#dorohedoro | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

madscientistshowdown · 2 days ago

Text

Top 3 will make it onto main bracket

PROPAGANDA

Chin Kid:

Chi is an Energetic Scientist who has also been a world-class Mage. Three years after the events of the 3DS Miitopia let’s play, this young adult changed her entire career on a whim! This is mainly because of her “never-ending hunger to find the next thing to master” in addition to being inspired by a close friend who’s also a Scientist. Even in the first season, she’s shown to have always been super obsessed with anything relating to fire! During her intro cutscene in the Switch let’s play, she begins this scientific career of hers by breaking and entering into a local high school and setting one of the science rooms on fire. She’s quickly caught by the authorities and fought to keep the lab coat that she’d stolen from the school. When Chi joined The Incident, the team adventuring to defeat the Second Dark Lord, the shenanigans she gets into in the name of science and fire are progressively more and more insane! Like she straight up DRINKS GASOLINE at one point for an experiment. She’s a very fun character and I love her <3

Scientist Eve:

Was highly intelligent and showed proficiency in science from a young age, so the main villain took her in as basically his apprentice and manipulated her into thinking they were doing good. As the years went by she rose the ranks and was the head scientist of their ranks Cloned and experimented on her own brother

Dr Andedonia J. Ghastly:

Willing to join a terrorist organization because she's in love with an evil disembodied brain.

Oscar Yoren:

One of the most memorable NPCs in the game, he was a former member of the Amythyst Academy, before the others found out about his… experiments.

Three (All 1 Propaganda):

Of the Intoners, Three is the most intentionally unhinged. She will quite happily turn her subjects into experiments. Or play around with creating stronger, more powerful monsters… by infusing them with human minds filled with hatred.

You fight multiple dolls of hers, which were the aforementioned human subjects.

As for being mad, she talks in riddles, sometimes without an answer, and beyond that she is under the sway of the Flower. Which has a deletrious effect on one's sanity at the best of times.

Johanna Hezenkoss:

I don’t think mere words can do her justice. She is, at all times, the absolute Most. She has quips for every situation. She does finger guns in a world where guns don’t exist. She has cunty science goggles. She performed a necromantic ritual on herself to become a lich, it failed and she became a half lich, and she cut off her own hand to use as a hand of glory. The hand of glory also does finger guns. She assigns a guy as her arch nemesis and does theatrical battles with him whether he wants to or not. she considers the protagonist of the game to be one of his sidekicks. She throws a murder party and invites everyone who wronged her so theyre all in one place to murder. nobody is doing it like her

Dr Kasukabe :

A medical doctor that is dating a devil and crafted a door to another dimension out of human* flesh (*technically not human but close enough). His experiments occasionally twist his home into a haunted labyrinth. He has a giant cockroach for a son.

Wilson Percival Higgsbury

He's ambitious gentlemen scientist who loves pun. When he heard sinister voice from radio he just followed its instructions throwing away his better judgement in name of science and build whatever hellish invention it told him to do! Successfully of course!

Denzel Crocker:

Brilliant Inventor doomed to be a elementary school teacher (and later janitor) due to his (entirely correct) belief in…. FaiRY GoDpARenTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Apparently had a bright future ahead of him before suggesting to put painful monitoring devices on all children in front of an audience of scientists.

41 notes · View notes

oddygaul · 2 days ago

Text

Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro is a weird book. And not for the reasons it presents itself as weird, like its big gyoza-eating lizard man, the fact that half its characters unironically dress like clowns, or its B-movie levels of gore. No, Dorohedoro is weird because its storytelling is so unusual. It’s goofy and unserious, despite the horrors and violence constantly inflicted upon its characters; those characters are consistently nonchalant, despite urgent stakes that would drive the plot forward in any other story; and that story is willing to take its sweet time, sparing no expense in how many group dinner scenes can be fit into its 23 volumes. Yes, Dorohedoro has a very deliberate and well-realized style – it’s just not one that clicks with me.

Ultimately, when I get down to it, I think the disconnect is one of sensibilities. Dorohedoro is very transparently a nihilistic work; its world is full of grim horrors, and terrible things happen to good people for no real reason. And while I don’t disagree that this is how the world works, there’s something about media that focuses in on that hopelessness and peppers it with callous violence that doesn’t resonate with me these days. Let me elaborate by examining one of Dorohedoro’s strongest recurring themes: the idea of transactional relationships versus genuine friendship.

