| Title | : | Dorohedoro, Tome 4 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 2849464074 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9782849464076 |
| Language | : | French |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published January 30, 2004 |
Dorohedoro, Tome 4 Reviews
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What are we going to learn in the 5th volume? All of this is still in the most chaotic of places - Dorohedoro.
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One star is off for baseball, like, seriously, baseball??? Everything else, omg, so good.
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Four and a half stars.
One of my favorite things about this series is that it feels like the author has created it to live through it in a world she prefers to the real one, and to hang out with cooler, more interesting people than what is available in reality. And yet the cozy world she has created is an apocalyptic one in which people can barely hope of climbing out of extreme poverty, they need to fear themselves or their loved ones getting killed by people from another dimension who couldn't care less about their existence, or in the best case scenario getting afflicted with life changing mutations like your body parts changing into a different creature's. Its inhabitants witness people getting murdered in gruesome fashion and then go back to their regular jobs as if they lived in a less realistic version of "Children of Men". While the author could have made her characters experience a day to day filled with nightmarish despair, they tend to remain cheerful, and often don't expect much of life beyond being able to eat their favorite meal.
This author's version of magic might be my favorite, and one of the only acceptable ones for me: it works as a sort of supernatural radiation, toxic fumes that can make a person mutate into a mass of mushrooms, turn their limbs into insects', or even turn them into two meters tall cockroaches. The effects of this filty magic doesn't end when it gets ejected from a magic user's fingers, because it accumulates into the ground, in the rivers, and stays in the air in some areas, poisoning everything it touches. If some magic users lose control, they risk turning the people they keep around into monstrosities. I can't blame the inhabitants of The Hole, who aren't magic users, for despising these interdimensional foreigners that seem to come to their world to make their lives a living hell.
The overall feeling of this series is, however, difficult to put into words, because all of it seems so idiosyncratic. The plot progresses according to a mysterious internal logic hard to predict and yet satisfying. As the overall plot so far we have our main protagonists, alligator head dude and cool athletic restaurant babe, trying to figure out what magic user turned the guy's head into an alligator's. Their investigation tends to involve massacring as many magic users as they find, a factor that gets complicated when we learn that the restaurant woman, the protagonist's best friend/undeclared girlfriend, is actually a self-exiled magic user. Throughout these four volumes, the protagonist has been growing little by little to take a final decision regarding whether his favorite human being a magic user is something that would change their relationship. Their investigations lead them to open an interdimensional door to the world of the magicians. There the protagonist has to learn to navigate another society without murdering everyone he meets. Although he still hates magicians in general, he understands what the restaurant babe knew from the beginning: that in that other dimension its people are divided into the powerful, the middle class and the downtrodden, and those without power don't fare much better than the average inhabitant of the Hole. It gets complicated further, however, by the fact that the magic users do consort with literal demons, and magic itself in this world might be demonic. While visiting her former world, the restaurant babe, wanting some clues on who transmogrified her sort of boyfriend's head, visits a demon she used to be well acquainted with, and after kneeling to kiss its claws they hang out for a while chatting pleasantly. The demon turns out to be quite a helpful fellow that's glad to be able to assist a person in her quest to help someone else.
Opposing our main protagonists' quest we have the mushroom guy's gang, who are relying on magic rituals to figure out who turned the protagonist into an alligator head person who can also resist magic. Because this world is weird, they recover the protagonist's previous, human and decapitated head, build a body for it and revive him in order to get some answers about who they are facing. We have then two characters who are the same person and yet don't know about each other, and would likely end up fighting to the death if they happened to meet. The revived guy doesn't know that his previous body was revived but with an alligator's head, and the alligator dude is usually just worried about when his next plate of favorite food is coming.
