manga: Dororo
Dororo is an Osamu Tezuka manga from the 60s, and the basis for the 2007 movie that is near and dear to the hearts of several people reading this right now.
The general plot is that a samurai makes a bargain with 48 demons that id they'll give him power, he'll let each of them have a body part belonging to his firstborn child. When the child is born, he has the baby (miraculously alive despite the missing body parts) sent down the river in a basket. The baby is found by a monk who happens to also be a mad scientist. The monk names the baby Hyakkimaru and builds him prosthetic body parts. As an adult, Hyakkimaru sets off on a quest to kill the demons and make his body complete. Somewhere along the way, he acquires a cocky pre-adolescent thief named Dororo, who also has an angsty secret past, and they proceed to spend about 750 pages squabbling and pretending that they really really don't secretly have squishy platonic feelings for each other.
It...is very very 60s, and the layouts sometimes confused me, having more in common with the page layouts for american comics than those for manga, both modern and what little older manga I've read. (By "older," I'm referring to 60s-70s series, almost all ones licensed by Vertical, like this one.) Despite the concept, it's considerably tame and far less madcap than than Princess Knight, the only other Tezuka manga I've read in its entirety (I also read some of Unico, but sadly couldn't really get into it) which made it easier to read in larger chunks. It's fun and its influence of later series is very obvious and interesting to see, but it's also very very dated in many ways.
However! I know that most of those reading this who have heard of Dororo mostly want to know about one thing, so I'll get on that.
In the movie (Which I haven't seen in a few years, so my recollections may be a bit off. Feel free to correct me id they are.) Dororo is an adult, and biologically female. Dororo, IIRC, is well aware of this, but was told as a child by hir mother to live as a man to protect hirself. The manga, I had been told for years, suddenly springs "biologically female" on us at the very end, but I don't think that's actually the case. Granted, I read the series well aware of Dororo's biological sex, but early in the series Dororo is injured and Hyakkimaru has to tend to hir wounds. After that, Hyakkimaru makes a couple comments about Dororo being a cute kid, and starts pestering hir to bathe, and never refers to Dororo as a boy (or a girl, for that matter, just as "kid" or "Dororo"). Towards the end, though, Hyakkimaru says he didn't realize Dororo was biologically female until later on. In flashbacks, Dororo's parents also never use gendered terms to refer to hir, and about 3/4 through the series, a bandit who has abducted Dororo forces hir to strip (for 100% non-pedophilic reasons, I hasten to assure, though of course its still very very icky because it's an adult forcing a kid he abducted to undress) and is basically "OMG I would have done that differntly had I know why did your parents raise you as a boy?" (To which Dororo, who is unaware of hir biological gender, replies "What're you on about? I AM A REAL BOY!")
So, pretty much, I actually don't think Tezuka was specifically writing Dororo to be read as male, but dropped hints both ways before eventually confirming it and let readers draw their conclusions up to that point. I also suspect Tezuka intended to delve more into gender performance and identification (in his way which is...rather unusual and somewhat faily, based on Princess Knight) but he seemed to lose interest in the series towards the end. The last few chapters are pretty much a half-hearted attempt to wrap a lot of things up but still leave a lot of the story unresolved.
The series was previously released in individual volumes, but is now available in one ginormous omnibus from Vertical.
The general plot is that a samurai makes a bargain with 48 demons that id they'll give him power, he'll let each of them have a body part belonging to his firstborn child. When the child is born, he has the baby (miraculously alive despite the missing body parts) sent down the river in a basket. The baby is found by a monk who happens to also be a mad scientist. The monk names the baby Hyakkimaru and builds him prosthetic body parts. As an adult, Hyakkimaru sets off on a quest to kill the demons and make his body complete. Somewhere along the way, he acquires a cocky pre-adolescent thief named Dororo, who also has an angsty secret past, and they proceed to spend about 750 pages squabbling and pretending that they really really don't secretly have squishy platonic feelings for each other.
It...is very very 60s, and the layouts sometimes confused me, having more in common with the page layouts for american comics than those for manga, both modern and what little older manga I've read. (By "older," I'm referring to 60s-70s series, almost all ones licensed by Vertical, like this one.) Despite the concept, it's considerably tame and far less madcap than than Princess Knight, the only other Tezuka manga I've read in its entirety (I also read some of Unico, but sadly couldn't really get into it) which made it easier to read in larger chunks. It's fun and its influence of later series is very obvious and interesting to see, but it's also very very dated in many ways.
However! I know that most of those reading this who have heard of Dororo mostly want to know about one thing, so I'll get on that.
In the movie (Which I haven't seen in a few years, so my recollections may be a bit off. Feel free to correct me id they are.) Dororo is an adult, and biologically female. Dororo, IIRC, is well aware of this, but was told as a child by hir mother to live as a man to protect hirself. The manga, I had been told for years, suddenly springs "biologically female" on us at the very end, but I don't think that's actually the case. Granted, I read the series well aware of Dororo's biological sex, but early in the series Dororo is injured and Hyakkimaru has to tend to hir wounds. After that, Hyakkimaru makes a couple comments about Dororo being a cute kid, and starts pestering hir to bathe, and never refers to Dororo as a boy (or a girl, for that matter, just as "kid" or "Dororo"). Towards the end, though, Hyakkimaru says he didn't realize Dororo was biologically female until later on. In flashbacks, Dororo's parents also never use gendered terms to refer to hir, and about 3/4 through the series, a bandit who has abducted Dororo forces hir to strip (for 100% non-pedophilic reasons, I hasten to assure, though of course its still very very icky because it's an adult forcing a kid he abducted to undress) and is basically "OMG I would have done that differntly had I know why did your parents raise you as a boy?" (To which Dororo, who is unaware of hir biological gender, replies "What're you on about? I AM A REAL BOY!")
So, pretty much, I actually don't think Tezuka was specifically writing Dororo to be read as male, but dropped hints both ways before eventually confirming it and let readers draw their conclusions up to that point. I also suspect Tezuka intended to delve more into gender performance and identification (in his way which is...rather unusual and somewhat faily, based on Princess Knight) but he seemed to lose interest in the series towards the end. The last few chapters are pretty much a half-hearted attempt to wrap a lot of things up but still leave a lot of the story unresolved.
The series was previously released in individual volumes, but is now available in one ginormous omnibus from Vertical.