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

I’ll be honest, it can be pretty easy when you’re reading Dorohedoro to simply forget about the plot and characters and just let yourself be led along. Not that the plot and characters aren’t terrific – they are, even if 3 volumes a year means that ti can be hard to recall who is what much of the time. No, it’s just that Dorohedoro is possibly the most sensory manga being released over here now that Children of the Sea (also an Ikki title, you’ll note) has finished. Chapter 63 in particular would be hilarious or terrifying if it weren’t just so fascinating, watching these partial corpses go about their day inside the fractal dreams of Caiman and Nikaido – well, perhaps Caiman. We’re *really* not sure about him anymore.

See, that’s Caiman on the cover – only it isn’t. He has a regular head, and is calling himself Aikawa. In fact, the similarities to Ai from flashbacks are unmistakable. And he seems to have some memories from before – he certainly wants to avoid Nikaido, and after she forcibly makes him show his face, promptly runs off again. As for whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy, let’s remember that this is Dorohedoro. There are no good guys here. I assume he will continue to be a major plot point.

As for other heroes, they’re not having the best volume either. Nikaido is back in En’s clutches, but seems determined to not help even if it means her death – her memory of her childhood past is still holding her back. It looks as if En is going to force the issue… but then comes the end of the volume. Remember last time when I said it showed off how overpowered En was? Well, he’s just run into Curse, and may be firmly dead now. Yikes. Fujita fares slightly better, managing to restore Ebisu to something resembling life… sadly, she has a lucky hairpin stuck in her brain, and so her mind is somewhat broken. Of course, that’s not really a big change from before.

In a series where no one is quite what they seem, and identities change from day to day (oh look, there’s Risu – whoops), that may be why I keep getting drawn back to the art. It seems more sinister and horror-movie than usual this time around, and even the gratuitous fanservice comes in the middle of a big action sequence. The artist recently revealed that she’s trying to end the series with Volume 20 (one volume more than planned by her publisher), so we’ve just passed the halfway mark. As such, if everything is accelerating downward, it should be no surprise.

There’s not even a lot of humor here, beyond the dark as pitch kind. As I said, the images of all the head and torsoless bodies wandering around the city, doing their daily business is sort of creepy-amusing in a Shintaro Kago sort of way. And there’s the thought process of Judas’ Ear, one of the few characters, along with Natsuki of the Cross-Eyed gang, who can still be described as innocent. (You could throw Fujita in there as well, but I find it hard to do so in a volume he spends trying to resurrect his dead crush.)

In short, reading Dorohedoro remains a head trip, and you have little choice but to let it drag you along. Even if it’s headed to hell, as is becoming increasingly apparent.

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

It’s worth noting, in case people have somehow forgotten it amongst all the gyoza and goofiness, that this series is incredibly terrifying at times. Everyone’s pasts are brutal and horrific, and it’s made almost all of them into morally ambiguous killers. The corpses that litter Dorohedoro are almost uncountable. And one of our good guys has a flashback in this volume showing that he collected these corpses and experimented on them. Meanwhile, Ebisu is learning the hard way that you can’t go home again.

Actually, the Ebisu plotline was probably my favorite part of this volume, if only for the 80 shades of wrong it contained. For one, the entire plotline with her parents is just nightmarish. Their daughter disappears, they are distraught, broken… so they pay a sorcerer to bring her back. And he… is a man with a paint tube mask, something that sounds much funnier than it is given that’s also how he recreates Ebisu. Only it isn’t Ebisu, to the point where her own parents fled their home. And now Ebisu returns to find herself under attack by her own doppelganger. Of all the disturbing art and violence that we get in this volume (yes, even the final scene), Ebisu having her head slashed open is the one that will stick with me. Just… urgh.

