Comics / Manga

Dorohedoro: Volume 11 manga review

By Leroy Douresseaux
December 19, 2013 - 15:59

Dorohedoro Volume 11 cover image is courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.

Rated “M” for “Mature”

The Hole is a dismal city neighborhood in a world of strange magic.  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.  En wants them dead.

Dorohedoro, Vol. 11 (Chapters 62 to 67) opens with the aftermath of a disaster, and Nakaido is returned to En.  And Fujita returns with a dead Ebisu.  Noi tries to heal Nikaido, whose body is rotting as she fights the spell En placed inside her.  Fujita sees En’s cat, Judas’s Ear, as the way to bring Ebisu back to life.

The Cross-Eyes meet a desperate woman.  Caiman meets Asu/Kawajiri, but denies that he is Caiman.  The shocker is that Caiman’s face is revealed!

THE LOWDOWN:  Here’s some repetition: As my grasp of the cast, setting, and plot of the Dorohedoro manga improve, my estimation of the series grows.  That’s still true.  I love this manga.  I don’t know if my reviews of Dorohedoro will be reliable for here on out, as I have likely become a “homer” for the series.

Dorohedoro Volume 11 convinces me even more that Dorohedoro creator, Q Hayashida, is one of the most imaginative artists working in comic books and manga today.  Her art really does look like the contents of Heavy Metal and Zap Comix thrown into a blender.  The resulting graphics, which I’ve described as a nightmare pesto of crazy black and white comics, is its own unique thing.  Dorohedoro is something that most comic books today are not – visionary and unsafe.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE:  Readers who want the darkest dark fantasy and the weirdest weird horror will find it in the IKKI Comix/VIZ Signature title, Dorohedoro.

 

Rating: A+ /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12