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ドロヘドロ [Dorohedoro] #16
異獸魔都 16
二階堂帶著松鼠穿越時空，終於發現會川與開曼之間的交集點!!然而此時二階堂的身體卻開始產生變化!!另一方面，透過魔法變成透明人的藤田到十字眼幫所在處收集情報，在如此艱困的環境下，他會目睹什麼樣驚人的發展!?藤田能否成為拯救煙老大的英雄!?
218 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2011
41 people are currently reading
370 people want to read
About the author
Q. Hayashida
81 books596 followersQ Hayashida (林田球, Hayashida Kyu) is a manga author from Tokyo.
Hayashida studied oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts. She has discussed her childhood and artistic inspirations in interviews but maintains a high level of privacy about her personal life, to the point that her true name and face are unknown.
Hayashida's first major manga was Maken X Another (1999-2001), a comic book adaptation of a video game.
Her most famous work is the 23-volumes long Dorohedoro (2000-2018). It was originally serialised in the alternative manga magazine 'Monthly Ikki', but it was later moved to 'Hibana' when Ikki ceased publication, and finally transferred to 'Monthly Shōnen Sunday'. Dorohedoro has been partially adapted into an anime on Netflix in 2018.
Hayashida's most recent manga series Dai Dark began serialisation in 2019 in the pages of Monthly Shōnen Sunday.
Hayashida studied oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts. She has discussed her childhood and artistic inspirations in interviews but maintains a high level of privacy about her personal life, to the point that her true name and face are unknown.
Hayashida's first major manga was Maken X Another (1999-2001), a comic book adaptation of a video game.
Her most famous work is the 23-volumes long Dorohedoro (2000-2018). It was originally serialised in the alternative manga magazine 'Monthly Ikki', but it was later moved to 'Hibana' when Ikki ceased publication, and finally transferred to 'Monthly Shōnen Sunday'. Dorohedoro has been partially adapted into an anime on Netflix in 2018.
Hayashida's most recent manga series Dai Dark began serialisation in 2019 in the pages of Monthly Shōnen Sunday.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
July 17, 2025
PT Acho que o meu principal problema com Dorohedoro é o facto de a história, muitas vezes, se arrastar sem grande justificação.
Ainda assim, este volume inclui alguns momentos importantes para a narrativa principal — especialmente a cena em que a Nikaido volta atrás no tempo até ao momento antes de encontrar o corpo do Caiman. É uma revelação significativa que lança nova luz sobre o mistério.
No entanto, o volume também tem capítulos bastante aborrecidos. Dois deles focam-se inteiramente em explicar como certos pratos são confecionados, e há outro totalmente narrado, sem qualquer diálogo, que me pareceu não acrescentar nada à história.
Agora que a relação entre o Caiman, o Aikawa, o Risu e o líder dos Olhos Cruzados foi finalmente esclarecida, parece que a história perdeu o seu principal motor narrativo. Como tal, começa a parecer que segue sem rumo definido.
Se calhar só preciso de fazer uma pausa nesta série.
--
EN I think my main issue with Dorohedoro is how often the story feels dragged out without much justification.
That said, this volume does include a few key moments for the overarching plot — particularly the scene where Nikaido travels back in time to the moment before she discovered Caiman's body. It’s a major reveal that sheds important light on the mystery.
However, the volume also contains some dull chapters. Two of them focus entirely on how certain dishes are prepared, and another is fully narrated, without any dialogue, which felt like it added little (if anything) to the story.
Now that the relationship between Caiman, Aikawa, Risu, and the Cross-Eyes boss has been clarified, it feels like the story has lost its main narrative drive. As a result, it’s starting to feel a bit aimless.
Maybe I just need to take a break from this series.
Ainda assim, este volume inclui alguns momentos importantes para a narrativa principal — especialmente a cena em que a Nikaido volta atrás no tempo até ao momento antes de encontrar o corpo do Caiman. É uma revelação significativa que lança nova luz sobre o mistério.
No entanto, o volume também tem capítulos bastante aborrecidos. Dois deles focam-se inteiramente em explicar como certos pratos são confecionados, e há outro totalmente narrado, sem qualquer diálogo, que me pareceu não acrescentar nada à história.
Agora que a relação entre o Caiman, o Aikawa, o Risu e o líder dos Olhos Cruzados foi finalmente esclarecida, parece que a história perdeu o seu principal motor narrativo. Como tal, começa a parecer que segue sem rumo definido.
Se calhar só preciso de fazer uma pausa nesta série.
--
EN I think my main issue with Dorohedoro is how often the story feels dragged out without much justification.
That said, this volume does include a few key moments for the overarching plot — particularly the scene where Nikaido travels back in time to the moment before she discovered Caiman's body. It’s a major reveal that sheds important light on the mystery.
However, the volume also contains some dull chapters. Two of them focus entirely on how certain dishes are prepared, and another is fully narrated, without any dialogue, which felt like it added little (if anything) to the story.
Now that the relationship between Caiman, Aikawa, Risu, and the Cross-Eyes boss has been clarified, it feels like the story has lost its main narrative drive. As a result, it’s starting to feel a bit aimless.
Maybe I just need to take a break from this series.
February 18, 2021
Working backwards with adding these on here, but holy shit that was pretty violent and sad, even for my standards. I'm not complaining and I'm glad Q knows when to push and when to hold back.
Full review to come
Full review to come
May 1, 2021
When they tell you you can become anything and you choose becoming a devil. Or you don't choose but still do.
March 10, 2023
Solo puedo decir: ¡Noooo!
Voy a desacelerar un poco a partir de aquí, más que nada porque me lo estoy leyendo muy rápido y no quiero acabarlo todavía, pero también porque quiero procesar la muerte que acabo de presenciar.
PD: por poquito me cae mal uno de los personajes, pero al final me volvió a gustar jajaja
Voy a desacelerar un poco a partir de aquí, más que nada porque me lo estoy leyendo muy rápido y no quiero acabarlo todavía, pero también porque quiero procesar la muerte que acabo de presenciar.
PD: por poquito me cae mal uno de los personajes, pero al final me volvió a gustar jajaja
April 20, 2020
This is a loose review of volumes 12 to 16.
I usually wouldn’t bother to write any more reviews of a series if I had failed to write reviews along the way, but I haven’t laxed on this pointless self-imposed task because this series was disappointing me (as in the case of “Gantz” and some others), but because the world is chaotic beyond belief at this point of time, which is screwing with my mental state. For the last week I was working from home instead of going to the office like I had been since this crisis started; I work in a hospital, so I just have to keep working even through national holidays. Cooped up at home I fell into the known routine of playing guitar or listening to music, playing boardgames and videogames, watching YouTube videos or movies, and masturbating. As the days went on I fell into another known routine which isn’t particularly compatible with sustaining an adult lifestyle and keeping a job: I slept too much and at random hours, hoping that the dreams, which are better than my life, would kidnap me for a while from my hopeless existence. This week, however, I’ve been thrown back into a routine at the office. For five days I’m doing afternoons working alone with a guy I can’t stand, while trying to steal some minutes to write these garbage words or read further into the series.
It hadn’t hit fully yet, but this series went through its massive midway inflection point common in most great stories. Huge spoilers from now on. However, if you are reading these words without having read the series, you either don’t care about spoilers or you are a dum dum. You big doodoo head. In any case, before the inflection point unfolded, our main protagonist alligator head dude was trying to save his beloved from the main bad guy, an awesome character with the ability to destroy almost anybody he wished with mushroom related magic. In the process of defending his beloved, alligator head dude gets killed. Shortly after, the boss of the “cross-eyed gang”, made up of lousy, almost unpowered people, ambushed the mushroom guy in his own mansion and slaughtered him. The restaurant woman/time magician, the protagonist’s best friend, had stated before the protagonist got killed that it was the last time she ever spoke to him (in a sort of authorial intrusion). I didn’t believe it, because this is a world in which anyone can get his mutilated limbs back and even get revived if they know the right people, so I figured those main characters were out just for a bit. Apparently not: both seem to be gone forever, except for fragments of them related to how this bizarre story world operates.
