We came tantalizingly close to understanding the truth of Caiman’s identity in this episode, but in the end, Dorohedoro’s tendency to complicate itself prevailed. Not that I’m complaining – this was a strong ending, assuming that a second season will emerge some day to continue the story. It resolved some mysteries and created much bigger ones, and convincingly reconciled two friends after brutally pitting them against each other. The latter of those accomplishments was important, as without Caiman and Nikaido’s pinky promise towards the end, this finale would have felt overstuffed with flashbacks, dreams, and clues. Nevertheless, I enjoyed all of those hints at the show’s bigger picture, and I’m going to spend the bulk of this post unpacking them, since I can use tomorrow’s series review to discuss everything else.
Mystery #1: Who is Caiman, really?
The show hasn’t given us a definitive answer here, but it sure drew a lot of parallels between Aikawa and Caiman in these chapters. They share an imposing body type, they both wear gas masks with circular eye windows, they both have a distrust of sorcerers (despite Aikawa being a magic user himself), and they both get headaches. We learned most of this information about Aikawa from Risu’s flashback at the beginning of the episode, and his chronic headaches were the most important piece. Aikawa always disappeared after these events, perhaps because the pain was too much to bear, but I’m thinking there’s another reason – they occurred just before he transformed, a fact which he’d want to conceal. Caiman’s sudden headache in the cathedral’s underground happened just before he stabbed Nikaido, who didn’t recognize him (presumably because he had assumed another form). To support this theory, one of Caiman’s dreams this week included the phrase, “Something evil keeps growing inside of me.”
Mystery #2: How did Aikawa become Caiman?
If we accept the idea that the headless corpse discovered by Nikaido was Aikawa’s, then a lot of this episode’s dreams involving surgery start to make sense. The first shows a gloved hand reaching into a brain and pulling out a sorcerer’s devil tumor, while a pair of cross-tattooed eyes (probably Caiman’s) watch the proceedings in the background. Caiman isn’t a magic user, but Aikawa was, and his brain would have been available for dissection if his head was removed from his shoulders. So how did Caiman gain his lizard head after being decapitated? Beats me, but it stands to reason that Ebisu’s reptile magic was the cause. We saw a jar of her smoke at the broker’s shop in episode 5, so her direct involvement wouldn’t have been necessary – someone else could have sewn any old head onto Aikawa’s body and transformed it into Caiman’s current mug. It could even be Aikawa’s head that was reattached, post-devil tumor operation, before it was magicked into a lizard face.
Mystery #3: What became of Aikawa’s devil tumor?
The Cross-eyes were almost certainly responsible for Aikawa’s murder, since his head was replaced with one bearing their signature tattoos (a calling card of sorts). They took his devil tumor, which contained whatever magic he possessed, and transplanted it into someone else’s brain. Somehow, Caiman accesses that memory in his second cathedral dream, likely due to his body’s connection with Aikawa’s consciousness (likely housed in the tumor). The dream depicts a bandaged head (not shown from the neck down, hinting at a recent attachment surgery) staring up at his IV bag and wondering what happened to him. My guess: that’s the Cross-eyes’ boss who En battled six years ago, given new life thanks to Aikawa’s devil tumor. Last week, we learned that their boss was rendered headless after En’s city-destroying smoke attack, but he survived the encounter and disappeared through a door. He likely perished soon afterwards, but given his murderous strength, the Cross-eyes would have required him to be revived to continue their war against the En family.
Occam’s razor says that the headless Cross-eyed boss and the headless corpse that Nikaido discovered in Hole are the same person, but I don’t think that’s the case. For one thing, I’m not sure the timelines line up; the boss lost his head six years ago, and I seem to recall that Caiman’s headless body was discovered more recently than that. Also, if we try to reconcile both headless bodies being the same person with the “Caiman = Aikawa” evidence from this episode, that would mean Aikawa was the leader of the Cross-eyes, as well. He hates their organization, though, having tried to dissuade Risu from joining them in the past. It’s more likely that Q Hayashida just really digs the decapitated look, since Dorohedoro is largely an aesthetically driven series. There’s evidence to support Aikawa being both roles, though, namely that evil presence that Caiman feels within himself in the cathedral’s underground during this episode. That matches the menacing aura that En sensed from the Cross-eyes’ boss when they tangled in the past, so there’s reason to suspect a direct overlap in identity. As a matter of fact, I may be convincing myself of this theory as I type…
Mystery #4: Whose head was in Risu’s bag?
