Winter 2020 Week 8 Roundup: What’s Going on in Dorohedoro?

Dorohedoro Episode 1 Review

It happens every week when I tune in to Dorohedoro. It’s an eyebrow raise higher than I’ve ever done with a solid dose of laughter as I spit ‘what the fuck am I watching?’ at my screen. We’re at the third unique ending sequence now, so it’s about time I put pen-to-paper (or thereabouts) and attempted to figure out just what it is that I’m watching!

The list of genres that are willing to be thrown into the cooky cauldron that makes up this anime increased last week with a baseball episode – that, bizarrely, moved the plot forward by a very noticeable amount. This week is an off-week, where all the various plot-lines are coalesced, analysed and reflected upon.

And our boy Caiman cleans some toilets. Because of course!

After a surprising confrontation during the baseball match, Caiman feels bad that Nikaido has been harmed, so he decides to take matters into his own hands, venturing into the Sorcerer’s World all alone. In that daring comic tone that Dorohedoro skirts, Caiman is still unawares of Nikaido’s great not-so-secret, and thinks that he actually contributed during their last trip outside of Hole, so it’s only natural that he gets a dose of reality. Thankfully, he’s not as useless as one might expect of the oafish lizard, and even lands himself a job baking pies.

The Sorcerers, however, are preparing for Blue Moon Night. I’ve gotta hand it to Dorohedoro, it sure knows how to keep its tone intact while world-building. Ebisu is the only one that stays awake during the montage of a play depicting the origins of Blue Moon Night, and the way Caiman is independently fed information about how sorcerers pair up in the once-every-4-year-event is equally lined with that oddly funny atmosphere. It’s campy, in its own way, and the show feeds off of it during scenes such as the costume designer’s introduction or the black-screen-white-text time checks. Offbeat doesn’t do justice.

Very little, ultimately, happens in this episode. Caiman sneaks into En’s party (as a guard) in the hopes of finding some powerful sorcerers that might have relation to his problem, and while the episode ends with an Iris Out on Caiman actually working and cleaning toilets, the confrontation is inches away. Next episode’s going to explode, where En’s gang come face-to-face with Caiman and Nikaido will, somehow, have to save the day.

Of course, the most important piece of the episode is something that happened very early. We briefly detail what Nikaido’s ‘smoke’ can do – and it has lizard transformative properties. Sound familiar? We’re far enough in the narrative that this suggestion cannot seriously lead to Nikaido being the sorcerer, but it’s certainly another hint that there’s many more secrets left in this bizarre show and between these bizarre characters.