We have been putting together the main dramatic mystery piece by piece, and although the series isn’t finished with it, this is the gist of it so far: a kid called Ai, who was born and lived in the Hole, the city where seemingly most humans, if not all of them, live, lost his parents maybe for magic related reasons and ended up working at a hospital where the main doctor dude, one of the prominent characters later on, was studying the corpses of magic users to figure out how they work. He had the theory that if he extracts the little demon inside the brain of all magic users (that they apparently are born with and that they call a tumor) and he transplants it into the brain of a human, he would develop magic powers. Nobody was crazy enough to offer himself as a voluntary sacrifice to test this hypothesis, but Ai ends up critically injured, and he asks the good doctor to test it on his brain. The doctor transplants the little demon of the corpse of a magic user he had around. Ai survives the operation, although he doesn’t seem to have gained powers. Some days later, Ai says that the operation was a success, but before he could prove it, the doctor finds Ai’s corpse in some alley. He abandoned the corpse for some convenient reason.
However, Ai did survive, and he did develop magic powers. Turns out that stuffing a little demon inside someone else’s brain fucks with nature in a chaotic way: those little demons are what generate magicians, so Ai ended up with a whole another person inside of him that intended to be spawned inside his own body. He went through hellish personality changes during which his entire head was pushed out of his body so another one would take its place, and then the original head would end up pushing the head that happened to be functional at that moment. Ai ceased to be himself during those times, and lacked except a general awareness of what the hell was going on. Meanwhile, his alternate persona, whether because he was born as a freak of nature or because the original owner of that little demon was fucked up, decided that he might as well go around murdering magic users, decapitating them and stuffing their little demons inside his own brain. He ended up with a skull filled with a tar-like substance in which loads of little demons floated around; turns out that such a brain-like commanding center isn’t particularly conducive to a stable mental state.
During the periods when Ai was himself, he lived in the world of the magicians as Aikawa, a regular grown dude who attended a school for magicians and who cared about little else than to eat whatever he could get his hands on and also to fight from time to time. He found a good friend in Risu, a brooding fellow who was born with curse-like magic powers. It’s complicated, but in general it means that if someone were to attack him, that person would receive the same damage, and also if Risu was ever killed, that person would be cursed with a malignant entity, with generally bad consequences. Risu wasn’t fond of his magic abilities, but he did trust Aikawa enough to tell him, and only him, of the kind of power he was burdened with. However, the megalomaniac, more-demonic-than-the-actual-demons-flying-around person that lived inside Aikawa also processed that information. At that point he had grown so powerful that he had unwittingly formed a gang of lousy magicians that wanted revenge on that world ruled by powerful magic users. They imitated with tattoos the cross-like birthmarks of sorts over the boss’ eyes. That megalomaniac persona took possession of Aikawa’s body and murdered Risu to steal his powers. However, due to the peculiarity of Risu’s power, that didn’t go down as usual: the curse left Risu’s corpse and pursued his murderer, the boss of the “cross-eyed” gang, who decided to face it in the Hole, the world of non-magic users. There the boss failed to defend himself properly, and ended up decapitated. As the unleashed curse was entering the corpse for reasons (I don’t recall exactly why), the twitching hand of the recently deceased boss crushed the bottled magical essence of Ebisu, a magician with reptile-related powers. That ended up growing an alligator’s head in the corpse and trapping the curse inside. Thus alligator head dude protagonist was born. He lacked any memory of his past, as the head was grown by magic. He was found by restaurant woman/time magician Nikaido, the other protagonist of this tale, and they spent a few years of bliss eating gyoza, murdering people and denying how much they wanted to undress each other and abuse their usually hidden parts (I’m guessing Nikaido was waiting until she wouldn’t have to french kiss an alligator’s head). This is pretty much when the series starts.
In the inflection point of this series, alligator head fella dies and the trapped curse leaves his body to reunite with Risu, who had been revived before and was literally hanging around, having been immobilized by his previous gang pals. However, only the alligator head dude persona died. Aikawa’s corpse, freed from the magic induced situation, returned to its cycle of popping a head belonging to either one of the many, many little demons stuffed into its skull, or back to the original Aikawa. Ai lived for a while as himself, with no memory of the years his body was used by alligator head dude (and apparently there are no calendars in that world to check that indeed he had lost years of his life). He was pestered by Nikaido and her friend, who knew that something was fishy about this whole situation and wanted to make Aikawa remember a life he hadn’t lived. Along the way, his boss persona grew more and more powerful and evil.
Regarding the boss’ actions and the increasingly more nervous gang of people following him, he forcefully enlists them for a genocide against magic users who aren’t himself, in order to become unstoppable. By far the worst death so far involves a greenhorn of the “cross-eyed” gang; she was a cheerful and helpful person who, despite finding out that she’s a moderately powerful magician, was accepted into the main group of “cross-eyed” gang people because she was so nice and useful (and I’m guessing that being attractive also helped). She dreamed of becoming the boss’ woman, or I guess the bride of some other reasonably comparable powerful guy. When the boss sniffs out that this girl is a magician with an interesting power, he destroys her body by instantly stuffing her with huge mushrooms, in one of the grossest things I’ve seen in a while, and then decapitates her. I don’t recall if he actually ended up transplanting her demon tumor into his brain, because a lot of shit was going down at that time, but in any case this girl seems to be dead for good. One of the most brutally cruel and undeserving fictional deaths I’ve experienced during my ongoing rampage through the best mangas.
Maybe it grossed me out so much because it hits something primal in my nature; my first nightmare as a child, which I still remember vividly, involved me looking from my dream eyes how fleshy bulges grew throughout my body. I can close my eyes and picture looking down at a round bulge that covered my entire palm, and about the same diameter of my hand. Maybe it was foreshadowing the acne I would end up dealing with throughout my teenage years, which worsened my likely clinically psychotic state as an undiagnosed autistic person around horrible teenagers. Fun times. And by fun I mean, “please let me die, or to never have been born” times.
Until the inflection point of this series, the mushroom guy and his huge “family” had been the clear antagonists from the protagonists’ point of view, although they were tremendously well drawn and mostly sympathetic characters that are the protagonists of their own tale. However, when the inflection point erased their leader from existence, the family collapsed as well. The guy’s overwhelming power had had a stabilizing effect in the community, to the extent that people who generally didn’t like the guy understood that they needed him. Now their world is spiralling into chaos as the power vacuum gets filled. Most of the family get murdered when the locals invade their walled town. Then the “cross-eyed” gang make it their base of operations. The very few remaining members from the mushroom guy’s family, including our beloved cleaners/mass murderers Shin and Noi, regroup in an underground hideout. However, for complicated reasons that hideout gets flooded and they have to flee to the Hole, the world of non-magic users, and make the local hospital their new hideout. Luckily for them, Shin is friends with the local doctors, or at least one of them, while the other is terrified of being turned into a monstrosity if he annoys any of the magicians.
Killing not only your main protagonist but also the main antagonist is a move beyond boldness on the part of our dear genius Q Hayashida (not saying much at this point, but this woman's creativity is god-tier). I thought the narrative would collapse now that maybe nobody would pose a similarly significant threat to the people we care about, but she filled the hole with the “cross-eyed” gang’s boss, who is just partially sympathetic; given that the world of this story is extraordinarily bizarre, we can only be sympathetic to a few of the multitudes that live in that body, while the main megalomaniac guy remains odious. It’s inevitable at this point, I suppose, but a bit of a shame in a story in which even the very active demons, the highest tier entities in this world, are often sympathetic if only because of how chaotic and entertaining they are.
