Nightmare Fuel / Dorohedoro

...B-Batman?

Though filled with a cast of eccentric characters and dorky friendship, it's important to remember that the world of Dorohedoro is not a peaceful place to live in. Beware of spoilers.

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• Kaiman is already scary when you forget about his actual personality, with his spikes, gas mask, imposing figure, and of course his infamous lizard head. And in earlier chapters he looked even more monstrous and reptilian than he does now. (Thanks to Art Evolution, he looks downright adorable).
  • What makes him steer into truly terrifying is his modus operandi; he hunts down magic-users, chomps on their heads to show them the man inside to find out if they're "the one", and brutally kills them after he's done. The first chapter has him doing his usual routine on Matsumura and cutting him into pieces. He would have done the same to Fujita.
  • What's worse is that he's indiscriminate about the magic-users he kills; Just being a magic-user is enough for him to kill you, as he immediately offs them after chomping on their heads regardless of whether he knows they actually did anything wrong or not, only sparing them if they turn out to be benevolent.
  • Once the reader learns about his relation with Ai Coleman, Aikawa and Kai, everything about Kaiman becomes full-fledged Fridge Horror. And it keeps going downhill from there.
• The Sorcerer Kaiman kills in Chapter 2/Episode 1 wasn't aware that En had locked down transit to Hole and when he tried to use a door to escape was only stabbed in the gut for his trouble by a more cautious Kaiman since Fujita had escaped in a similar way. Something of him makes it through though, his blood, much to the horror of the guard at the Magic World door. Given his voice, immaturity and treatment of his "practice" as a school assignment, it's very likely the Sorcerer was a teenager too, which casts a darker light on Hole in general as Kaiman doesn't even hesitate to decide to kill him.
  • The people that the unnamed Sorcerer from the first episode "practiced on" are the key reason why he was an Asshole Victim. He partially mutated their limbs and heads into bugs poorly and we get to see the effects personally when one turns up at the hospital Kaiman is doing part-time work at, barely alive and in need of medical assistance due to the Sorcerer only changing his limbs and his head being a halfway-transformed nightmare.
• Shin. Not only does his magic let him cut up people without killing them, he clearly has fun doing his job and his expressions can be often be horrifying. The fact that his mask is shaped like a human heart doesn't help matters.
  • Just in case Shin was not nightmarish enough with his vivisecting magic, then he gets possessed by Kai and sent to hunt down En's family, how nightmarish could it be for them to see their trusty friend(and possible love interest for Noi) turning against them at the worst possible moment?
• After the Cross-Eyes take over En's mansion, the hallways become filled with mountains of Sorcerer's severed heads. Kai has killed and mutilated hundreds, if not thousands of people over the course of only a few weeks.
• Nikaido after she starts mutating into a devil, with her sprouting out little cute horns and a tail...then she becomes a creepy Stepford Smiler running on Dissonant Serenity, her face frozen in a perpetual demented smiley while she acts more and more random AND violent.
• Curse, Risu's Superpowered Evil Side, a shrouded monster with a four-eyed snake skull for a head and multiple chains ending in metal spikes that sprout out his body and act as impaling Combat Tentacles, he is a Super-Persistent Predator that attacks any source of hostility he perceives and is hell-bent on destroying the one that killed him once, AKA Kai.
• The man inside Kaiman, with his static pose and Tranquil Fury, is usually subdued creepy... but not in Episode 2 of the anime. Here the scene is re-imagined so not only are his proportions completely fucked up with an oddly long neck and arms, but he’s grinning ear to ear and staring off into space as he embraces and wraps his twisted body around the magic user. Just when you think he’s about to strike... he just says “you’re not the one”, his smile fades, and he lets him go. What the hell was he about to do?
• Cruel and Unusual Death is the bread and butter of this manga. It can be pretty hilarious most of time due to Asshole Victim being in full play, though. However, it stops being funny halfway through the story when it turns much darker. Notable examples:
  • En being killed by Kai, dear lord. To sum it up: The Boss of the Cross-eyes tears him apart, and escapes with his head through the vent of the Manor.
    • Kai doesn't take just En's severed head. A good portion of En's shoulders are still attached, meaning he was diagonally bisected with a knife.
    • The aftermath is pretty messy. because he witnessed En's death, Fujita is left in such shock he sleeps for two days straight. Shin is unable to track down the killer, and when he and Noi question Fujita about it, the latter cannot recall the killer's face. There's also the fact that the entire organization falls apart within those days.
  • And then there's Natsuki's death, which is this, Tear Jerker and Player Punch all packed in one; Kai kisses her then rips her apart, turning her corpse into a mushroom and hiding her body underneath a statue of Chidaruma. It's abrupt, horrifying and heartbreaking.
• Store. A demonic, humanoid bird-thing that butchers devils. It also wields the most powerful weapon in the setting and only communicates with a creepy NANANANANA sound. It's the page picture, in fact.
• Kai, Jesus Christ, Kai. He's a Humanoid Abomination that kills sorcerers to get their Devil Tumors, his mere presence can twist surroundings and makes sorcerers feel ill, similar to what the rain in the Hole does. Not to mention to make people hallucinate about the headless man that Kaiman/Aikawa see while dreaming. Long story short, he's a living nightmare.
  • To make a point: He's so strong, he easily kills En and overpowers both Shin and Noi. Three who are the best sorcerers in the series, and that says a lot.
  • And then there's what Kai actually is, and where the zombies and the rain in the Hole originate from...
• The department store turning into a Genius Loci Eldritch Location that can mind control people with horrifically large metal tubes it forces under their skin. The tubes are near indestructible, and once you’ve been injected it’s basically inevitable that you will turn against your former friends. The only cure is death or exceedingly strong magic. Death may not be a huge deal for a magic user of the En family but for everyone else in the series...