherings, haunted mansions, etc. There’s a reason for the place’s twisted hallways and disembodied voices, though. They’re caused by the remnants of the doctor’s experiments, which involve the smoke produced by magic users. I really enjoy these explanations for the strangeness of Dorohedoro’s plot and setting, as they illustrate just how much of Hole’s misfortune is caused by its sister dimension. It seems as though the series is set to leave Hole behind for a bit, however, since Caiman’s doctor friend has succeeded in creating a door to the other realm. We’re only four episodes in, and Dorohedoro is arranging a second meeting between its two sets of major characters. Things are moving quickly, but given how much detail has been lavished on both worlds (plus our growing understanding of the relationship between them), the show’s timing couldn’t be better. Hook this show into my veins, man – I need more!