As two outstanding examples of the demon community we have Chidaruma, apparently the most powerful demon, who seems to laze around all day only to arouse himself to action according to his whims, which often involve playing relatively nasty pranks on people, or just scooping bird shit and throwing it at randos. He seems rather chill otherwise. We are given a poignant moment when he receives in the mail the yearly gift offered by mushroom guy, who had been dead for a while at that point. The demon considered this fella a friend of sorts, if a demon can be friends with a lesser being, and for a moment he doubles over in grief when he realizes that the guy is fully gone. The other notorious demon is the Hole’s doctor’s former wife, a magician who had studied/trained to become a demon and ended up sort of turning into one. It seems that some demons are something like meat vehicles, like the titans from “Attack on Titan”, but otherwise she’s a regular very hot lady hiding inside a demonic form.
Pictured: that demon I was writing about (I just noticed that it has a typo. C’mon, this particular translator!)
A clear case study of the hot/crazy matrix, after she turned into a demon she seems mostly interested in composing terrible music, murdering other demons she dislikes, making lesser beings bow to her, and keeping her human doctor sort of husband around I suppose for more or less forceful and disturbing sex.
Pictured: also her, so, you know, worse things could happen
Speaking of demons, our beloved Nikaido, gyoza woman, is also turning for some reason into a demon of sorts. She grew two horns and a tail and showed other symptoms of ongoing demonic transformation: optimism, sudden bursts of violence, boundless creativity, weirdly specific superpowered talents. In her case, predictably, she becomes the best cook of gyoza in the entire world. The next time I order Japanese food I will get me some of that stuff, but these days oriental restaurants aren’t doing so well where I’m from. In any case, Nikaido makes for the sexiest demon, a fact that her former demon friend and Risu could attest as they stared at her bare bubble butt while she frantically cooked hundreds of gyozas.
Pictured: what I suppose could have happened, but won’t (or will?)
I could write more about these bunch of volumes, I guess, but I don’t wanna.
I usually wouldn’t bother to write any more reviews of a series if I had failed to write reviews along the way, but I haven’t laxed on this pointless self-imposed task because this series was disappointing me (as in the case of “Gantz” and some others), but because the world is chaotic beyond belief at this point of time, which is screwing with my mental state. For the last week I was working from home instead of going to the office like I had been since this crisis started; I work in a hospital, so I just have to keep working even through national holidays. Cooped up at home I fell into the known routine of playing guitar or listening to music, playing boardgames and videogames, watching YouTube videos or movies, and masturbating. As the days went on I fell into another known routine which isn’t particularly compatible with sustaining an adult lifestyle and keeping a job: I slept too much and at random hours, hoping that the dreams, which are better than my life, would kidnap me for a while from my hopeless existence. This week, however, I’ve been thrown back into a routine at the office. For five days I’m doing afternoons working alone with a guy I can’t stand, while trying to steal some minutes to write these garbage words or read further into the series.
It hadn’t hit fully yet, but this series went through its massive midway inflection point common in most great stories. Huge spoilers from now on. However, if you are reading these words without having read the series, you either don’t care about spoilers or you are a dum dum. You big doodoo head. In any case, before the inflection point unfolded, our main protagonist alligator head dude was trying to save his beloved from the main bad guy, an awesome character with the ability to destroy almost anybody he wished with mushroom related magic. In the process of defending his beloved, alligator head dude gets killed. Shortly after, the boss of the “cross-eyed gang”, made up of lousy, almost unpowered people, ambushed the mushroom guy in his own mansion and slaughtered him. The restaurant woman/time magician, the protagonist’s best friend, had stated before the protagonist got killed that it was the last time she ever spoke to him (in a sort of authorial intrusion). I didn’t believe it, because this is a world in which anyone can get his mutilated limbs back and even get revived if they know the right people, so I figured those main characters were out just for a bit. Apparently not: both seem to be gone forever, except for fragments of them related to how this bizarre story world operates.
We have been putting together the main dramatic mystery piece by piece, and although the series isn’t finished with it, this is the gist of it so far: a kid called Ai, who was born and lived in the Hole, the city where seemingly most humans, if not all of them, live, lost his parents maybe for magic related reasons and ended up working at a hospital where the main doctor dude, one of the prominent characters later on, was studying the corpses of magic users to figure out how they work. He had the theory that if he extracts the little demon inside the brain of all magic users (that they apparently are born with and that they call a tumor) and he transplants it into the brain of a human, he would develop magic powers. Nobody was crazy enough to offer himself as a voluntary sacrifice to test this hypothesis, but Ai ends up critically injured, and he asks the good doctor to test it on his brain. The doctor transplants the little demon of the corpse of a magic user he had around. Ai survives the operation, although he doesn’t seem to have gained powers. Some days later, Ai says that the operation was a success, but before he could prove it, the doctor finds Ai’s corpse in some alley. He abandoned the corpse for some convenient reason.
However, Ai did survive, and he did develop magic powers. Turns out that stuffing a little demon inside someone else’s brain fucks with nature in a chaotic way: those little demons are what generate magicians, so Ai ended up with a whole another person inside of him that intended to be spawned inside his own body. He went through hellish personality changes during which his entire head was pushed out of his body so another one would take its place, and then the original head would end up pushing the head that happened to be functional at that moment. Ai ceased to be himself during those times, and lacked except a general awareness of what the hell was going on. Meanwhile, his alternate persona, whether because he was born as a freak of nature or because the original owner of that little demon was fucked up, decided that he might as well go around murdering magic users, decapitating them and stuffing their little demons inside his own brain. He ended up with a skull filled with a tar-like substance in which loads of little demons floated around; turns out that such a brain-like commanding center isn’t particularly conducive to a stable mental state.
During the periods when Ai was himself, he lived in the world of the magicians as Aikawa, a regular grown dude who attended a school for magicians and who cared about little else than to eat whatever he could get his hands on and also to fight from time to time. He found a good friend in Risu, a brooding fellow who was born with curse-like magic powers. It’s complicated, but in general it means that if someone were to attack him, that person would receive the same damage, and also if Risu was ever killed, that person would be cursed with a malignant entity, with generally bad consequences. Risu wasn’t fond of his magic abilities, but he did trust Aikawa enough to tell him, and only him, of the kind of power he was burdened with. However, the megalomaniac, more-demonic-than-the-actual-demons-flying-around person that lived inside Aikawa also processed that information. At that point he had grown so powerful that he had unwittingly formed a gang of lousy magicians that wanted revenge on that world ruled by powerful magic users. They imitated with tattoos the cross-like birthmarks of sorts over the boss’ eyes. That megalomaniac persona took possession of Aikawa’s body and murdered Risu to steal his powers. However, due to the peculiarity of Risu’s power, that didn’t go down as usual: the curse left Risu’s corpse and pursued his murderer, the boss of the “cross-eyed” gang, who decided to face it in the Hole, the world of non-magic users. There the boss failed to defend himself properly, and ended up decapitated. As the unleashed curse was entering the corpse for reasons (I don’t recall exactly why), the twitching hand of the recently deceased boss crushed the bottled magical essence of Ebisu, a magician with reptile-related powers. That ended up growing an alligator’s head in the corpse and trapping the curse inside. Thus alligator head dude protagonist was born. He lacked any memory of his past, as the head was grown by magic. He was found by restaurant woman/time magician Nikaido, the other protagonist of this tale, and they spent a few years of bliss eating gyoza, murdering people and denying how much they wanted to undress each other and abuse their usually hidden parts (I’m guessing Nikaido was waiting until she wouldn’t have to french kiss an alligator’s head). This is pretty much when the series starts.
