Dorohedoro



Dorohedoro is a Seinen series created by Hayashida Q, published in Ikki, a magazine specializing in underground or alternative manga. Described by the creator as being like "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it," it manages a delicate balance of gratuitous amounts of gore, a fondness for displaying the random boobie or two, and a stark-black sense of humour. The series follows the story of Kaiman, a man who's had his head turned into that of a lizard, and lost his memories -- and his adventures as he attempts to regain his memories and his face.

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This manga contains examples of:

 * Action Girl - Most prominently Nikaido.
 * Affably Evil - Devils, when they aren't randomly killing people for fun.
 * Alien Blood - Magic-users can be identified by black particles in their blood.
 * Amnesiac Hero
 * Anti-Magic - A few variations: Kaiman, being hexed  is immune to smoke. Chota's smoke reverses the effects of magic. And Noi can restore a body to its normal state (healing Shin's arm after a Magic User starts to melt it).
 * Asshole Victim - Why most of the Gorn is Played for Laughs.
 * Asskicking Equals Authority - Why En is in charge of the Magic Users world.
 * Avenging the Villain - The main plot gets started when Kaiman kills Fujita's partner Matsumura. Which gets En after him, which gets Shin and Noi after him.
 * Ax Crazy - Shin during work, even if he actually uses an hammer.
 * Badass in a Nice Suit - En's family, being vaguely mafia/yakuza-like, embraces this, although there does seem to be a degree of leniency, as Shin and Noi seem to wear T-shirts or hoodies under their jackets quite a bit.
 * This only applies to the higher-ups. Fujita (when not at social occasions), wears shorts. And most family members wear some sort of garment that vaguely resembles a radiation suit.
 * Badass Abnormal - Kai typically uses his knives in combat, which is bad enough. But, when using stolen power to devastating effect or regrowing his own head, he becomes this.
 * Badass Normal - The Cross-Eyes. In theory, at least. Only Dokuga is consistently able to stand up to the stronger Magic-Users.
 * Barbie Doll Anatomy- Subverted; the series uses an extremely gritty, but comparatively realistic style.
 * Bare Your Midriff - Haru in her human form.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For -.
 * Deconstructed with the wish-granting devil. He prefers granting stupid or selfish requests, so if you want your wish fulfilled you have to make it sound silly or greedy. When trying to get their friends healed, the Cross-Eyes wish for things like money. Natsuki, being Natsuki, decides to wish for Dokuga to be happy... and the Devil makes him laugh, sending his poison spit everywhere.
 * Belated Backstory - The earliest backstory we get is Shin's, and that's in volume 4.
 * Benevolent Boss - En is terrifying, but seems to take good care of his men.
 * Beware the Superman - Magic users experiment on humans, with humans for the most part unable to do anything about it. High class magic users like En also appear like this to weaker Magic Users, like the Cross Eyes.
 * Thirteen freaks out when Nikaido returns to the Hole with a bunch of (friendly) sorcerers.
 * Big Creepy-Crawlies - Jonson.
 * Blob Monster - Natsuki's magic.
 * Body Horror - Kai, what with his multiple heads and all (some of which are rotting).
 * Boisterous Bruiser - Kaiman and Noi. It gets really creepy when they act like this while killing people.
 * Brainwashed - Making a contract to be someone's partner doesn't seem to require the consent of both parties.
 * Break the Cutie - Subverted with Ebisu in the first volumes since the author made it look hilarious.
 * Brought Down to Badass - Shin's smoke doesn't work on Kaiman, but then Kaiman makes the mistake of thinking that Shin is a Squishy Wizard, and gets stomped on.
 * Bullying a Dragon - When a pair of bullies pick on Fujita and Ebisu, knowing full well that they work for En. Now, this would be fine, seeing as Fujita is a weakling... but his friends, Shin and Noi are not.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer - Mushroom-happy En. He lives in an enormous estate filled with statues of himself, sells mushroom items (including some that, when in the trial stage, attach themselves to people and refuse to let go), and decides that testing dream mushrooms on himself and his subordinates is a good idea. With all of these quirks, which are Played for Laughs, it is easy to forget that he basically rules the Magic Users' world.
 * Butt Monkey - Fujita. Upon hearing that he will be sent on a dangerous mission, the other members of En's Family, somewhat surprised that they were not chosen, conclude that he was chosen because he is expendable.
 * The Caligula - Kai. Erratic, homicidal and prone to switching personalities, he takes to sending his men out to collect the heads of as many Magic Users as possible. Which he uses to  for no apparent sane reason.
 * Charles Atlas Superpower - Most of the main cast can slice and dice their opponents quite easily, with their bare hands if need be. They also happen to be fast enough to deal with guns.
