In anime series Dororo, a young thief and a ronin go demon hunting in medieval Japan
- Based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese folk tales follow the adventures of an unlikely pair
- , “godfather” of the genrePlus, Carla Gugino’s Jett is fresh out of prison and back doing what she does best
Morality tales seem to be all the rage, particularly those featuring big bad demons. And you don’t even need green-screen deceptions to evoke them, not when Japan’s Mappa studios are bringing to life plenty of diabolical scary monsters and super creeps.
Mappa’s malevolent entities populate Dororo, Amazon Prime’s anime adaptation of the acclaimed manga by “godfather” of the genre, Osamu Tezuka. And the medieval Japan they stalk throughout this 24-part first series is fertile ground for terrifying tales of flesh-eating ghouls and rabid river spirits devouring good guys and bad. Such were the dangers, according to historical folk tales, risked by anyone travelling abroad – meaning beyond their village – in the Sengoku period of regional squabbles and kingdoms in conflict.
And so our cunning young Dororo, all alone in the world, must survive on his (or her?) wits, even if it means a little light stealing here and there. Dororo teams up with unlikely protector Hyakkimaru, symbolic of how good eventually beats bad, no matter what the odds – he was, after all, born without limbs, eyes, ears, tongue and skin – having been cursed when his power-obsessed father did a dirty deal with demons.
That’s a somewhat limiting start in life, you might think, for anyone, let alone a superhero; but that’s what Hyakkimaru, a ronin, turns out to be, slashing, stabbing and purging his way around the country, vanquishing monsters and in return earning real body parts to replace his prosthetics. (And if that sounds like a video-game premise, you can find a version of the tale on PlayStation 2.)
As Hyakkimaru, with gleaming (or bloody) swords for arms homes in on the fiends who damned him, the animation dazzles, the action seldom slackens and the folk-tale mysteries continue to confound. The last two episodes are about to land, so will Hyakki end up whole or must he continue hacking?
Carla Gugino steals the show as the anti-heroine in HBO Go’s Jett
Monsters of the corporeal rather than supernatural are abroad in new HBO Go series Jett, featuring nine episodes of mayhem, brutality and inveterate criminality, especially that flaunted by the obscenely wealthy.
Daisy “Jett” Kowalski (Carla Gugino) is a reluctantly returning thief and confidence trickster pulled back into the swindling game after her release from prison, mainly to pay for the upbringing of her daughter – who is the reason she would prefer not to be in the game at all. A variety of rich, ruthless gang bosses have need of Jett’s unique skill set in fighting their turf wars, while Jett considers herself a sort of Robinette Hood, ripping off the same moneyed villains whenever possible to assist the more deserving.
Expect menace, flesh and violence in abundance, but it’s not all blood and bullets: Gugino provides much of the considerable glamour and the underworld chiefs most of the surprisingly good taste, although they probably have advisers for that sort of thing.
Jett is a crime noir excursion of which novelist James Ellroy (Mr L.A. Confidential himself) would be proud. Our morally questionable heroine is obliged to battle through every double-cross no matter how often she’s blackmailed, betrayed or shot – sometimes by officers of the law gone rotten, not always by the likes of suave, capricious gangster Charlie Baudelaire, played with sinister charm by Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad). And at the end of it all, she still has to go home and be a mother, a lover and a confidante to a live-in female friend.
There’s one indisputable star of this Jett set and Gugino – strutting but somehow vulnerable, smart of mouth, high of heels and deadly with a pistol – makes her a siren of the times.