In the inflection point of this series, alligator head fella dies and the trapped curse leaves his body to reunite with Risu, who had been revived before and was literally hanging around, having been immobilized by his previous gang pals. However, only the alligator head dude persona died. Aikawa’s corpse, freed from the magic induced situation, returned to its cycle of popping a head belonging to either one of the many, many little demons stuffed into its skull, or back to the original Aikawa. Ai lived for a while as himself, with no memory of the years his body was used by alligator head dude (and apparently there are no calendars in that world to check that indeed he had lost years of his life). He was pestered by Nikaido and her friend, who knew that something was fishy about this whole situation and wanted to make Aikawa remember a life he hadn’t lived. Along the way, his boss persona grew more and more powerful and evil.
Regarding the boss’ actions and the increasingly more nervous gang of people following him, he forcefully enlists them for a genocide against magic users who aren’t himself, in order to become unstoppable. By far the worst death so far involves a greenhorn of the “cross-eyed” gang; she was a cheerful and helpful person who, despite finding out that she’s a moderately powerful magician, was accepted into the main group of “cross-eyed” gang people because she was so nice and useful (and I’m guessing that being attractive also helped). She dreamed of becoming the boss’ woman, or I guess the bride of some other reasonably comparable powerful guy. When the boss sniffs out that this girl is a magician with an interesting power, he destroys her body by instantly stuffing her with huge mushrooms, in one of the grossest things I’ve seen in a while, and then decapitates her. I don’t recall if he actually ended up transplanting her demon tumor into his brain, because a lot of shit was going down at that time, but in any case this girl seems to be dead for good. One of the most brutally cruel and undeserving fictional deaths I’ve experienced during my ongoing rampage through the best mangas.
Maybe it grossed me out so much because it hits something primal in my nature; my first nightmare as a child, which I still remember vividly, involved me looking from my dream eyes how fleshy bulges grew throughout my body. I can close my eyes and picture looking down at a round bulge that covered my entire palm, and about the same diameter of my hand. Maybe it was foreshadowing the acne I would end up dealing with throughout my teenage years, which worsened my likely clinically psychotic state as an undiagnosed autistic person around horrible teenagers. Fun times. And by fun I mean, “please let me die, or to never have been born” times.
Until the inflection point of this series, the mushroom guy and his huge “family” had been the clear antagonists from the protagonists’ point of view, although they were tremendously well drawn and mostly sympathetic characters that are the protagonists of their own tale. However, when the inflection point erased their leader from existence, the family collapsed as well. The guy’s overwhelming power had had a stabilizing effect in the community, to the extent that people who generally didn’t like the guy understood that they needed him. Now their world is spiralling into chaos as the power vacuum gets filled. Most of the family get murdered when the locals invade their walled town. Then the “cross-eyed” gang make it their base of operations. The very few remaining members from the mushroom guy’s family, including our beloved cleaners/mass murderers Shin and Noi, regroup in an underground hideout. However, for complicated reasons that hideout gets flooded and they have to flee to the Hole, the world of non-magic users, and make the local hospital their new hideout. Luckily for them, Shin is friends with the local doctors, or at least one of them, while the other is terrified of being turned into a monstrosity if he annoys any of the magicians.
Killing not only your main protagonist but also the main antagonist is a move beyond boldness on the part of our dear genius Q Hayashida (not saying much at this point, but this woman's creativity is god-tier). I thought the narrative would collapse now that maybe nobody would pose a similarly significant threat to the people we care about, but she filled the hole with the “cross-eyed” gang’s boss, who is just partially sympathetic; given that the world of this story is extraordinarily bizarre, we can only be sympathetic to a few of the multitudes that live in that body, while the main megalomaniac guy remains odious. It’s inevitable at this point, I suppose, but a bit of a shame in a story in which even the very active demons, the highest tier entities in this world, are often sympathetic if only because of how chaotic and entertaining they are.
As two outstanding examples of the demon community we have Chidaruma, apparently the most powerful demon, who seems to laze around all day only to arouse himself to action according to his whims, which often involve playing relatively nasty pranks on people, or just scooping bird shit and throwing it at randos. He seems rather chill otherwise. We are given a poignant moment when he receives in the mail the yearly gift offered by mushroom guy, who had been dead for a while at that point. The demon considered this fella a friend of sorts, if a demon can be friends with a lesser being, and for a moment he doubles over in grief when he realizes that the guy is fully gone. The other notorious demon is the Hole’s doctor’s former wife, a magician who had studied/trained to become a demon and ended up sort of turning into one. It seems that some demons are something like meat vehicles, like the titans from “Attack on Titan”, but otherwise she’s a regular very hot lady hiding inside a demonic form.
Pictured: that demon I was writing about (I just noticed that it has a typo. C’mon, this particular translator!)
A clear case study of the hot/crazy matrix, after she turned into a demon she seems mostly interested in composing terrible music, murdering other demons she dislikes, making lesser beings bow to her, and keeping her human doctor sort of husband around I suppose for more or less forceful and disturbing sex.
Pictured: also her, so, you know, worse things could happen
Speaking of demons, our beloved Nikaido, gyoza woman, is also turning for some reason into a demon of sorts. She grew two horns and a tail and showed other symptoms of ongoing demonic transformation: optimism, sudden bursts of violence, boundless creativity, weirdly specific superpowered talents. In her case, predictably, she becomes the best cook of gyoza in the entire world. The next time I order Japanese food I will get me some of that stuff, but these days oriental restaurants aren’t doing so well where I’m from. In any case, Nikaido makes for the sexiest demon, a fact that her former demon friend and Risu could attest as they stared at her bare bubble butt while she frantically cooked hundreds of gyozas.
Pictured: what I suppose could have happened, but won’t (or will?)
I could write more about these bunch of volumes, I guess, but I don’t wanna.
May 22, 2023
Otro volumen impresionante por su mezcla de horror, gore y ternura. Después de varios tomos llenos de caos, por un fin uno que brinda respuestas sobre el pasado de Caimán.
March 29, 2022
Tenía mucho sueño mientras lo leía así que probablemente no estoy siendo justa con él. Sea por lo que sea este tomo no me ha gustado tanto como los anteriores
March 10, 2015
Official caught up on Dorohedoro. Now for the long, long wait as new chapters are released from Japan piece meal. You would think that a series this long (began in 1999) would have run out of tricks. Not Dorohedoro! 10/10 would recommend to anyone craving something different.
Seriously tho
I don't know what to do with my life now...
What did I do with myself before?
Chaos...
But that is ~Dorohedoro~!
Seriously tho
I don't know what to do with my life now...
What did I do with myself before?
Chaos...
But that is ~Dorohedoro~!
May 29, 2023
Esse aqui simplesmente foi bom d+, impossível parar de ler no meio, então cá estou finalizando esse volume às 00:35 (sendo que trabalho amanhã)
Finalmente tivemos algumas das esperadíssimas explicações sobre as origens do Caiman e é muito bom ver a historia tomando forma e se conectando melhor. Ainda assim, muitos mistérios ainda perduram e a curiosidade, portanto, também.
Gostando bastante do desenvolvimento dos personagens e fiquei até emocionado numa certa parte desse.
Um tanto preocupado com a Nikaido e Risu também.
Adoraria já emendar no próximo volume, mas deu a hora de mimir. Infelizmente não tenho os gyozas da Nikaido pra dormir de buchinho cheio.
Finalmente tivemos algumas das esperadíssimas explicações sobre as origens do Caiman e é muito bom ver a historia tomando forma e se conectando melhor. Ainda assim, muitos mistérios ainda perduram e a curiosidade, portanto, também.
Gostando bastante do desenvolvimento dos personagens e fiquei até emocionado numa certa parte desse.
Um tanto preocupado com a Nikaido e Risu também.
Adoraria já emendar no próximo volume, mas deu a hora de mimir. Infelizmente não tenho os gyozas da Nikaido pra dormir de buchinho cheio.
November 17, 2024
I felt the absence of the MC in this volume, but our side characters got some nice moments. Fujita got to play the hero, Haru and Haze the star crossed lovers (ack, my heart!).