 * Clothing Damage - Generous amounts of it, especially for the ladies.
 * Cloudcuckoolander - Ebisu, though it is due to brain damage caused by Kaiman.
 * Cloudcuckooland - The Magic Users' world, full stop. Strange fashions, stranger masks, odd architecture, a restaurant whose main attraction is a toilet connected to Hell...
 * Combat Medic - Noi
 * Crapsack World - Oh boy. You could end up living in a filthy, crime-filled slum and die by way of criminals or Magic Users, who think that turning you into something awful is a really good time. Or you could be a Magic User, living in a similarly bad world with skilled Magic Users running the whole show. And when you die, you go to hell.
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass -  of all people. When using black powder, she turns into a giant lizard.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death - Anyone on the receiving end of Shin's vivisection ability.
 * Curb Stomp Battle - Two notable examples: En to  and Kai to.
 * Dark and Troubled Past - Most people - unsurprisingly - have one of these. A variation with Nikaido, who is troubled because.
 * Darker and Edgier - Once the Cross-Eyes  start killing off Magic Users. Arguably, the trend began about
 * A Day in the Limelight - The Bonus Curse chapters occasionally focuses in secondary characters like Natsuki, Risu and Ebisu.
 * Death Is Cheap - En has a pet family member that can bring Magic users back to life, so long as their Devil Shaped Tumour remains intact. Though this has had surprisingly little use.
 * Disc One Final Boss - From the beginning it looks like that En is the "Big Bad" of the series (which isn't saying much thing considering the Black and Grey Morality in this manga), but after several volumes later it turns out that the actual Big Bad is . But then by the end of Volume 15, it seems like that the real actual Big Bad is.
 * Dissonant Serenity - Nikaido, who looks positively bored while killing people in horrible ways.
 * Becomes positively horrifying when, as Kaiman accosts poor little Ebisu, Nikaido stands there with a massive smile on her face
 * Drop the Hammer - Shin. He can even cut off your head with it.
 * Evil Costume Switch -.
 * Eye Scream - In a flashback sequence, it is shown that Tetsujo had his left eye stabbed by a Magic User wielding a pair of scissors.
 * Also in Volume 1, Nikaido makes the eye of some thug fly away by just kicking him in the face.
 * Nikaido does this to Noi, slashing her eye. But since this is Noi, it doesn't stick.
 * Eyes Always Shut - Natsuki.
 * Face of a Thug - Both played straight and averted. When masked all the cast look like it's out to get you (it probably is actually...), when unmasked they're all pretty cute. En even ventures into cute little boy territory in a flashback.
 * Facial Markings - The Cross-Eyes Gang have -- you guessed it! -- crosses tattooed over their eyes.
 * Fantastic Caste System - Dr. Kasukabe notes that, as far as weak Magic Users are concerned, the Magic Users' World is little different from the Hole.
 * Fantastic Racism - Magic-Users and Devils consider humans to be little more than trash only fit for performing experiments on or eating.
 * Played for Laughs when Kawajiri (Asu) says something along the lines of "Shut up, human" to Thirteen.
 * For the Evulz - Devils mess with people for the heck of it, ranging from throwing crap at them to growing to enormous size and stepping on them. To be fair, this basically appears to be their job description.
 * For Science! - Kasukabe. He even tells Kai that he wants to help him in order to study him (and was )
 * From Nobody to Nightmare - Ai.
 * Gag Boobs - Ebisu orders a pair of these along with an outfit in order to compete with Noi.
 * Genki Girl - Natsuki and Noi.
 * Go-Karting with Bowser - When Fujita ends up playing baseball against Kaiman and crew (and Fujita's zombified partner Matsumura for good measure).
 * Also, Kasukabe and  end up working together or hanging out with each other.
 * Gorn
 * Grey and Grey Morality - You couldn't honestly call anyone in this manga good or bad with a straight face.
 * Depending on how seriously you take the Black Comedy, it verges on Black and Black Morality and Black and Grey Morality.
 * The Grim Reaper - Risu and Aikawa meet one of these in a Bonus Curse story.
 * Healing Factor - Noi, who can regenerate an entire body given only the head.
 * Heroic BSOD -  has one when, led by a small fraction of memory, he goes to an abandonded school building in the Magic Users' world and realizes he was actually.
 * Heroic Sacrifice -  tries to get rid of   by letting Fukuyama turn him into a pie.
 * Hulk Speak - Slightly subverted; Ebisu talks in a childish, stilted manner.
 * Humanoid Abomination - Whenever he appears, everything seems to twist around, Magic Users feel ill, and see the headless/neckless man that   meets in his dreams.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal - Kaiman wants his head back. As in, he wants to look human again.
