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The beauty of this story is beyond words, and will hit especially hard for those with creative aspirations. There is so much care put into every scene. The friendship between the two protagonists is beautiful and grounded, and full of all of the emotional highs and lows of any deep relationship. If the beauty of friendship brings you to tears, this movie is for you, as you will cry tears of joy and everything else. It's also a sober love letter to the creative process, and includes the ugly, boring, exciting, and magical aspects in ways that few other pieces of media ever showcase.


I won't ... speak much on the story here, the setup is pretty simple: The two protagonists are young artists who aspire toward careers in Manga. However, they have opposite styles and opposite motivations for creating art; one being socially motivated and the other drawing for the pure love of the craft. Their art styles also oppose one another, being character-based and environment-focused respectively. They start out in competition but end up collaborating, and their opposite approaches create beautiful harmony. Their relationship is *much* more complicated than what I've described, but is much more worth watching for yourself if that premise intrigues you.

***minor spoilers ahead***

However, the last 1/4 of the film takes a turn that feels... almost non sequitur at best and like a cheap play for emotion at worst. The protagonists' relationship is plenty emotional as it is, and didn't need the inclusion of trauma to make their arc feel impactful. Without it, I would give the film an 8/10 or higher, but the aforementioned story choice feels so shoehorned, predictable, and... confusing?

Yes, I understand that the story can be read in multiple ways, both literal and metaphorical, but the inclusion of such trauma combined with strange half-magical realism felt out of place. Actually, I usually love magical realism, metaphors, unreliable narrators, and extreme emotion, (among my favorite films are Mindgame, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, etc.), however, something about the execution here completely missed the mark for me. The way it affects the overall message feels unnecessarily convoluted, unfinished, and even predictable, but almost entirely unnecessary. Like I said before, their relationship is plenty emotional as is, and a huge portion of the ending act could have played out differently or flat-out removed while *still* making the same points about connection, regret, creativity, loneliness, and permanence.

I would still recommend it, but it left me personally disappointed. I'm aware that this will not be the case for most viewers.

A collection of short animations adapting Q Hayashida's 'Extra Evil' segments at the end of some books/chapters. Basically just lots of humorous vignettes with some worldbuilding.

Although many people think the animation style is a bit lacking, as a huge fan of the manga I actually prefer it, as it feels a lot truer to the spirit of Dorohedoro. The stiff movement combined with the composite layered cutout animation captures the crusty, comedic heart of the story and style.

Worth the watch if you are a true/diehard fan, but can imagine a lot of passive watchers probably missed it. Would have personally enjoyed if they were ... tacked onto the ends each of a few of the mainline episodes.