The mechanics of invisible eating was very entertaining, and Shin’s unique methods for questioning Dokuga was perfectly on-brand for Hayashida.
The mechanics of invisible eating was very entertaining, and Shin’s unique methods for questioning Dokuga was perfectly on-brand for Hayashida.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 28, 2022
It continues to be extremely gory and makes you really care about all of the characters, with not being a clear-cut line between the good guys and the bad guys.
Nikaido's magic is changing her, there's more explanation regarding Kaiman and Curse, and there's ore focus on the underdog Fujita.
Nikaido's magic is changing her, there's more explanation regarding Kaiman and Curse, and there's ore focus on the underdog Fujita.
February 28, 2021
Un tomo en el que descubrimos muchas cosas, siempre con ese toque de humor/terror de la autora y un final que no ves venir.
April 4, 2025
Nikaido tho
May 19, 2025
Fujita really shone in this one.
The manic gyoza making had me cackling.
The manic gyoza making had me cackling.
June 22, 2025
3.5 stars
January 8, 2024
Nesse volume a história não avança muito.
September 23, 2021
( I am currently re-reading the series, my review will be edited later! I enjoyed all of the volumes though! :D)
All of my Dorohedoro reviews are actually a summary of what I've read & some thoughts!
I have the memory of a goldfish.
[RE-READ] SEPTEMBER 2021
TW: Strong language, blood & gore, graphic violence, body horror, substance (drugs : black powder), guns, transfiguration & nudity
Rating: 5 stars
Summarising with bullet points from now onwards so I can get through my re-reads faster
Spell 94: Cross Replay
- Almost a year has passed since the previous living dead day and the central department store's annual sale commences
- Nikaido brings Risu to where Caiman body was found in the alley. Risu recognises the place despite never visiting Hole
- Nikaido's magic can only bring two people to the past so Kawajiri remain behind
- We see the man that kidnapped Nikaido from the hospital approaching the alley with Johnson. He mentioned that he saw Caiman's transformation before he was killed back in volume 4. He also mentions seeing Nikaido at the alley before Caiman 'died'
- A sorcerer portal door suddenly showed up causing him to freak out and hide
- We see Dokuga and Aikawa (with cross-eyes marks) coming out of the door. This angers Risu. The boss seems to be 'hiding' from someone in the realm and has resorted to Hole. He gave Dokuga his knife for safekeeping saying that 'knives don't work on him. His power is taking everything.'
- We see Dokuga giving the boss a bag of black powder and asks him to run before someone finds him. When Dokuga left, we see a mysterious looking figure escaping from the door's keyhole before the portal vanishes (It's Curse for sure!)
Spell 95 : Conceptual Quarrel
- We see past Nikaido on the day she met Caiman. She is seen wandering through the shops alone
- Meanwhile, Curse is trying to provoke the boss. He mentions to him that "He can't hide. I only exist for the sake of killing you". Aikawa runs away from 'it'
- Nikaido stops Risu from doing anything as it could erase them out of existence
- Risu mentions that curse killed a lot of people in the realm. Curse memories are his memories. Aikawa is afraid of it so he came to Hole
- Curse calls Aikawa a fake. Curse kills everyone that kills Risu. Apparently, Aikawa is a Frankenstein monster built from the sorcerer's flesh by humans. Curse ate Aikawa's head and the rest of his things
- Before Curse was able to finish transforming back into smoke, we see a vial of Ebisu's magic in Aikawa's grasp. When the magic spewed out, it blocks Risu's magic. Once it mixes with other magic, the spells stop working. Risu's magic got frozen and as a result, he got stuck inside Aikawa
- We see younger Nikaido finding the body and putting it inside a body bag. Meanwhile, due to rage, Risu morphs into something but is calmed by Nikaido
- The man and Johnson witnesses the fight and he attempts to steal from the corpse. He sees the present Nikaido and runs
- When past Nikaido left, we see the corpse moving inside of the body bag and when she arrived with the cleaning group, the body is seen walking towards them
- Past Nikaido opens the body bag to reveal Aikawa with the reptile head (Caiman)
- Risu suddenly knows who he is
Spell 96 : Free Hospital
- Back in the present, we see Nikaido sharing the new developments with Kawajiri. Kawajiri deduces that the curse will keep affecting Risu until he kills Aikawa
- Nikaido doesn't want Risu to kill Aikawa because he is Caiman and intends to stop him if he does
- The grocery man comes by the Hungry Bug to sell some ingredients. Kawajiri paid with a gold coin minted by Chidaruma. They're inscribed with symbols of the different realms that chidaruma rules. There are three kinds: 1) hell 2) sorcerers 3) the hole
- Nikaido has bouts of hot flashes while preparing gyoza and checks on Risu
- Risu is upstairs still outraged by what he saw in the past. Nikaido stops him from going anywhere. The two fights. Risu was hit with a radish by Kawajiri (hahahaha)! Kawajiri isn't scared of Risu's threat (Kawajiri is small but badass)
- Before the two men got to fight, we see Nikaido turning into a devil
- En's family have resorted to the central hospital disturbing Dr Vaux's peace and quiet (unlike Prof Kasukabe, Dr Vaux still haven't fully warmed towards sorcerers). Sho puts Shin to lead them
-Dad Shin asks Dr Vaux for clothes for his wife and kid (Jk)
- A mysterious portal door appeared at the Hospital. They assumed that the cross-eyes are coming. Haru is seen carrying Prof Kasukabe and Johnson. She seems surprised to see them at Hole. Haru gave the sorcerers their clothes and masks using her devil powers
Spell 97 : Fujita's excellent adventure
- We finally see what Fujita was up to the entire course of him being invisible. Only Sho is able to see him (hahaha can he really?). He went to En's mansion first using the invisible broom. He gained confidence after experimenting with making funny faces in front of a cross-eyes member. He looks for the boss. En's mansion became a total mess after the cross-eyes took over
- Something that surprised me: Fujita hoping Nikaido is alright upon seeing a framed photo of her in her old room. Remember how bitter he was (when she became En's partner) because she was responsible for Matsumura's death? Fujita's character development is chef's kiss. He is still revengeful towards Caiman, which is understandable
- He starts hanging out with the cross-eyes members to get more information. He snuck into one of the trucks in hopes to find the boss. He met with the cross-eyes inner circle. Dokuga's sixth sense creeps him out. Indeed, Fujita was the one who smashed the vase at Tanba's. He had been witnessing everything (from Aikawa's magic reversal to The boss's transformation). He starts missing the whole family but he is adamant to continue until En is resurrected (En, you better treat this poor boy better once you're successfully resurrected)
Spell 98 : Morphing
- Sho advises Ebisu to avoid bringing Judas's Ear outside because he's an important member of the family. (Sho is shorter than Ebisu!!! Hahaha so cute!) They stumbled across dead humans that have been murdered with a gun. Their clothes were stolen and it doesn't seem like the murders are random. While Sho is deep in thought, we see Ebisu laughing uncontrollably.
- We see the monks spraying salt again throughout Hole (Living dead day is approaching) and Nikaido personality drastically changed upon becoming 100% devil (I love this version of her!! She's cuckoo but 10x stronger ). She cooks Gyoza at a much faster pace & this impresses Kawajiri
- Kawajiri mentions to Risu that she's showing early signs of being devil ( Spontaneous violence, speaking her mind, speed far beyond normal sorcerers, positivity & creativity )
- She even made a new suit to wear within seconds!!! and of course, both Risu and Kawajiri enjoys her Gyoza (I want to eat it too!)
- The cross-eyes gang are seen wandering the hole to get food for their boss. Unfortunately, the shops are closed during the department store annual sale
- Dokuga and the boss are still waiting under the bridge for their return. Dokuga senses someone (Fujita) again and blames it on his tiredness. The monks approached them out of the blue.