 * Risu and the others who attend the school for Magic Users. All they really want is to be Magic Users.
 * I'm a Humanitarian - En serves the people he turns into mushrooms in his restaurant.
 * - Shou. This, combined with him being difficult to notice (he was the En family's assassin before Shin and Noi) makes most people forget about him. Except for En.
 * Invisible to Normals - The Gyoza Man.
 * Jekyll and Hyde -.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold - Applies to many characters, but Tanba is possibly the most notable example. Despite beating his employees for incompetence and constantly insulting them, he actually shows concern for them. He is also the one who helps Kaiman after he comes alone to the world of the Magic Users to find about his past.
 * Katanas Are Just Better - Tetsujo. Though it gets averted once he fights really strong characters and his katana doesn't help much.
 * Kill'Em All - When the Cross-Eyes start hunting down Magic Users. Any that fight get slaughtered and have their heads taken. This results in a truly horrendous amount of heads lying around.
 * In a milder example, Kaiman considers doing this when he arrives in the Magic Users' world. Nikaido convinces him not to.
 * Killed Off for Real -
 * Knife Nut - Kaiman, Aikawa, Risu, Kai, Dokuga, Ton...  Kai still takes the grand prize for putting the "nut" in "Knife Nut".
 * Most Cross-Eyes use knives because they're easy to hide and precise enough to.
 * Knight Templar - The Hole once had an anti-magic squad, who brutally killed any Magic user or anyone involved with them.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia - Kaiman, a.k.a..
 * Lethal Joke Item - Magic power actually; Fukuyama can beat opponents instantly by turning them into pies.  En's mushroom power is similar, just substitute mushrooms for pies. He can also propagate them through spores without directly using smoke.
 * Natsuki's magic is large and blobby, but becomes less funny when
 * Lizard Folk - Kaiman.
 * Mask Power - Freaking everyone.
 * Mad Doctor - Kasukabe seems pretty happy about having made his magical door out of human Magic-User skin.
 * Made of Plasticine - Sure, Noi is strong, but it's supposed to be nigh impossible to karate-chop a person in half.
 * Mage Killer - Kaiman (who gets introduced as this in a boxing match) and Dokuga.
 * Mega Manning - Ai. In possibly the most horrifying manner imaginable.
 * A Million Is a Statistic - This and that the victims decided to fight is the reason that the wholesale slaughter unleashed by the Cross-Eyes isn't treated as a Moral Event Horizon.
 * Mook Horror Show - The first few panels look like a couple of innocent people getting massacred by a lizard monster; this scene loses none of its disturbing quality when the two are revealed to be Magic Users. For bonus points, Matsumura's last action was helping Fujita escape...
 * Mugging the Monster - Some thugs decide to mug Nikaido and get killed horribly for it.
 * Muggle Power - The Hole militia, Option 2 (Kill'Em All).
 * The Cross-Eyes, who just want to be Magic Users. To accomplish this, they sell the power-enhancing black powder and work to defeat the reigning En family.
 * Mundane Luxury - After  Dokuga and friends are much more impressed by the stash of food than the gold.
 * Mushroom Samba - En gives himself and his subordinates mushrooms that allow them to have lucid dreams... which promptly turn into nightmares.
 * No Ontological Inertia - Everything a magic user has done decays and stops upon their death.
 * One-Winged Angel -
 * Perpetual Poverty - The Cross-Eyes in Berith. They keep the light off as long as possible to save money and take whatever (crappy) jobs they can get. They almost lose their house until they (accidentally) kill the landlady. Justified in that they need to keep a low profile and cannot take any major jobs.
 * Person of Mass Destruction - En, whose mushroom power covers an entire village with mushrooms during his battle with Kai.
 * Phlebotinum Pills - The black powder, which dramatically enhances the strength of Magic Users.
 * Pint-Sized Powerhouse - Nikaido as a child. She was even able to take down adults in hand to hand combat.
 * Poisonous Person - Dokuga. He takes baths after his companions and eats alone to avoid poisoning them. He does manage to kill an entire party of Magic Users by taking a bite of something and throwing it into the punch bowl.
 * Psycho Supporter
 * Puny Humans - Haru thinks of humans this way.
 * Put on a Bus -
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old - Not quite, but Professor Kasukabe is well over sixty, and looks maybe sixteen.
 * Justified, as he used Magitek to make himself appear younger.
 * Refuge in Audacity - Killings are usually over the top, which makes it hard to take them too seriously. Once things start getting more serious, deaths are less comedic (though the black comedy remains).
 * Reincarnation -
 * Ret-Gone - What happens to  surrogate sister. She also erases her entire past.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized - The Cross Eyes, who started out as the oppressed in Magic User society, stigmatized, tormented and forced to live overall sucky lives because they lacked magic power. Once they gain political power, Kai decides that it is time to begin the slaughter. Mountains of corpses result.