I have no clue. But Aikawa said he knew whose head it was, as well as what the Cross-eyes were up to. Damn it, he probably *was* their boss, and just told Risu to quit in order to protect him. These events being portrayed out of order is an effective method of obscuring the underpinning truths of the series. I’ve typed a bunch of theories only to realize that I’m probably wrong about everything, so let’s cut to some other thoughts before calling it a day.
– Nikaido’s personal stakes got ramped way up in the wake of her contract with En being removed. Merely encountering him again will cause it to regrow, so being on the run with Caiman could turn into a desperate scenario if and when the series returns for another season.
– I like the timing of the reveal that Nikaido was the one to give Caiman his name. Their battle was fucking brutal, so his reluctance to travel with her afterwards made sense, but getting another piece of their history together made their season-ending vow of friendship feel authentic.
– Just realized that the stabbing method that a transformed Caiman used in the Cathedral basement was the same one that the Cross-eye boss used against Shin and Noi in the previous episode’s flashback. Too lazy to work that observation into an earlier paragraph, though. :^)
– The episode’s final montage includes a shot of several Cross-eye members looking at a waist-level camera. My gut tells me it’s a POV shot of their boss, who’s lying on a bed post-operation and looking up at his henchmen, perhaps having lost his memory of them.
Season review tomorrow, ideally with 90% less self-doubt. Might do a post about the OVA mini-episodes when they release in June, too. See you then!
Here’s my take based on the clues shown throughout the series. Sorry in advance for the wall of text, there’s a lot to process.
Caiman is Aikawa, who is also the cross-eyed boss but doesn’t know it. Aikawa’s other personality killed Risu, who cast whatever his magic is after dying, then somehow a bottle of Ebisu’s smoke got involved creating Caiman as we the audience and Nikaido know him.
Here are the clues in the show that make me think that. As I mentioned before, I’ve been reading the manga after watching the episode, and nothing so far makes this conclusive in the original source at this point.
Aikawa = Caiman
1. Both fight with knives using a style that is a mix of normal and reverse grip
2. They are both as tall as Risu and Noi, the only other characters shown as being that tall are Tanba and the cross-eyed boss.
3. Both wear gas masks and a similar style of black clothing
4. Both get headaches in the sorcerer world
5. Back to #2, in the fire toilet bathroom Caiman has a flashback of Risu introducing himself, and he is not looking up or down at Risu’s face
6. Their personalities seem similar. Both are carefree, violent, and deeply care about their friend’s well-being
OK, so most of that is circumstantial, but this point has been heavily implicated in other ways. So let’s go to the next part of the puzzle, Aikawa is the cross-eyed boss but doesn’t realize it. I’ll start with what we know about the cross-eyed boss.
1. He is hunting for skilled sorcerer’s heads, though we don’t know why
2. He used knives to beat Shin and Noi
3. He is able to induce vertigo on others
4. When fighting En, he cut through En’s mask and inflicted a shallow wound.
5. At the same time, En blacked out after initially casting his magic
6. The cross-eyed boss’s headless body walked through a door
What do we know about Aikawa?
1. He can emit smoke, but his magic is not defined
2. He knows what the cross-eyes are doing, but in the one brief scene where you can see his eyes he does not have the red tattoo
3. He gets headaches then disappears
4. Weapon of choice is a knife
5. Is attending a school with Risu to learn how to use their magic
Finally, what did we learn form Caiman’s dreams, hallucinations, and what the “Risu in his mouth” says?