- The 'monks' injures Dokuga. They turn out to be the member of the cross-eyes (the one that saw them escaped through the portal door)
Spell 99 : Playing with parts
- En's family has taken over the central hospital at Hole. Dr Vaux is impressed with the cleanliness once the sorcerers took over. Dr Vaux read about murdered monks in the newspaper. They turn out to be the corpses Sho saw with Ebisu early on. Zeus and King found Dokuga badly injured and took him to the hospital. They notice that he has cross-eyes marks so they deduce that he's a sorcerer
- The rest of the cross-eyes inner circle came back to the river to find Dokuga and their boss gone
- They notice the polluted river is not quite like water. It's similar to what the boss has been emitting all this time ( sludge)
- They follow a trail of black powder and started talking about bringing Natsuki back (it's sad that Dokuga kept secrets from them)
- Back at the Central Hospital, Haru warns Prof Kasukabe to stay away from Ai. She won't help him for the second time. She mentions having an important task and can't be concerned with watching him. She turned Prof back into a kid because it will be hard to leave him if she didn't (ASDFGHJKL)
- Dokuga is healed by Noi but his body is dismembered (by Shin's magic) to avoid him from escaping. Shin and his family start interrogating Dokuga. Dokuga being a smartass finally understand how they were able to escape the mansion (via Sho's magic). He mentions being watched and deduced it was one of En's family spies (right-o!). The family is thrilled to learn that Fujita is alive. Sho mentions to Dokuga that Fujita is not the only sorcerer that is after him. The boss has made a lot of enemies so it is possible that other parties want the cross-eyes dead
- Upon mentioning the boss, Dokuga freaked out and asked what they've done to him. The family now learns that the boss is also at Hole
- A glimpse of hope for En's revival is shown to the readers (he will rise again. I'm sure of it
Spell 100 : Half-clear
-We see 'Risu's curse' when it was still inside of 'Caiman', the person who killed him. As he wanders deeper into the mouth, he sees multiple coffins with dead bodies inside ( I assume they're the same corpses in sludge from before)
- Risu woke up from the nightmare. It could actually be the curse's memory. While they were asleep, Nikaido made dozens of gyoza bento boxes (Kawajiri got fat and went into a food coma hahaha so cute)
- Nikaido doesn't remember growing a tail and cooking all those gyoza. Risu still wants to kill Aikawa. I feel like Kawajiri is the only person who can outsmart/ calm an angry Risu hahaha
- Devils are a creature of passion and since Nikaido made a lot of gyoza, Kawajiri told her that maybe she wants to run her restaurant again. She mentions that she does but with Caiman (asdfghjkl). They head out to the central department store to sell the bento boxes
- Fujita followed the 'monk's who killed Dokuga and kidnapped the boss. He was shocked to find out that they're actually a member of the cross-eyes. Before some of them got to consume the black powder thinking that they've hit the jackpot, they're all murdered by Yasaka ( the person who saw the inner circle leaving with the boss back at En's mansion ). It seems that he wants the monster (black powder making machine) all to himself. It's crazy how he was willing to kill his friends just for black powder. Fujita broke his promise to Sho (about keeping lowkey) and consumed some of the black powder to kill the cross-eyes and take back En's devil tumour! (YES GO FUJITA! I BELIEVE IN YOU!)
Spell 101 : Colourless Hero
- Fujita killed Yasaka with his magic. His body is now full of smoke. The powder is too strong that it blew off his arm. Due to the fact, he can't use his arm to cast magic smoke. He starts to bleed and tries to stop it. Yasaka is not dead and starts shooting his gun everywhere (Fujita is still invisible). Fujita got hit by one of the bullets and lies on a pool of his own blood. We see Yasaka cutting the head of the 'boss' to steal his brain (after he saw his oozing out, wtf how will this help you, Yasaka?). We see several devil's tumours on his hand
- Fujita blasted black smoke and it blew his arm completely. Yasaka was killed. Fujita slowly dies out alongside the boss (I still believe in you, my friend!)
Such a fun volume with a lot of reveals! I think I need to ponder on it first before continuing with the next! :')
The bonus chapter is so cute! Not Kawajiri casually entering the bathtub in hopes to scrub Nikaido's back (Also how rich is he? I know his house is now in ruins, thanks to Nikaido but wow! It had many rooms and levels!). His wet hair is so adorable (everything about him is adorbs!). It seems that he is trying to reclaim himself as a sorcerer. He mentions to Nikaido that he still thinks like a devil (He has a cutout of the Cross of Saint Peter/ upside-down cross on his back! AAA I'm sure it hurts). Apparently, the reason why he has been sharing wisdom is to remember who he was before he became a devil. He decided to advise Risu. He keeps annoying Risu with honest talk. If you've ever been a devil, your tastes remain devil (no wonder he still likes to live in luxury!). Apparently, Risu was annoyed because Aikawa used to say the same things to him (poor baby!). The two buried the hatchet over food.
All of my Dorohedoro reviews are actually a summary of what I've read & some thoughts!
I have the memory of a goldfish.
[RE-READ] SEPTEMBER 2021
TW: Strong language, blood & gore, graphic violence, body horror, substance (drugs : black powder), guns, transfiguration & nudity
Rating: 5 stars
Summarising with bullet points from now onwards so I can get through my re-reads faster
Spell 94: Cross Replay
- Almost a year has passed since the previous living dead day and the central department store's annual sale commences
- Nikaido brings Risu to where Caiman body was found in the alley. Risu recognises the place despite never visiting Hole
- Nikaido's magic can only bring two people to the past so Kawajiri remain behind
- We see the man that kidnapped Nikaido from the hospital approaching the alley with Johnson. He mentioned that he saw Caiman's transformation before he was killed back in volume 4. He also mentions seeing Nikaido at the alley before Caiman 'died'
- A sorcerer portal door suddenly showed up causing him to freak out and hide
- We see Dokuga and Aikawa (with cross-eyes marks) coming out of the door. This angers Risu. The boss seems to be 'hiding' from someone in the realm and has resorted to Hole. He gave Dokuga his knife for safekeeping saying that 'knives don't work on him. His power is taking everything.'
- We see Dokuga giving the boss a bag of black powder and asks him to run before someone finds him. When Dokuga left, we see a mysterious looking figure escaping from the door's keyhole before the portal vanishes (It's Curse for sure!)
