Honorable Mention:
It might seem strange to find a wacky Chanbara fantasy epic here, one in which the hero had his body stolen at birth and is now trying to track down the 48 demons responsible, so he can kill them and get his organs back.
And, I should note that it makes no bones about being a fantasy, as we see some wonderfully bizzarre demonic creatures, and get to watch some of the most exaggerated Wu Xia style swordfighting ever filmed.
But what is perhaps the strangest element of all this is that the newborn hero, little more than a torso and an eyeless face, is given a replacement body by a far less “fantastic” method: the wise old healer he considers his father used babies’ body parts, chemicals he mixed himself and, yes, electricity to create a Frankenstein-style living body for the boy.
Which, while clearly science-fictional, is more than a little out of place in a movie where the hero has to fight a moth demon with eyes all over its wings and the villain sells his son’s body to demons.
Dororo is, in fact, based on a Manga series by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, who created an incredible number of legendary series, from Astro Boy to Kimba: The White Lion, to Blackjack, to Metropolis, to The Phoenix. He even wrote a Manga biography of the Buddha.
I suspect that a lot of the crazy fun of this film came from Tezuka, whose wildly imaginative work had no trouble combining moments of unforced humor with even his most serious efforts. And it is a lot of fun, with great fights, great creatures, interesting characters, a few memorable gross-out scenes, a satisfying underlying theme and story arc, and yes, even a killer tree.
Let’s face it: it is a movie well worth its popcorn.
And that is something we can say about far too few films these days.
rivets on the poster 