Dorohedoro takes place in a city known only as the Hole. Sorcerers snatch its residents to use as material for magic experiments, and Caiman, the lead, has been left by one such spell with a lizard's head and no memory. He and his friend Nikaido catch the sorcerers who come into the Hole, one by one, hunting for whoever cast it, while on the sorcerers' side the boss, En, sends his cleaners in to deal with the lizard man. VIZ sums the world up as one of vicious brutality, capricious wizards and fatal absurdity.
Q Hayashida began it in the first issue of Ikki, a supplement to Weekly Big Comic Spirits, on sale 30 November 2000. The series then moved three times, to Monthly IKKI, to Hibana and finally to Gessan, and ended in Gessan's October 2018 issue. The final volume, number 23, came out on 12 November 2018. Gessan's series page describes the last battle as being against Hole-kun, a being formed from the collected resentment humans hold toward sorcerers.
The Korean publisher's blurb calls it a decadent, savage world drawn in a grotesque, gory style and populated with comic characters and black comedy, and that is a fair description of what makes a page of Dorohedoro recognisable at a glance: cruelty and a gag sitting in the same panel. Gessan adds that a great secret between sorcerers and humans comes to light as the story goes on.
MAPPA makes the anime. The twelve-episode first season aired on Tokyo MX and other stations from 13 January to 30 March 2020, with Netflix distributing it. Yuichiro Hayashi directs and Hiroshi Seko handles series composition. Wataru Takagi voices Caiman, Reina Kondo is Nikaido, Kenyu Horiuchi is En, Yoshimasa Hosoya is Shin and Yu Kobayashi is Noi.
Season 2 arrived six years later, opening on 1 April 2026 at 23:00 JST with episodes 1 to 3 released together, then one episode every Wednesday on multiple platforms in near-simultaneous worldwide distribution, ending with episode 11 on 27 May. The same day, the official site announced that a third season is in production. No date has been given. The opening theme is "Zettai MUST Danmen" by (K)NoW_NAME.
The art book came out in Japan on 20 February 2020, while the first season was on air. Shogakukan's edition, Dorohedoro Gashu MUD AND SLUDGE, is a 344-page B5-variant volume priced at 6,930 yen, with book design by Shin Sobue, and its editor's note invites readers to enjoy the excessive, chaotic portion that spilled over when the world was fitted into a manga. VIZ Media publishes it on 22 September as Dorohedoro Illustrations: Mud and Sludge under the VIZ Signature imprint, a 344-page hardcover at $65.00 collecting colour manga pages, illustrations, sketches and paintings.
In Korea, Sigongsa published all 23 volumes as ๋๋กํค๋๋ก. Hayashida began her next series, Dai Dark, in Gessan in April 2019, six months after the finale. Gessan's official YouTube channel still carries the special video posted for the ending in 2018, and its title notes that a TV anime was already in the works.