Spell 95 : Conceptual Quarrel
- We see past Nikaido on the day she met Caiman. She is seen wandering through the shops alone
- Meanwhile, Curse is trying to provoke the boss. He mentions to him that "He can't hide. I only exist for the sake of killing you". Aikawa runs away from 'it'
- Nikaido stops Risu from doing anything as it could erase them out of existence
- Risu mentions that curse killed a lot of people in the realm. Curse memories are his memories. Aikawa is afraid of it so he came to Hole
- Curse calls Aikawa a fake. Curse kills everyone that kills Risu. Apparently, Aikawa is a Frankenstein monster built from the sorcerer's flesh by humans. Curse ate Aikawa's head and the rest of his things
- Before Curse was able to finish transforming back into smoke, we see a vial of Ebisu's magic in Aikawa's grasp. When the magic spewed out, it blocks Risu's magic. Once it mixes with other magic, the spells stop working. Risu's magic got frozen and as a result, he got stuck inside Aikawa
- We see younger Nikaido finding the body and putting it inside a body bag. Meanwhile, due to rage, Risu morphs into something but is calmed by Nikaido
- The man and Johnson witnesses the fight and he attempts to steal from the corpse. He sees the present Nikaido and runs
- When past Nikaido left, we see the corpse moving inside of the body bag and when she arrived with the cleaning group, the body is seen walking towards them
- Past Nikaido opens the body bag to reveal Aikawa with the reptile head (Caiman)
- Risu suddenly knows who he is
Spell 96 : Free Hospital
- Back in the present, we see Nikaido sharing the new developments with Kawajiri. Kawajiri deduces that the curse will keep affecting Risu until he kills Aikawa
- Nikaido doesn't want Risu to kill Aikawa because he is Caiman and intends to stop him if he does
- The grocery man comes by the Hungry Bug to sell some ingredients. Kawajiri paid with a gold coin minted by Chidaruma. They're inscribed with symbols of the different realms that chidaruma rules. There are three kinds: 1) hell 2) sorcerers 3) the hole
- Nikaido has bouts of hot flashes while preparing gyoza and checks on Risu
- Risu is upstairs still outraged by what he saw in the past. Nikaido stops him from going anywhere. The two fights. Risu was hit with a radish by Kawajiri (hahahaha)! Kawajiri isn't scared of Risu's threat (Kawajiri is small but badass)
- Before the two men got to fight, we see Nikaido turning into a devil
- En's family have resorted to the central hospital disturbing Dr Vaux's peace and quiet (unlike Prof Kasukabe, Dr Vaux still haven't fully warmed towards sorcerers). Sho puts Shin to lead them
-Dad Shin asks Dr Vaux for clothes for his wife and kid (Jk)
- A mysterious portal door appeared at the Hospital. They assumed that the cross-eyes are coming. Haru is seen carrying Prof Kasukabe and Johnson. She seems surprised to see them at Hole. Haru gave the sorcerers their clothes and masks using her devil powers
Spell 97 : Fujita's excellent adventure
- We finally see what Fujita was up to the entire course of him being invisible. Only Sho is able to see him (hahaha can he really?). He went to En's mansion first using the invisible broom. He gained confidence after experimenting with making funny faces in front of a cross-eyes member. He looks for the boss. En's mansion became a total mess after the cross-eyes took over
- Something that surprised me: Fujita hoping Nikaido is alright upon seeing a framed photo of her in her old room. Remember how bitter he was (when she became En's partner) because she was responsible for Matsumura's death? Fujita's character development is chef's kiss. He is still revengeful towards Caiman, which is understandable
- He starts hanging out with the cross-eyes members to get more information. He snuck into one of the trucks in hopes to find the boss. He met with the cross-eyes inner circle. Dokuga's sixth sense creeps him out. Indeed, Fujita was the one who smashed the vase at Tanba's. He had been witnessing everything (from Aikawa's magic reversal to The boss's transformation). He starts missing the whole family but he is adamant to continue until En is resurrected (En, you better treat this poor boy better once you're successfully resurrected)
Spell 98 : Morphing
- Sho advises Ebisu to avoid bringing Judas's Ear outside because he's an important member of the family. (Sho is shorter than Ebisu!!! Hahaha so cute!) They stumbled across dead humans that have been murdered with a gun. Their clothes were stolen and it doesn't seem like the murders are random. While Sho is deep in thought, we see Ebisu laughing uncontrollably.
- We see the monks spraying salt again throughout Hole (Living dead day is approaching) and Nikaido personality drastically changed upon becoming 100% devil (I love this version of her!! She's cuckoo but 10x stronger ). She cooks Gyoza at a much faster pace & this impresses Kawajiri
- Kawajiri mentions to Risu that she's showing early signs of being devil ( Spontaneous violence, speaking her mind, speed far beyond normal sorcerers, positivity & creativity )
- She even made a new suit to wear within seconds!!! and of course, both Risu and Kawajiri enjoys her Gyoza (I want to eat it too!)
- The cross-eyes gang are seen wandering the hole to get food for their boss. Unfortunately, the shops are closed during the department store annual sale
- Dokuga and the boss are still waiting under the bridge for their return. Dokuga senses someone (Fujita) again and blames it on his tiredness. The monks approached them out of the blue.
- The 'monks' injures Dokuga. They turn out to be the member of the cross-eyes (the one that saw them escaped through the portal door)
Spell 99 : Playing with parts
- En's family has taken over the central hospital at Hole. Dr Vaux is impressed with the cleanliness once the sorcerers took over. Dr Vaux read about murdered monks in the newspaper. They turn out to be the corpses Sho saw with Ebisu early on. Zeus and King found Dokuga badly injured and took him to the hospital. They notice that he has cross-eyes marks so they deduce that he's a sorcerer
- The rest of the cross-eyes inner circle came back to the river to find Dokuga and their boss gone
- They notice the polluted river is not quite like water. It's similar to what the boss has been emitting all this time ( sludge)
- They follow a trail of black powder and started talking about bringing Natsuki back (it's sad that Dokuga kept secrets from them)
- Back at the Central Hospital, Haru warns Prof Kasukabe to stay away from Ai. She won't help him for the second time. She mentions having an important task and can't be concerned with watching him. She turned Prof back into a kid because it will be hard to leave him if she didn't (ASDFGHJKL)
- Dokuga is healed by Noi but his body is dismembered (by Shin's magic) to avoid him from escaping. Shin and his family start interrogating Dokuga. Dokuga being a smartass finally understand how they were able to escape the mansion (via Sho's magic). He mentions being watched and deduced it was one of En's family spies (right-o!). The family is thrilled to learn that Fujita is alive. Sho mentions to Dokuga that Fujita is not the only sorcerer that is after him. The boss has made a lot of enemies so it is possible that other parties want the cross-eyes dead
- Upon mentioning the boss, Dokuga freaked out and asked what they've done to him. The family now learns that the boss is also at Hole
- A glimpse of hope for En's revival is shown to the readers (he will rise again. I'm sure of it
Spell 100 : Half-clear
-We see 'Risu's curse' when it was still inside of 'Caiman', the person who killed him. As he wanders deeper into the mouth, he sees multiple coffins with dead bodies inside ( I assume they're the same corpses in sludge from before)
- Risu woke up from the nightmare. It could actually be the curse's memory. While they were asleep, Nikaido made dozens of gyoza bento boxes (Kawajiri got fat and went into a food coma hahaha so cute)
- Nikaido doesn't remember growing a tail and cooking all those gyoza. Risu still wants to kill Aikawa. I feel like Kawajiri is the only person who can outsmart/ calm an angry Risu hahaha
- Devils are a creature of passion and since Nikaido made a lot of gyoza, Kawajiri told her that maybe she wants to run her restaurant again. She mentions that she does but with Caiman (asdfghjkl). They head out to the central department store to sell the bento boxes
- Fujita followed the 'monk's who killed Dokuga and kidnapped the boss. He was shocked to find out that they're actually a member of the cross-eyes. Before some of them got to consume the black powder thinking that they've hit the jackpot, they're all murdered by Yasaka ( the person who saw the inner circle leaving with the boss back at En's mansion ). It seems that he wants the monster (black powder making machine) all to himself. It's crazy how he was willing to kill his friends just for black powder. Fujita broke his promise to Sho (about keeping lowkey) and consumed some of the black powder to kill the cross-eyes and take back En's devil tumour! (YES GO FUJITA! I BELIEVE IN YOU!)
Spell 101 : Colourless Hero
- Fujita killed Yasaka with his magic. His body is now full of smoke. The powder is too strong that it blew off his arm. Due to the fact, he can't use his arm to cast magic smoke. He starts to bleed and tries to stop it. Yasaka is not dead and starts shooting his gun everywhere (Fujita is still invisible). Fujita got hit by one of the bullets and lies on a pool of his own blood. We see Yasaka cutting the head of the 'boss' to steal his brain (after he saw his oozing out, wtf how will this help you, Yasaka?). We see several devil's tumours on his hand
- Fujita blasted black smoke and it blew his arm completely. Yasaka was killed. Fujita slowly dies out alongside the boss (I still believe in you, my friend!)