So many cool moments, somewhat spoilery: restaurant babe breaking into the mushroom guy's lair to locate her sort of boyfriend's alter ego, and punching the mushroom guy in the mouth in the process. The mushroom fellow loses control and his magic spurts in a toxic cloud that begins turning the rest of his gang members, and friends, into mushrooms, in a disturbing fashion. After they find out who transformed the protagonist's head into an alligator's, which ends up being quite surprising, the disturbingly sexy behemoth of a woman who works for mushroom guy turns into a huge mutated reptile who can't control her unleashed aggression. Her beloved senpai stops her, getting eviscerated himself in the process. Shortly after he stands around stoically while they perform a demonic ritual that will turn the woman back into normal; they needed a sample of her favorite person's guts as part of the ritual, but thankfully the guy's intestines were already hanging out while he casually witnessed the whole thing. There's a great baseball sequence in which the hospital the protagonist works at plays against an opposing hospital; one of the members of the protagonist's team is a two meters tall, mind controlled cockroach, and the pitcher for the opposing team is a magic user who came to the Hole to murder the protagonist for killing his partner. At some point the peculiar, half-retarded girl who got her face ripped off in the first volume (and who might have been half-retarded before, I'm not clear on that point), visits a store owned by Death itself. After buying some stuff there, Death gives her tickets to a horror movie it apparently produced.
Plenty of other fascinating bizarre stuff going on that has melded together in my mind. This is so far one of those series that you just want to go back to and enjoy a timeless, self-contained reality full of awesome characters.
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Link to the full intro song of the anime adaptation, because I might as well) -
4.5 stars
The art style is everything. Adore the line work. Gimme all that gritty goodness! -
The info we learned about Senpai and Ebisu are astounding, it's making all the characters connected in more than one way.
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Where has this series been, all my life? It's been ages since I last read a manga as good as Dorohedoro. Q. Hayashida continues to deliver a damn near perfect blend of suspense, dark comedy, horror, and even a bit of whimsy, with this volume (seriously, I defy you to look at Ebisu in a shark costume, and not at least crack a smile). Plus, some of the twists in volume 4 are really well-executed. For the series as a whole, it's still gory, bizarre, and full of eminently likable characters. As long as you don't mind dark themes, blood, and the occasional bit of nudity, I truly can't recommend Dorohedoro strongly enough.
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All of my Dorohedoro reviews are actually a summary of what I've read & some thoughts!
I have the memory of a goldfish. ( I am currently re-reading the series, my review will be edited later! I enjoyed all of the volumes though! :D)
[RE-READ] SEPTEMBER 2021
TW: Strong language, blood & gore, graphic violence, body horror, substance (drugs) & nudity
Rating: 5 stars
Spoilers ahead!
All of my Dorohedoro reviews are actually a summary of what I've read & some thoughts!
I have the memory of a goldfish.
Another solid volume.
Volume 3 ended with an injured Nikaido. Caiman conjured a portal back to Hole (thanks to Prof's smoke spray). She is being treated in the central hospital. Doc Vaux and Prof Kasukabe performed the surgery to remove the mushroom from the back of her body.
It has been revealed that both of them knows about Shin. Shin's past is an unfortunate one. Sadly, both parents got killed; his mother when he was just a baby and his father for protecting his sorcerer son. It was mentioned that humans refused to be guinea pigs to sorcerers and fought back in the past. The Neighborhood patrol (NP) was invented. The reason why they succumbed to being magic victims now is all because of Shin. I swear the power this man holds is amazing. Shin originated from Hole and is a hybrid (half-human &sorcerer). His father hid the fact that he was a hybrid until he accidentally injured himself while working and emitted black smoke.
The NP found out about it and decided to kill them both. Shin learned about the death of his father and his personality changed dramatically. That was the start of his violent streak. His list of crimes grew every day. Doc Vaux and Prof Kasukabe found Shin in one of the operating rooms at the hospital while they were on call. He was trying to find his smoke outlet so he cut both arms off. (DAMN, SON. DO U NOT FEEL ANY PAIN?)
SHIN IN THE BEGINNING :/ gets pricked *owww*
ALSO, SHIN: /NO ARMS I'M STILL ALIVE U SURPRISE?
