Dorohedoro Manga, Stripped to Kill & a Media Exchange

Henrique Couto and Michelle begin a new media-exchange experiment built around things the other person might never discover alone. Their friendship has long included trading art across personal taste—from all seven original Nightmare on Elm Street films during Michelle’s shoulder recovery to Re:Zero as Henrique’s first anime—so this time Michelle assigns a fan translation of Q Hayashida’s Dorohedoro manga while Henrique sends the 1987 erotic thriller Stripped to Kill without labeling the file.After five chapters, Henrique is fascinated by Dorohedoro’s mix of grotesque violence, food comedy and unexpectedly sweet friendship. He tries to explain Caiman, a man with a lizard head who bites sorcerers so the mysterious person inside his mouth can identify whoever cursed him, and Nikaido, his gyoza-making companion. Failed magic experiments, theatrical masks and lines about gyoza keep colliding in a world whose logic is disturbing and funny at once.The manga reminds Henrique of two rare earlier comic experiences: Godzilla vs. Barkley and the violent Columbus-made Voodoo Joe, whose cursed hero must help strangers take revenge. Michelle is more interested in what Henrique will think as Dorohedoro introduces additional sorcerers, while he promises to continue reading beyond the assigned chapters and appreciates that an unfamiliar format could still make him laugh aloud.Michelle’s Stripped to Kill notes cover an undercover police officer entering a strip club, elaborate dance sequences, an effective mystery reveal and her conclusion that she is not sexually attracted to women. Henrique places Katt Shea’s Roger Corman production within the wave of stripper thrillers that followed, then discusses exploitation formulas, women as both victims and heroes, and later B-movie variations. Contains graphic comic violence, murder, dismemberment, sexualized nudity and stripping, a brief child-sexual-abuse reference, abortion and reanimated-fetus imagery, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.LinksEmail the hosts: [email protected]