For my money, there is nothing sadder in Dorohedoro than the chapter where Ebisu dies and no one gives a shit.

While Nikaido and Caiman are ostensibly the main characters of Dorohedoro, the manga is unique in how much time it gives us with En’s family, our purported antagonists. This isn’t limited to typical villain stuff, either, where we watch them do reprehensible things to cement their status as baddies; no, we spend a lot of casual time with Shin, Noi, and the whole crew, getting to know them as people. It’s a very humanizing approach: sure, these folks are cleaners who go around killing people that run afoul of En’s family, but they eat hot pot and shop for new clothes with their friends, same as the rest of us. They care about each other, same as Caiman and Nikaido do, Dorohedoro implores, they simply happen to find themselves diametrically opposed to our leads.

And then the 13-year old girl who sees them as role models and follows them around like a puppy gets her head split open and dies, and none of them but Fujita are willing to spare a single minute to help. And to be clear, that’s about how long it would take: En’s family owns a magic… dog? cat? with the ability to bring the dead back to life instantly, with no opportunity cost. They simply do not care: everyone no-sells Fujita carrying Ebisu’s corpse around, shows no concern, and are all unwilling to interrupt their daily tasks to help revive her. As far as they’re concerned, this girls’ death is Just Not A Big Deal. This shocked me at first: how could these people, her friends, not care that one of their own is dead? After giving it some thought, though, I realized this reaction is right in line with their past behavior: despite all the time we’ve spent with them that made me humanize En’s family, the only thing we’ve seen them care about is power.

The imbalance of power and its effect on sorcerer society is highlighted in Dorohedoro near-constantly. A sorcerer’s magic is innate; though they can attempt to refine their power through training, their abilities are something they’re born with, and the inherent power levels run the gamut from world-breaking to useless. En is one of the strongest sorcerers we see in the story. His abilities are not only powerful, but versatile: his mushrooms can kill in all sorts of gruesome, intractable ways, yes, but they can also serve as protection, transportation, autonomous servants, or even be cultivated as products. People like Fujita, on the other hand, have powers so weak they’re barely even usable in combat. So, while En’s cunning and business acumen no doubt played a role in his ascension, it’s clear that the sheer luck of being born with such overwhelming talents was one of the biggest factors.

Well aware of this imbalance, En has built his entire organization around exploiting it. Though En’s family is extensive and well-connected, none of them are there because he likes them, or because they’re friends; the people he surrounds himself with are there solely because of their unique and powerful abilities. Take Chota for example: En actively can’t stand to be around him, but still keeps him locked up in the compound because Chota’s ability to undo others’ magic is so rare. Each member is only worth what they can do for En, and this mindset, intentionally or no, trickles down the food chain. Thus, because Ebisu serves no crucial function within the family, because her absence does not directly impact their lives, her death simply isn’t important to anyone – her life is disposable.

The Hole gang, on the other hand, is the antithesis of that mindset – they’re a found family that sticks together just because. Nikaido doesn’t like Caiman because his immunity to magic makes him powerful, she simply likes Caiman. Shit, look at Jonson – he basically followed them home one day, and they’re like, “Well, sure, he mostly just kinda hangs out and shrieks in unintelligible bug language, but… he’s part of the crew now!”

And, crucially, they treat everyone this way, not only their in-group. Despite the two being strangers, Caiman leaps to Fukuyama’s aid without a second thought because he likes helping people in trouble. Kasukabe helps everyone that asks, too; sure, you could argue that it’s mostly due to depraved scientific curiosity, but he does his best to help out even sorcerers. They’re a group of altruists: rather than being beaten down by the unrelenting nature of the Hole, they’ve realized that sticking together is all anyone really has.

This dichotomy shows up constantly throughout Dorohedoro – it’s baked right into the worldbuilding. In the sorcerer world, masks are a sign of wealth and status; those who have connections flaunt bespoke, devil-crafted masks, while the poor settle for mass-produced store-bought varieties. They all wear a mask regardless, though, because at the end of the day, life in the sorcerers’ world is about brandishing power, while leaving your true self hidden underneath*. In the Hole, no such custom exists – no one gives a shit who you are or how you present yourself.

*We even see En’s gang repeatedly fail to recognize each other when their masks are off, further highlighting their impersonal, transactional relationship.