They helped him sew his arms back. While Vaux hesitated a bit, Kasukabe remained calm. I LOVE CHILL CHARACTERS. Ugh, Prof Kasukabe is the best. I guess this is the first time the manga has shown that humans and sorcerers can co-exist??? They just need to help and understand one another, that's all. Anyway, more people got killed (this time, by Shin's magic) and the NP disbanded. Nobody dared to stand up against sorcerers since that day. May I remind you that he did all this when he was just a literal kid? AMAZING.
Again, a sorcerer's weakness regarding the rain was confirmed yet again but this time by Prof. Kasukabe. Caiman is still in denial about Nikaido's true identity. Nikaido ponders upon her conversation with Asu and her magic. Could it be the only way?
While on bed rest, a mysterious man kidnaps her. Caiman went after the man and got led into the sewers. There are a lot of dead bodies in the sea of rainwater and smoke; a sewer graveyard, if you will. Johnson is introduced! He has become of my favourite characters. Apparently, a human went around killing magic victims for their black jewels. It can turn someone into a sorcerer? (Though I highly doubt it). Right before his demise, the guy revealed to Caiman that he was there when he had a human head. He saw Nikaido that day too.
Spell 20 is one of my favourite storylines. While the En family tries to uncover Ebisu's magic (that they found at the smoke shop), Fujita and Ebisu went to Hole to avenge Matsumura. Technically, Ebisu wasn't invited, haha! They got caught up in a game of baseball.
The entire arc is *chef's kiss*!!! Not Caiman being jealous over another man eating Nikaido's gyoza & flirting with her. Your jealousy is so obvious, my man! The entire game scene is the best! I love shark cheerleader +erandboy Ebisu, the stingy old man with tricks up his sleeve (he drugged the opposing team's members & even tried to kill Johnson)! Not to forget, our intelligent Prof. Kasukabe bringing a Franken-Matsumura back to life and also controlling Johnson via remote control. AMAZING!!!! I laughed so hard but I also felt bad about Fujita seeing his old partner's corpse being used this way. The sorcerer pair eventually escaped with Matsumura.
Back at En's place, the family learned about Ebisu's magic! Unfortunately, En's staff accidentally dropped the vial of smoke and it turned Noi into a reptile. Noi went on a killing rampage. Shin had to knock her out. Meanwhile, Fujita and Ebisu arrived at the mansion. Ebisu developed a headache because she drank some of Fujita's smoke booster juice back at the baseball field (which I'm guessing is black powder juice).
So apparently black powder not only increases the volume of smoke but can also cause insanity. Ebisu was revealed to be a loyal consumer of black smoke (my girl's a drug addict at a very young age, hmm). The vial of smoke was mixed with black powder which caused Noi to go amok. En took Shin and Noi to meet with a sorcerer with the power to dispel the magic of others. Chota is introduced.
THINGS TO REMEMBER:
How to dispel magic
1) the sorcerer who cast the magic has to nullify it
2) the sorcerer must die
3) or take advantage of Chota, seem like
Also, how is Shin carrying Noi with his guts out? I mean, I am not surprised but... wow. Not En thinking 'Don't you feel pain?'.
I think En knew that Chota's magic will be useful so he locked him in a tower. Chota's magic is amazing. Of course, it's romantic too! Shin blushing when Noi woke up is so cute! He gave her his coat to cover up. What a gentleman.
Ebisu went berserk due to the black powder juice she consumed. She turned into a lizard and killed Franken-Matsumura. Fujita became devastated yet still hopeful.
After the magic dies down, some of her memories came back. Instead of the usual ' you are not it ', the man inside of Caiman (Risu) told her that ' you are the one who stopped me'.
So did Ebisu turned Caiman's head into a lizard? Was she there when it happened? or did someone used her smoke on Caiman??? In what way did she stop Risu?? Did Risu planned to do something to Caiman?? Let's find out.