Such a fun volume with a lot of reveals! I think I need to ponder on it first before continuing with the next! :')
The bonus chapter is so cute! Not Kawajiri casually entering the bathtub in hopes to scrub Nikaido's back (Also how rich is he? I know his house is now in ruins, thanks to Nikaido but wow! It had many rooms and levels!). His wet hair is so adorable (everything about him is adorbs!). It seems that he is trying to reclaim himself as a sorcerer. He mentions to Nikaido that he still thinks like a devil (He has a cutout of the Cross of Saint Peter/ upside-down cross on his back! AAA I'm sure it hurts). Apparently, the reason why he has been sharing wisdom is to remember who he was before he became a devil. He decided to advise Risu. He keeps annoying Risu with honest talk. If you've ever been a devil, your tastes remain devil (no wonder he still likes to live in luxury!). Apparently, Risu was annoyed because Aikawa used to say the same things to him (poor baby!). The two buried the hatchet over food.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 5, 2022
Volume 16 of Dorohedoro shows us what happens in The Hole. En's family, the Cross-Eyes, Nikaido, Asu and Risu- the gang's all there, even Professor Kasukabe shows up. Nikaido and Risu go back in time to watch the events that led Nikaido to discover the headless body that became Caiman; Haru alludes to some sort of mysterious task she is supposed to perform; and a bunch of crazy crap happens around the thing that the boss of the Cross-Eyes has become, Fujita and that disillusioned Cross-Eye who wears the helmet. It was great.
In this volume, the plot points and sequences of events made sense. The various storylines that Hayashida has been exploring progress that little bit more and we learn just enough of Nikaido and Risu's incidentally shared past to pique out interest. Added to the mix are is Haru's task and the appearance of a giant department store in the middle of The Hole. Volume 16 has the right combination of bloody violence, humour and intrigue that makes Dorohedoro so entertaining.
In this volume, the plot points and sequences of events made sense. The various storylines that Hayashida has been exploring progress that little bit more and we learn just enough of Nikaido and Risu's incidentally shared past to pique out interest. Added to the mix are is Haru's task and the appearance of a giant department store in the middle of The Hole. Volume 16 has the right combination of bloody violence, humour and intrigue that makes Dorohedoro so entertaining.
February 18, 2022
Probably said this before but it needs to be said again, i have never read a series that has made me care so deeply for every character before be it "good" or "bad" although i dont think its correct to be using those categories in the first place
May 28, 2022
I miss the lizardhead.
August 26, 2025
mm mm. devil Nikaido.
December 24, 2025
In a world of strange magic, The Hole is a dismal city neighborhood. It is home both to “Magic Users” (Sorcerers) and to people who lack the ability to wield magic. The Sorcerers abduct people to use in their awful black arts experiments. Nikaido is a young woman who hunts and kills sorcerers. Her partner is Caiman, a mutant who has a reptile head and a bad case of amnesia. He chomps down on the heads of sorcerers, hoping to discover the one that transformed him. However, this couple has drawn the attention of En, the head Sorcerer and main crime boss. who wants them dead.
As Dorohedoro, Vol. 16 (Chapters 94 to 101) opens, Nikaido and Riso travel back in time to see how Caiman/Aikawa lost his head. Nikaido is shocked to learn that Aikawa was connected to the gang known as the Cross-Eyes. Then, Nikaido undergoes a startling transformation.
Back in the present, Fujito has an excellent adventure spying on the Cross-Eyes, who now occupy En's mansion. His method of camouflage causes him no end of trouble, however. Meanwhile, the remnants of En's family try to revive the sorcerer.
Dorohedoro Volume 16 is more of the same – creator Q Hayashida delivering violent and gruesome graphics that are also quite beautiful. I also find some of Hayashida's writing to be quite perversely funny. It seems that my grasp of the cast, setting, and plot has improved to the point that the series has somehow found a permanent place in my imagination.
Dorohedoro still looks like someone put the contents of Heavy Metal and Zap Comix together into a blender and created a nightmare pesto of crazy black and white comics. This unique, dark visual feast deserves a place in all manga readers' imaginations.
Readers who want the darkest dark fantasy and the weirdest weird horror will find it in Dorohedoro.
As Dorohedoro, Vol. 16 (Chapters 94 to 101) opens, Nikaido and Riso travel back in time to see how Caiman/Aikawa lost his head. Nikaido is shocked to learn that Aikawa was connected to the gang known as the Cross-Eyes. Then, Nikaido undergoes a startling transformation.
Back in the present, Fujito has an excellent adventure spying on the Cross-Eyes, who now occupy En's mansion. His method of camouflage causes him no end of trouble, however. Meanwhile, the remnants of En's family try to revive the sorcerer.
Dorohedoro Volume 16 is more of the same – creator Q Hayashida delivering violent and gruesome graphics that are also quite beautiful. I also find some of Hayashida's writing to be quite perversely funny. It seems that my grasp of the cast, setting, and plot has improved to the point that the series has somehow found a permanent place in my imagination.
Dorohedoro still looks like someone put the contents of Heavy Metal and Zap Comix together into a blender and created a nightmare pesto of crazy black and white comics. This unique, dark visual feast deserves a place in all manga readers' imaginations.
Readers who want the darkest dark fantasy and the weirdest weird horror will find it in Dorohedoro.
January 20, 2018
This book remains a lot of fun, despite, or maybe because of some odd departures. I'm not sure what Q Hayashida is trying to do with Nikaido, for example. The violence and gore is stepped up a notch in this volume, which I like, especially considering that's where the author's best artwork happens. She is wildly imaginative and just keeps coming up with more weird shit to throw on the pages, and of course there is the continued theme of food intertwined with the rest of the story.
April 5, 2020
This was a more chill volume, of course wild things happened its drhdr, but the stakes weren't that high, for now. I love the Nikaido scenes and Fujita had a moment to shine. It's funny to see all of them in the hole.
I am still a bit confused about the boss/ai/kaiman thing but we are getting there/
I am still a bit confused about the boss/ai/kaiman thing but we are getting there/
July 4, 2022
The covers of these sometimes are real spoilers. This one had a LOT OF ANSWERS, but somehow, it still left me feeling like they could have given me something more. I don't know what, but I didn't get what I wanted from the answers I got in this volume. The story is still gripping me and I'm in love with all the characters. Fujita really steps up in this one.
January 30, 2023
Por fin tenemos respuestas sobre lo acontecido el día en que Caimán fue hechizado. La obra continúa sorprendiéndome con el exquisito dibujo y la intrincada trama, que no parece guardar misterios de forma deliberada o agresiva, sino sutil. La intriga está muy bien manejada, pero creo que lo mejor de esta serie son los personajes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2021
Que se te desparramen los sesos es jodido.
Este tomo de Dorohedoro es importante. Se desvelan más misterios de los que te brindan y eso me pone triste, porque sólo puede significar que el final se acerca, que se acerca el número 21.
Echo de menos a Caimán, más que a Shin. Es extraño.
Este tomo de Dorohedoro es importante. Se desvelan más misterios de los que te brindan y eso me pone triste, porque sólo puede significar que el final se acerca, que se acerca el número 21.
Echo de menos a Caimán, más que a Shin. Es extraño.
April 23, 2022
Welp, Nikaido's turning into a devil! We finally get to see how she met Caiman and how he came to get that Lizard head of his that I miss so much. I'm very much obsessed with this cover.
May 23, 2022
too much filler a few plot holes and this arc is getting a little redundant…anyway tht man has been dead for the past 4 ish volumes and at first it was funny but im not laughing anymore 😐 can he wake up already i kinda miss him
June 4, 2023
Waah finally understanding some whys and whats.
So if I got it correctly: Aikawa went to the hole, The curse followed him and splattered his brain on the ceiling. Went into him but Ebisu's magic interfered
So if I got it correctly: Aikawa went to the hole, The curse followed him and splattered his brain on the ceiling. Went into him but Ebisu's magic interfered
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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