 * Rich Idiot With No Day Job - How most Devils appear, especially Chidaruma and Haru.
 * Samus Is a Girl - You have no idea that Noi is really a girl until she takes off her mask by the first time.
 * Ebisu was kind of more obvious with her extremely skinny body, but unless you're already used to Q Hayashida's style, you don't expect an underage girl under that skull-faced mask.
 * Considering the tone of the manga and ambiguous pen name, you could say the author herself is an example.
 * Scaled Up - This turns out to be  power.
 * Shout-Out - Ebisu has a poster of Jason Vorhees in her room.
 * Spell My Name with an "S" - The Viz releases change Kaiman's name for "Caiman".
 * Split Personality -
 * Squishy Wizard - Mainly averted. Many powerful Magic Users  have Charles Atlas Superpower to go along with their magic. The aversion is justified with Noi, whose magic lets her heal her own injuries.
 * En is an interesting case. Though he never shows any major physical feats, preferring to destroy people with his magic, he does survive getting punched in the face by Nikaido. The same Nikaido who karate chopped a man's head off.
 * Serial Escalation - Just when you thought the Gorn couldn't get any worse, the Cross Eyes begin collecting heads...
 * Stalker with a Crush - Chota is unashamedly gay for En. The feeling is NOT mutual.
 * The Stoic - Dokuga. Justified in that he literally cannot laugh out of fear for killing his friends.
 * Super-Powered Evil Side -.
 * The cross-eyes' boss to.
 * Surreal Horror - It gets particularly blatant in dream sequences, when it gets harder and harder to tell who is speaking to who, or when it was supposed to take place, or what the hell that actually is. The author's art style makes a good part of the main story have this feel to it as well.
 * Sympathetic Murderer - Shin,.
 * Teleporters and Transporters - Kawajiri
 * Time Travel -.
 * Those Two Bad Guys - Shin and Noi, but again Gray and Grey Morality.
 * Token Mini-Moe - Ebisu. Though, her actual age is never mentioned, so she may simply be flat chested.
 * Token Minority - Kasukabe. Possibly Kaiman as well, given that there aren't many lizard-men running around.
 * Tomato in the Mirror -  is actually a homicidally berserk Magic User. And the Big Bad of all things.
 * Took a Level In Badass -, once he accesses his Super-Powered Evil Side.
 * Nikaido, after undergoing the physical training for the Devil Exam.
 * Devils in general (at least those who used to be Magic Users), going straight from Witch Species to Beware the Superman.
 * Trademark Favorite Food - Kaiman loves Nikaido's gyoza.
 * Training From Hell - The Devil Exam, which involves wearing massively heavy armor and carrying around giant bats.
 * True Companions - The En family, Kaiman and Nikaido.
 * Urban Fantasy - A variant in some way. The Magic Users ride on brooms (basically flying, smoke-powered broom-shaped motorcycles) and use cell phones. Plus, the whole setting reminds a cyberpunk-like esque universe.
 * Villain Episode - This manga concentrates just as much on the "villains" as the "heroes".
 * Villains Out Shopping - The En family will often be shown engaging in everyday activities. In the case of Shin and Noi, they will be at some fancy restaurant. En runs his many non-evil businesses, and Ebisu plays with Kikurage. They also actually go shopping.
 * The Cross-Eyes in Berith (Dokuga, Ton, Tetsujou, etc.) live in poverty and try to find whatever jobs they can. For much of the series, their appearances involve keeping the lights out as long as possible, freaking out because they missed recycling, or finding various strange jobs (termite extermination and hot springs workers).
 * The Voiceless - Kirion.
 * Weaksauce Weakness - Rain physically weakens Magic users.
 * White-Haired Pretty Girl - Noi seems to have albino coloring.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? - Oddly enough, Kaiman is terrified of ghosts. The same guy who is alright with zombies. According to him, zombies are only hungry.
 * Witch Species - The Magic Users
 * "With Our Swords" Scene - Fujita gets loaded up with Family magic before . Subverted, in that.
 * Wretched Hive - The Hole. The gritty artwork makes the entire place look dark and dirty. Houses are cobbled together out of who-knows-what or are part of a disheveled urban sprawl. Though good people can be found, having to dodge the crime and the zombies as well as Magic User attacks makes it not so fun to live there.
 * You Gotta Have Purple Hair - Ebisu.
 * Zombie Apocalypse - the Hole gets one regularly, and so the people turn it into a money-making event.
 * Zombie Apocalypse - the Hole gets one regularly, and so the people turn it into a money-making event.