Before the volume ends, we get a glimpse of the day Risu got murdered and it was revealed that he had a partner named Aikawa (who is very Caiman-esque). The person who killed him was also a cross-eyes member. BUT WHO? Nothing major has been revealed at this point but the reptile magic, though not rare, is definitely Ebisu's.
Back at Hungry Bug at the hole, Caiman didn't want to include Nikaido anymore in his adventure to discover his real identity. So he left Hole using Prof Kasukabe's portal door. He didn't say goodbye to Nikaido but still hopes to eat her gyoza again someday. That statement gives me hope. I can't wait to read about Caiman's adventure in the sorcerer's realm. -
So many good parts in this volume!
Love when Caiman jumped straight out the window without thinking just to try and rescue Nikaido!
Then there's 13 and Caiman's jealousy lol of course, it's only because he wants all the gyoza for himself... riiiight... haha
And as always, love Ebisu and her random phrases/thoughts "this feels dangerous..." lol
I absolutely love the story (and every character!) and can't wait to find out how it all plays out!! -
Fujita and Ebisu continue to be my favorite sorcerer's. I was really nervous that they'd be background characters with no substance or story but with each volume they're found more and more central to the main story.
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Dzień bez jednego tomu dorohedoro to chyba dzień stracony. Fabuła - ok, nadal nic wielkiego, ale bohaterowie, świat przedstawiony, coś niesamowitego! Chwyta i nie chce za nic puścić!
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2.5
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dovrebbero abolire le partite di baseball
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Shocking!
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There is not much new to say about this series from my earlier reviews. It remains a solid reading experience. I love how random things can be in the world. There can be a large focus on violence and magic that takes a break for a baseball game; and it all works. Also, finally got to the introduction of Johnson!
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I'm still enjoying a lot this series, so much interesting ideas and humor mixed with brutality!
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Dorohedoro is amazing what's new
In this volume we had quality Noi and Shin, Kaiman and Nikaido, Ebisu & her magic content.
Bless you Q. Hayashida you wonderful talented woman you -
More. MORE. Gimme.
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...did I mention I really need gyoza...like right now.
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Antagonist backstory, secrets finally revealed, and an extensive baseball game.
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Much more back story in this volume, allowing more insight into the investigation and motives. And all played firmly with a tongue in the cheek.
Man, I love this series so much! -
The story opens with Nikaido undergoing surgery to have a large mushroom removed from her back. After the surgery is finished, the Professor and Doc go into a story about Shin a.k.a. the “Patchwork Kid.”
After it was discovered that he is half sorcerer, he is hunted and his father risks his life to allow his son time to get away from the Neighborhood Patrol whose job is to kill sorcerers. Shin’s rage carries him through his revenge on the NP, and one night he’s found by Doc in Central Hospital after cutting off his own arms in an attempt to find the source of his magic.
Much later after their story, Nikaido is kidnapped from the hospital and Caiman follows the mysterious figure into the sewers to save his friend. He runs into a pretty tough giant roach named Johnson. Turns out the man who kidnapped Nikaido was present when Caiman still had a human face and before he lost his memory. Unfortunately for Caiman, he’s also the target of Fujita’s revenge for killing his friend, Matsumura.
So after making his way to the Hole with Ebisu to find the giant man with the lizard head, he gets his chance after being recruited by Hole Peace Hospital who needs players for their upcoming baseball game against Central Hospital. Sounds a bit sudden and weird, but believe me when I tell you that it totally works and is one of the best chapters in the book. However, Fujita has to put his revenge plans on hold when he sees what’s been done to his “dead” friend, and takes him back to the realm of sorcerers.
Once back in their realm they run into a problem as they find out everyone is trying to stop Noi who has been transformed by Ebisu’s magic into a giant lizard and is on a murderous rampage. However, Fujita and Ebisu have more pressing issues as Matsumura has started to lose control and just might kill them both….
There’s so much originality in here that you can’t help but find a couple of things to pique your interest. The action is fantastic and the humour hits at just the right points. The artwork was very good, though at times in the later chapters it was a bit too dark and muddled most of the detail that we got to see earlier in the book.
