Dororo (2007)

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General		Extras
Category	Martial Arts	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of Deleted Scenes Trailer-x4 Gallery
Rating
Year Of Production	2007
Running Time	132:51
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (78:12)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Akihiko Shiota
Studio Distributor	Toho Company Madman Entertainment	Starring	Satoshi Tsumabuki Kou Shibasaki
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Japanese dts 5.1 EX (768Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	English	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

Based on a manga and anime by the legendary Osamu Tezuka (better known as the creator of Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion), Dororo is the story of a young man named Hyakkimaru (Satoshi Tsumabuki) who roams the countryside in search of the 48 demons who have taken his various body parts. Each demon he defeats using a sacred blade that he has attached to the stump of his left arm, he gets back a body part. Hyakkimaru is accompanied for the bulk of his journey by a feisty young thief who adopts the name Dororo, meaning little demon, who promises she is only waiting for him to die so that she can have his magical blade (isn't that the basis for most friendships?).

Hyakkimaru finds himself in this unfortunate predicament thanks to a pact his father, the ruthless warlord Kagemitsu Daigo (Kiichi Nakai), made with the demons. Daigo offered the body parts of his unborn first child in exchange for achieving ultimate power across the land. Born as merely a body and a head, no limbs, internal organs or facial features, Hyakkimaru was abandoned in a nearby river. He was found by a great shaman, who perfected the art of generating living artificial body parts using the flesh of dead bodies (though not in a zombie kind of way) and taught Hyakkimaru how to maintain his own body until he could retrieve all his own parts back.

Dororo is a cracking good samurai film come effects extravaganza with a wicked sense of humour. The action comprises a solid balance of CGI, wire-fu and good old fashioned live swordfighting. The film certainly has more in common with the CGI-action likes of The Mummy than it does Zatoichi, though it pays due respect to its heritage. There's little wonder as to why Dororo was the first smash hit of 2007 at the Japanese box office, it certainly has the flash and the lasting appeal to warrant repeat viewing. The barmy plot is an added bonus!

Video

The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

The video generally looks very good. The image is sharp and free of low level noise. A mild level of grain is noticeable in the image throughout the film. The numerous flashback scenes in the film are deliberately grainier than the rest of the film, in order to visually set them apart from the scenes in the story's main time period, however they occasionally border on being distractingly grainy. The shadow detail in the image is fair, though far from perfect. Blacks and dark colours in many of the darker scenes look a little crushed.

The film uses a heavily blue-filtered palette to achieve a distinct look and highlight the reds and browns in the image. This visual style has translated well to DVD and appears to be colour balanced as intended.

There are no noticeable compression artefacts in the transfer. During the course of the film I spied one lonely small white fleck of a film artefact.

Bold yellow English subtitles are present for the feature. They appear to be well timed and provide a natural translation of the original Japanese dialogue.

This is a RSDL disc. The layer break occurs mid-scene at 78:12 but was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps) and Japanese DTS 5.1 (768 Kbps) audio tracks are present for the film. Both tracks sound excellent, though the DTS is noticeably crisper than the Dolby Digital track.

The dialogue is at a good level in the mix and appears to be well synchronised to the video.

The score is a traditional Japanese Orchestral affair, featuring a number of oriental instruments, that suit the film perfectly.

The surround channels are given an excellent workout during course of the film. The action scenes, in particular, are deliciously bombastic with their sound. The subwoofer gets a good workout throughout the feature also, though not as impressively as the surrounds.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

The Road to Dororo Making Of Featurette (35:52)

A rather interesting "Making Of" featurette that covers the back-story, planning, photography and post production of the film. Presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but not 16x9 enhanced. The highlight of the featurette is its coverage of the green screen and effects used in the movie. This presentation style featurette is very culturally different to most Western featurettes, which makes for refreshing viewing.

Deleted Scenes (8:14)

A series of deleted scenes presented in context to where they were cut from the film. There is some amusing stuff here, but nothing essential to the film.

Trailers

Four trailers for the film are presented, a teaser, a theatrical trailer, an even longer theatrical trailer and a TV Spot. There are also trailers for the other samurai flicks Shinobi, Death Trance, and Shadowless Sword.

Trailers

15 promo images for the movie. Ho-hum.

Dororo does not yet appear to be available in other English speaking territories.

A first-rate Japanese popcorn flick, filled with big samurai action scenes, flashy effects and a wicked sense of humour.

The technical presentation on the disc is very good. The extras are both reasonable in number and high in quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall