By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

This is one of the SigIkki titles that doesn’t seem to get as much chatter. Children of the Sea has the beautiful landscapes, Afterschool Charisma, has the celebrity clones, Kingyo Used Books has the manga meta-love, and I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow has the indie-comic lovable loser thing going for it. Really, Dorohedoro probably compares best to Bokurano: Ours, as they both depict what appear to be soul-crushing dystopias.

However, Dorohedoro has a healthy dose of humor, and some really likeable anti-heroes, so it didn’t really crush my soul at all. World-building manga, where you spend the first few volumes finding out about the city/state our heroes work in, is difficult to carry off, and you have to create interesting lead characters or else it will simply read like a travelogue. Hayashida does that here.

Not that the two leads are particularly likeable. There’s no real good guys and bad guys in this story yet. We root for Caiman and Nikaido because, well, we met them first, and they seem to be the viewpoint characters. But the ‘villains’ we’re introduced to later, Shin and Noi, seem equally likeable in a different way (I loved the reveal on Noi, which was done quite well.) In a crapsack world where everyone’s a killer, you take what you can get.

Like many of the series I’ve seen from Ikki, Dorohedoro seems to pride itself on striking and grotesque images – the manga opens with a man’s face between the jaws of a giant lizard creature – and I enjoyed Hayashida’s art, which conveyed a sketchy, indie feeling without being difficult to understand. I can’t help but be reminded of the similar Dogs: Bullets & Carnage, which has similar stylings (and plots). The action is quick and violent, and the girls are cute even as they’re catching brains in baseball caps.

I didn’t think this would be my thing at all – the gore can be a bit much, frankly, and the words ‘sorcery’ almost always put me to sleep – but it ended up being a quick, riveting read. I want to see Caiman and Nikaido face off against Shin and Noi, and wonder who I’ll root for. I’d like to see more of the weird skull-mask soreceror girl. And who wouldn’t want to see more of Fujita getting humiliated? I’ll definitely be getting the next volume.