Meanwhile, we continue to get flashbacks to the guy that I think is Caiman’s past. His name is Ai, and he’s a sullen teen, all right. He also goes and gets himself killed fairly fast, or so we think. As it turns out, when Shin and Noi dig up the grave, there is a distinct lack of Ai there. It has to be said that Dorohedoro is a very dense manga, and its hints, when they arrive, are not necessarily very revealing. Caiman’s past in particular is difficult as we’re given the fakeout of his being connected to Risu, which turned out to be not quite true (but also yes, it is totally true).

And finally, En wakes up again, and boy is he pissed off. It’s worth noting just how overpowered En is in comparison to everyone else in this manga. He arrives and just completely owns everyone, even Caiman, who is immune to magic… which really doesn’t help when mushrooms are erupting from all of your internal organs. Now En has Nikaido again, and Caiman appears to be dead. He’s appeared to be dead before, but this time he has his own head (maybe) back, and the lizard head is a thing of the past. Maybe.

Leaving aside the batter-fried shrimp sorcerer at the end of the book, this was a fun, if a bit confusing, volume of Dorohedoro. Yes, explanations are thin on the ground, but the story never suffers from the lack of them. I suspect that the story is going to switch back to the cross-eyed gang for a bit given that cliffhanger (and we also get a really sweet/disturbing scene of the cross-eyes reminiscing about their completely insane leader, who I think is also Ai? Caiman? Whatever…). Wherever the story goes, though, I’m right there with it.

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

This bright pink volume of Dorohedoro feels very much like the calm before the storm, or the sort of thing that ends with the tag ‘End of Part One’. There’s not as much pulse-pounding action here, and the revelations are still mostly hinted rather than stated outright. But we’ve almost got Caiman’s past, and we’re starting to learn Nikaido’s, and it’s going to turn out SO BADLY for both of them, isn’t it?

I especially feel as if I may have seem the last of Caiman, at least as Caiman, and that’s a shame, as he’s such a big, lovable doof. With a lizard head. But he’s always wanted to retrieve his memories, and is now starting to see the downside to all of that. Unfortunately, it’s not really something he can stop doing, either. Hayashida, by the way, does a terrific job of showing just how agonizing Caiman’s ongoing headaches are – including giving us an x-ray of his brain to drive it home!

Meanwhile, Shin and Noi are also hot on the trail of the cross-eyes’ boss, despite him possibly being dead. This leads us to the funniest moment of the series, where we meet the boss’ grandfather, and react to his appearance. Even in the most horrible moments, Dorohedoro still finds a way to be completely ridiculous, and it’s a big reason why I love it as much as I do. If this series didn’t have a high level of comedy and weirdness, it would simply be too bleak to function.

Meanwhile, I can’t really feel bad for Chota – who brought it all on himself, and makes things even worse towards the end. What we do get via his character, however, is the start of Nikaido’s backstory, as she began to keep a diary while at En’s so that she didn’t lose herself. (I’ll be honest, at first I thought the diary would be a giant fakeout, but the flashbacks do seem to make it genuine.) Little Nikaido is absolutely adorable, and you know her backstory is going to be amazingly wretched, so I’m just enjoying the tiny kid messing around with time magic while I can.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the omake chapter at the end. Shin and Noi are my favorite characters in the series, and I also tend to ship them. So far, though, any in-series romance has been just tease. It’s clear that Noi has a crush on Shin, but his feelings for her have been more ambiguous. Now we get a flashback to Shin from ten years ago, forced to attend a masquerade ball by En where he has to dance or get poked by devils with a pitchfork. (This sounds like most of the junior high dances I attended, only everyone usually chose the pitchfork over dancing with girls.) Shin looks adorably cute here, and his dance partner even more so. I love seeing side stories like this.

All in all, another solid volume of Dorohedoro. I see in addition to Scott Pilgrim’s creator giving a blurb, the man behind King City is also praising the series. Viz should be happy. It may not generate Naruto sales, but Dorohedoro has become one of their prestige series, and needs more love. And gyoza. It always needs more gyoza.