1. In the past, Caiman remembers Risu introducing himself
2. A phone call we can’t hear shows up often and is hinted at being really important to the mystery
3. Risu’s reflection in the mirror asks if he is going to kill a friend again
4. He is heard saying something evil is growing inside of him
5. Risu-in-the-mouth is mad at Ebisu, most likely due to whatever caused the lizard head
6. Asu, who is an all-knowing devil, KNEW there was another person under the “church”, but he could only find Caiman. Asu KNOWS Caiman is not the one who stabbed Nikaida, because he is an all-knowing devil, though he does doubt Nikaido’s testimony that Caiman is not the one who stabbed her
7. Building on #6, it’s obvious to us viewers that Caiman, or his body at least, stabbed Nikaido. The same style of bayonet, the green gloves, and T-shirt are visible to us viewers when it happens. However, he did not have a lizard head, which we can see from the black outline and Nikaido’s testimony to Asu.
OK, so how does Risu and Ebisu get involved in the mystery?
1. In the first episode, Fujita says Caiman is immune to magic. En’s reply is “or he’s already affected by magic”. This implies that someone under the effects of a spell can’t be affected by a second spell until the first one is removed
2. Also in the first episode, Fujita’s partner creates a door AFTER he is diced into little pieces
3. We have been shown several times that sometimes a sorcerer can’t use magic if their “smoke vein” doesn’t have access out of their skin. Nikaido had to bite her finger to use her door, and Shin had to cut his arms off until his smoke veins had access outside of his body
4. Risu notably doesn’t know what his magic power is, because his smoke vein doesn’t allow his smoke to get out from under his skin
5. Ebisu sells her smoke on a regular basis
If my Caiman = Aikawa + cross-eyed boss (CEB) split personalities is true, here is what I think the event timeline is.
1. Risu and Aikawa become friends. CEB starts killing and extracting demon tumors for some reason without Aikawa knowing, or without Aikawa being able to control himself. The CEB has the cross eyed tattoo, while Aikawa does not; the tattoo could be magical in nature
2. Risu is killed by CEB, because Risu’s magic is somehow special
3. Risu’s magic is activated by his headless corpse
4. CEB gets a phone call, goes back to apartment
5. Shin, Noi, and EN fight CEB
6. En is not a physical fighter. He also blacks out right after casting his magic, wakes up standing upright with a shallow wound to his neck. I think whatever Risu’s magic does interfered in this fight, saving En and decapitating CEB
7. CEB arrives in hole, headless.
8. Ebisu’s magic, probably in a broken bottle, somehow begins to affect CEB and traps Risu’s magic in the body. This is why Risu-in-the-mouth is mad at Ebisu
9. CEB grows new head with no memories, leading to Caiman*
No idea why new head grew. This also happens after Shin decapitates Caiman, but Caiman retained his memories after growing a new head. Maybe the regrowing heads is related to the evil thing Caiman refers to in this episode and is the cause of the Aikawa/CEB split personality?
I think this might be our first comment ever to pass 1000 words.
You reminded me of some important details, like Caiman’s flashback/dream of Risu introducing himself. Caiman might be an amnesiac, but Aikawa’s memories are still floating around in there somewhere.
Aikawa being the Cross-eyed boss makes some sense to me, but the timeline you constructed is really just a line – there are no dates there, which is where the theory starts to break down for me. If the Cross-eyed boss went through the door to Hole six years ago (which is when he fought En), that would mean that Caiman has been living there for nearly six years (after recovering from whatever magic gave him a lizard head). I was under the impression that Caiman was a more recent resident, though I can’t put my finger on why I thought that.
As for the Cross-eyed boss being the one to kill Risu, the two pieces of evidence I got from your post are his M.O. (a particular stabbing method) and mirror!Risu asking “Caiman” (who was once CEB) if he was going to kill another friend. Honestly, the latter point makes a lot of sense to me, since it immediately precedes Caiman stabbing his closest friend (Nikaido), as he did in the past (Aikawa/CEB stabbing Risu).
The one thing that makes almost no sense to me is the Risu inside Caiman. It’s pretty convenient to assume that Risu’s magic entered Aikawa/CEB’s body after the murder, then Ebisu’s magic happened to give him a lizard head once he went to Hole. I get that it creates a string of events that we can follow until the present day, but there are still so many gaps in our knowledge that might provide other explanations.
Nice theorycrafting! Hopefully we won’t have to wait more than a year or two for a second season to confirm or deny your findings.