The Cross-Eye gang present an interesting subversion. Sorcerers with weaker powers like them are typically relegated to the lower caste, left to scrabble for power in an attempt to move up the societal ladder. Instead, the Cross-Eyes reject this system, forming a gang based purely around loyalty and brotherhood. It doesn’t matter to them how strong or weak your abilities are – as long as you’re willing to give everything for the group, you’ll be accepted. Their renunciation of the status quo is shown in their character designs: the majority of the gang abstain from wearing masks, choosing instead to proudly display their tattooed faces. Despite seeming more egalitarian on the surface, though, the Cross-Eyes’ maxim ultimately boils down to blind faith to their Boss; this leads to their downfall, their sanity stripped away by the pogroms they commit in their leader’s name, before his eventual murder of nearly all of the core group.

So, the thing that just doesn’t square with me is that I think Dorohedoro still wants me to see it as this light, breezy, slice-of-life story. It wants me to put aside these characters’ cold-blooded cruelty and feel affection for them anyway, and I don’t.

It wants me to read the chapter where Fujita heaves Ebisu's lifeless body around like a wacky misadventure, and I can't.

If anything, it feels like a tragedy watching hapless people like Fujita*, who shows time and time again he does value helping other people, get wrapped up with such shitters. Look, bait the Shin x Noi romance all you want, Q – a CEO and his toadies are a CEO and his toadies, mushrooms or no.

*Or Natsuki, whose death stands out as unfair and cruel even amidst a series as brutal as Dorohedoro. From bubbly and laughing to a piece of meat on the floor in seconds, her face looking away the whole time, rendering her humanity inert.

why is Dokuga a mothman? it was just, you know, his style at the time

I don’t wanna get too deep into this next piece – this journal is already running way long and way late – but the pacing and stakes truly are bizarre in so many ways. At any moment, Dorohedoro will put a pin in a scene and have the characters stop what they’re doing, sit down, and cook a meal together – even if they’re enemies. Dorohedoro will spend three chapters on its characters playing baseball together, and somehow still manage to advance crucial plot points; meanwhile, characters going off on an urgent rescue mission will get distracted, start working at a pie shop or whatever the fuck, and fully disengage from the plot until they fall back into it ass-backwards. Dorohedoro chapters will end with wild cliffhangers where an important character meets a grisly death, and 99% of the time it won’t matter because one of the main characters can, and constantly does, bring people back from the dead*. Right at the story’s climax, Dorohedoro will give its protagonist a strange affliction that forces them to smile unceasingly, resulting in some of the series’ most emotionally charged character moments playing out with all the expressivity of a mannequin.

*Part of me hated how much Noi’s powers kneecapped any sense of stakes or drama these moments might have had; I feel like I would’ve been furious reading month-to-month. Q manages to make death an interesting part of the story anyway, though – En’s death, for example, despite eventually being reversed, causes a compelling narrative paradigm shift AND results in one of Dorohedoro’s coolest ‘worldbuilding supports storytelling’ moments.

This is an observation, not a criticism. Q Hayashida is chaos.

you ever just... threateningly ate fried chicken at somebody?

—

Honestly, though, maybe one of the biggest obstacles to me in Dorohedoro was just that I wasn’t thrilled by the art (the interiors, mostly). I think Hayashida’s design sensibilities are great, particularly in her worldbuilding – from characters’ ever-changing clothing to the well-realized cities and environments we visit, Dorohedoro’s setting is singular and unmistakable. But despite fitting the rough-and-tumble tone of the series, the scratchy rendering style doesn’t terribly excite me. There was a period starting around volume 3 that I really dug; Hayashida seemed to have gotten comfortable with the characters and the style, and started experimenting. The following few volumes feature lots of unique ink textures, slick screentone usage, and lots of creative, collage-like layouts. Soon enough, though, it seems like the unceasing nature of manga schedules caught up to her, and the rendering starts taking a backseat again.

some of my favorite layouts

some of my favorite inks. genuinely one of the best rain tricks I've ever seen

also these panels where Noi is drawn like a shoujo character lmao

I know there’s no way it would be sustainable, as Dorohedoro is fucking lengthy, but it would have been so fucking rad if the whole thing was painted. Q really feels in her element for all these painted pages – they’re vibrant, and filled with rich texture. Too bad the US publisher couldn’t even be bothered to print these color pages in color, instead printing them in a washed-out greyscale from volume 4 onwards.

#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository #long post #manga #dorohedoro

25 notes · View notes