Dorohedoro [18+]

[Darj]

There are two different kinds of people in Dorohedoro. Magic users and non-magic users. The magic users all reside in the magic user realm while all the non magic users reside in a place called "Hole." Magic users all have different powers. Magic users will often go into hole and find unfortunate victims to test out/practice their powers on. The magic users that do this have yet to master their powers so it will often leave their victims either dead, wounded or semi-transfigured. The main character Kaiman is immune to magic, has the head of a lizard & has lost all his memories. He is accompanied by his female companion and best friend Nikaidou as he hunts down magic users in hole in an effort to find out the identity of the magic user who put him in this state.

(Image has a link to its Myanimelist entry)

 

I hesitated on making this thread for so long because I understand it can be... in a way, controversial; but I really want to know now who among us reads and follows it, or otherwise knows about it, so we can potentially discuss about it and stuff; and using the search function doesn't throw any result on a thread about this manga so I guess it has never been discussed on YCM before, which is understandable since it seems to be an obscure manga.
 
Anyway, this manga is easily my #1 favorite. Granted, I haven't read nor I follow a lot of mangas so there isn't much competition, but this is my top manga regardless. It simply has so many things going for it. For instance:
- Magic and supernatural powers, but portrayed in such a gritty way that I have yet to see in any other series.
- Cool fights, most involving those powers, and they can get quite graphic; well, a lot graphic, as far as a black&white manga can go, of course.
- Lots of gore with characters losing their limbs, heads and bodies sometimes literally exploding, and so on.
- It even keeps it kinky with the occasional flash or nudity.

 

Also, a few elements of it match with things I personally like, such as:
- Lizards and salamanders are my favorite animal species; the main character has a lizard head.
- I have a thing for masks and some masked characters; masks have some degree of importance in the series.
 
In fact, this manga and Franken Fran are the reasons I acquired a taste for non-torture/abusive gory stuff (or perhaps I should say I discovered that I liked it, I don't know). For the record, emphasis on "non-torture gore" because it's a different thing to torture and/or kill someone just for sadism (e.g. Higurashi series, and I know there are more graphic torture series out there), than splattering someone with a punch/kick in combat, or mutilating it for an operation.
 

[spoiler=Possible spoilers]Also it reinforced my preference for devil-like characters (not actual mythological devils), as well as led me to including the concept of devils in my thoughts and vocabulary, so to speak (e.g. referring to my negative thoughts as "devils", or other analogies involving devils; silly stuff like that). Actually, I developed a thing for moths and combat with knives from this series as well. It really has influenced my tastes.

 

 

All in all, I truly recommend this one; if you have no problem with the explicit stuff, that is. But if you don't really mind or are actually into it, I encourage you to giving it a try if you haven't yet; I bet it will at the very least surprise you.

 

As for other information, it is currently ongoing and it doesn't have too many chapters yet, compared to other manga giants (currently on chapter #143), also the chapter releases are reaally slow, so it shouldn't take long for someone to catch up with it.