If you’re looking for something completely different I’d suggest Dorohedoro in a heartbeat. -
In this volume, the story seemed to slow down a bit, but it still had a lot of crazy moments, character backstories, and a baseball game? We start with the doctors giving the backstory for Shin (sorcerer with the heart mask) and how the people of The Hole used to fight back against the Sorcerers. The Neighborhood Patrol hunted Sorcerers using any means necessary: Shin, whose father was human, and his mother a Sorcerer making him a hybrid.
They killed his mother and eventually his father after he was found to be one, and Shin went on a killing spree and ran off to the Sorcerer's dimension. This explained The Magic Practice Victims Ward being established. This shows that the Sorcerers weren't all bad and discriminated against. I would love to learn more.
Nikaido gets kidnapped by this guy looking for the black jewels, which will make him a Sorcerer, and this man also has a giant cockroach named Johnson. Fujita decides to track down Caiman by himself and ends up playing baseball. Fujita and Ebisu have a nice moment when Fujita mentioned that no one would care that he died, and Ebisu said she would.
In En's laboratory, Ebisu's smoke gets released, and Noi becomes a giant lizard-like Caiman.
Shin has to be the one to stop her. Risu, the head En revived, tries to figure out his past, find his partner Aikawa, and figure out what the Cross-Eyes were planning.
We end with Caiman leaving The Hole and going to the Sorcerer's dimension without Nikaido's help because he doesn't want to get her involved. This series continues to be one of the most original stories out there, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next. -
Aaahhhh everything I found a tad flat about the zombie sequence is undone by the absolute joy that is the baseball game! I don't even care that we never have met those old geezers before! Johnson appears in the story and then immediately because Kasukabe's sidekick?? Are you kidding? The humour is off-the-charts. So so good.
I can't quite tell if Fujita's getting set up to genuinely be a danger to Caiman & co or not. He seems to just be indirectly. But I have to say that of all these characters, I see myself most in his poor, pathetic, self-pitying, favour-currying self, with, nevertheless, a dollop of loyalty to his friends. I'm sad that his buddy's possible resurrection is lost at Ebisu's hands, but the revelation is pretty worth it.
Wow, lots going on. -
So much randomness.
And i'm starting to enjoy said randomness, i did enjoy it before but now it feels like i got used to it, and it turns out it super fun. The story had a good pace and even though i don't like baseball, i did enjoy that weird game in the middle of the volume.
I might've said this in a previous review but i don't remember so i'll say it again, the characters are the stronger things of this so far. The humor is good and the brutality is so much fun but the characters are what drives this series forward, they are the most interesting thing to me so far.
Overall, probably my favourite volume so far :D. -
all dorohedoro's are 5's. re-reading right now for the final volume which was just released. i will write up a full review when i have finished the 23rd volume.
my star system:
1 star - this book must be forgotten by god and man
2 star - i was not wild about this book
3 star - other people will enjoy this more than i, but i see the appeal/enjoyed it/probably had some fun
4 star - i love this book and wholeheartedly recommend it
5 star - i am an absolute freak and this book was written specifically for me, your mileage may vary -
I love this series !
It is SO weird. It always surprise you with the most strange things. It's very gory and dark and yet hilarious ! Everything is absurd and light and funny. While the plot is harder to grasp, it's characters are absolutely wonderful. I love each and every one of them more than the last. Caiman, Nikaido, Ebisu, Shin, Noi and En are amazing characters 👌 not to forget Johnson 🤣
I'm really looking forward to read past the anime. Will be slowly savouring my way through this 23 books series! -
Q. Hayashida just knows how to draw you into her world and make you feel at home. Despite some of the gory events that take place in The Hole, you still feel like you are alongside these characters on their adventures, and that they will always have your back. I will always come back for more, this is 1,000,000% my favorite manga series!!
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Q. Hayashida upped her game in this volume, with story lines that seemed more weighty than the previous volumes, but still laced with plenty of absurdity and humor. The characters are steadily gaining more depth.
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