Dororo Episode 19

Dororo Episode 19

The story of the Amanojaku

Of all the Dororo episodes so far, this is the one which felt most like your traditional filler episode. Nothing regarding the main story was accomplished, and it was oddly comedic. That’s not to say other episodes haven’t had some comedy, but this one seemed to have a more slapstick feel to it.

Even so, I still found myself enjoying the episode overall. It wasn’t important, or even exciting, but it was still fun to watch mainly due to two of the newly introduced characters. These are Okowa and her father, the blacksmith (I don’t remember his name).

I’ll get to Okowa and her father in a bit, but first let’s take a look at the general setup of the episode.

Over the years of fighting both ghouls and other humans, Hyakkimaru’s swords have become too badly damaged to use. Specifically, in his last fight with Tahoumaru, one of his swords was snapped in half. Due to this, he’s in need of a blacksmith, and there have been rumors of one who’s a master at his craft.

The only problem is that when Hyakkimaru and Dororo arrive at the village where this blacksmith resides, they only hear negative things about him from the other villagers. In fact, they went so far as to call his daughter, Okowa, ugly.

But, as we learn when Okowa answers the door, she actually isn’t ugly, and the townspeople were all lying when they said that her father wasn’t a very good blacksmith. It seems that they always lie for some reason, and Okowa has simply become used to it.

Okowa

So let’s talk a bit about Okowa because I think she’s my favorite girl of the series so far; sorry Mio. Yeah, Mio was good, but she didn’t really have any competition until now. And now that we have someone else to compare her to, it’s clear that Mio can’t match up to Okowa.

Okowa is a pretty cute girl. I mean, she has a ponytail, so there isn’t really much more you could ask for. Aside from the ponytail, her hair and general facial expressions actually reminded me a lot of Ruri “Kuroneko” Gokou from Oreimo.

Okowa from the anime series Dororo
Okowa

But just looking cute isn’t really enough to justify Okowa being the best girl over Mio. She needs to at least have a few good personality traits to go along with it. And, in case you were wondering, she does.

First of all, she’s extremely proud of her father’s work and seems to want to be involved in the family business to some extent. This might now seem all that important, but it shows that she’s passionate about something and that’s always a plus.

More importantly, she just acts cute. Sometimes she’s shy, other times she’s bold, but she always manages to pull off whatever she’s doing in an attractive way. She gets flustered when Hyakkimaru touches his forehead to hers, but within the same day she also asks him to marry her.

As for her father, he’s almost like her opposite. They’re both extremely proud of the swords he makes, but he’s much more serious than Okowa is. He doesn’t seem to care what other people say about him as long as he’s able to continue making a living from his work, and he doesn’t talk all that much.

However, the one thing he does mention about himself is that although he’s a blacksmith who will make weapons, he doesn’t like his weapons to be used for killing. He knows that’s what they will be used for, but his dream is to one day make a weapon so deadly that it stops the enemy from even trying to fight.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? If I had to venture a guess, I’d say that that this character was highly influenced by what the original creator of Dororo, Osamu Tezuka, experienced during the second World War. Although the blacksmith is referring to swords, it’s easy to see the parallels to nuclear weapons.

The Ghoul

While this episode is basically filler, it does still have a ghoul which Hyakkimaru and Dororo have to defeat. Although, in this case it was defeated by Okowa’s father with the help of Dororo; Hyakkimaru wasn’t helpful at all.

But what exactly did this ghoul do? It wasn’t a dangerous ghoul by any means. Instead it simply cast a spell on the people of the village to make them constantly say the opposite of what they meant. This is why the villagers always said that Okowa was ugly and her father was a bad blacksmith.

The reason Okowa and her father weren’t affected by the ghoul’s curse was due to the blacksmith deities they prayed to. And, since their home is decorated with masks of these deities, anyone inside it is able to speak freely despite being cursed otherwise.

This is why Dororo isn’t affected by the curse until after she takes off the deity mask which she was wearing when Hyakkimaru was cursed. And due to his curse, Hyakkimaru ends up agreeing to marry Okowa despite not actually wanting to (though he definitely should have).

The Amanojaku from the anime series Dororo
The Amanojaku

I could talk more about how Okowa was cute while getting ready for her marriage with Hyakkimaru, or how she gets married to someone else within a day of learning that it was all a misunderstanding, but instead there’s something else: spirit colors.

I’ve discussed the various spirit colors in this series a number of times. The last time I did I brought up the fact that a green spirit, which had only previously been used for the Goddess of Protection statue, was used for Hyakkimaru without any explanation.

At the time I assumed that this meant the Goddess of Protection was now living within Hyakkimaru after the statue was lost, but now I’m not so sure. You see, the ghoul from this episode also had a green spirit, despite demons and ghouls previously only being depicted in red.

So what gives? Was the color-coding system for souls thrown out? There are still five more episodes, so it’s possible we’ll get an answer, but I find that unlikely. This episode felt so much like filler that I doubt the series is ever going to come back around and explain why this ghoul had a green soul rather than a red one.

Conclusion

Anyway, what did you think of this week’s episode of Dororo? Did it feel like a filler episode to you too? Who do you prefer: Mio or Okowa? And, what are your thoughts on the recent addition of more green souls? Let me know in the comments.

Also, I almost forgot to mention that this is actually my 500th post here on DoubleSama.com, so if you enjoyed it be sure to click the like button ❤ down below. Normally I would have done something special for this occasion, but I already have enough of a post backlog as it is.

And, perhaps you noticed that there wasn’t a post uploaded yesterday despite Mondays being one of my scheduled days. If you follow me over on Twitter (@DoubleSama), you’ll see that I mentioned this week’s Monday post is being postponed until Wednesday.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting this blog at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about becoming a supporter, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

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