The Sum of All Parts

I just saw the movie Dororo based on the manga comics of the same name. The movie is an epic, odd and moving mishmash of Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Edward Scissorhands, the Karate Kid, and the story of Moses, if all those stories had taken place in feudal Japan during the age of Samurais.

At the heart of Dororo is an incredibly silly and wondrously irresistible premise: the warlord Kagemitsu Daigo has made a pact with demons - in exchange for giving him the wherewithal to rule the world, he will allow the demons to take 48 body parts from his unborn son (the demons need the human body parts so they can deceive and wreck havoc and mayhem).

Daigo knows his deal has been sealed when his son is born without arms, legs, mouth, nose, eyes, ears, liver, heart and forty other undisclosed body parts. Daigo wants to kill his newborn son who, sans heart and other vital organs, still lives and breathes (or a facimile thereof since he doesn't have a mouth or lungs). Daigo's wife intervenes, places the baby in a woven basket and sets it adrift on the river.

The baby is found by Jukai, an alchemist-healer who proceeds to turn our hero into a real boy via miraculous prosthetic limbs and organs. The deaf, dumb, blind kid (who will wield a mean set of demon-slaying swords/hands) is also given a clockwork heart that allows him to see and hear (How does he see? With his heart!).

When Jukai dies, Hyakkimaru sets out in the world to kill demons and retrieve his stolen body parts. Every time he discovers and dispatches a demon, his prosthetic parts are replaced by real parts.

Hyakkimaru is joined on his quest by the feral girl-thief, Dororo, who is masquerading as a boy. Dororo's father is killed by Daigo's dark army and she has vowed to stay a boy until she has avenged her dead parents.

Satoshi Tsumabuki as Hyakkimaru and Ko Shibasaki as Dororo, an alleged couple in real life, are fetching and compelling as the stars of this movie. Filmed in New Zealand by director Akihiko Shiota (with the beautifully acrobatic sword fights choreographed by Hong Kong master Siu-Tung Ching), Dororo rises above its hokey and unconvincing demons, a mishmash of bad special effects and worse CGI, to wring actual emotion out its outlandish premise. Improbably, it makes you care and long for parts two and three, the promised sequels.

~rave!