Anime with great historical value isn't something that tends to get released here in North America on any sort of basis, at least in the sense that it's historical nature is completely established by the time it is picked up; normally, a title becomes historical after it's already been brought over (i.e. titles like
Evangelion,
Cowboy Bebop,
Sailor Moon, etc.). Even more rare to ever see released over here is black & white/B&W anime, which is pretty obvious to see why. Most anime fans are young & interested in the here & now, with older fans only being so interested in titles from the 60s, which is when B&W anime was still being produced. That's what makes the subject of this review so interesting & important, though... This is a B&W anime being released in the year 2016 because enough people were interested in it, & it's historical significance is absolutely through the roof. In fact, it's so important in the history of anime that it being adapted from a manga by Osamu Tezuka seems kind of blasé.
Dororo originally debuted in the pages of Weekly Shonen Sunday back in mid-1967, but it only lasted a year before Tezuka had to cancel it, though that certainly didn't stop it from winner an Eisner Award in 2009 once Vertical published it in North America. Anyway, Tezuka's original anime studio, Mushi Productions, was interested in adapting the manga to anime in 1969, after making a pilot film in 1968 that caught the interest of Fuji TV. As the story goes, though, Fuji was leery about Mushi's use of blood, which resulted in Mushi having to produce the TV anime in B&W; Fuji also mandated the inclusion of a puppy to follow the leads. By 1969, though, anime was well into the age of color, which meant that the
Dororo anime wound up becoming the last anime to ever be completely produced in B&W. While anime since it has used B&W in varying ways for artistic purposes, this was the last one made without color because of the very time it was made in.
Also, half-way into the show's airing, the anime changed names slightly, going from
Dororo to
Dororo & Hyakkimaru, due to how the latter was technically the main character. Come episode 20 would be a new sponsor, Calpis Co. Ltd. (which makes the
soft drink of the same name), with the idea being that Calpis would sponsor each & every anime that would air in the time slot that
Dororo ran in for the time being; after
Dororo finished the slot changed to airing anime based on classic children's literature. Ten years after the creation of
Calpis Manga Theater, though, Calpis would stop sponsoring, though the slot itself would stay the same; House Foods would later be the sponsor at times. In short,
Dororo was the very first entry in the venerated
World Masterpiece Theater franchise, which produced anime like
Heidi, Girl of the Alps,
Anne of Green Gables,
3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, &
A Dog of Flanders, many of which became international classics of anime. It's also the first entry in the anime staple to not be based on a piece of classic literature, with only 1994's
Tico of the Seven Seas doing the same by being an original story. Only an anime based on an Osamu Tezuka manga could be both the end of one era & the start of another, & yet there's still more historical significance to
Dororo.
That last bit is housed within the staff list for this anime, but we'll get to that when appropriate. For the moment, let's finally get the show itself, which finally saw a DVD release by Discotek Media earlier this year.
