YMMV / Dororo

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • How Dororo handles discovering they're a girl changes depending on the fan group. Some think Dororo takes to it easily, some think Dororo never truly gives the identity up, and still others have it that Dororo subconsciously realized what dangers await her if she lives as a girl in their Crapsack World of an era, so the masculine presentation is a safety net. There's another major fandom interpretation, see in Trans Audience Interpretation below.
  • Dororo and Hyakkimaru's relationship in the live action film. Dororo doesn't seem to hold any romantic feelings for him and only sees him as a friend... or is she simply waiting for him to regain the other half of his body back and become a real man before dropping her masquerade?
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After seeing Daigo's men murder Mio and the kids she's taking care of, watching Hyakkimaru slaughter them all definitely counts as this.
  • And for those who were frustrated with Daigo being a Karma Houdini in the manga, the bastard explodes into ludicrous gibs in the movie adaptation, which is without a doubt a joy to watch.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While Hyakkimaru had Mio as an explicit love interest in many adaptations, Hyakkimaru/Dororo is by far the more accepted pairing. Most fans have them be a couple after the latter comes of age in some continuities.
• It Was His Sled: Dororo being female is a twist people have known for ages, and people usually either exaggerate it or openly show it in later adaptations.
• Nightmare Fuel: Picture a little baby, with its big head, no hair, and large eyes. Now, take away those eyes and leave holes behind. Now take away the ears and the nose. Take away the limbs, leaving only a torso. Now, to top it all off, take away the skin of that baby, leaving behind what looks like a tiny skull covered in blood. And that baby? It's alive. And breathing. That's what happened to Hyakkimaru. The demons left him with the barest minimum of humanity. Most people who find the baby are astonished by not only the fact that he's alive and breathing but that he is apparently running on sheer determination to live so much so that everyone can pick up on it from the midwife to the doctor who finds him.
• Nightmare Retardant: The demonically possessed katana Nihil corrupts its user. When Dororo picks it up, his Bratty Half-Pint dialogue doesn't change at all, so the audience is briefly entertained with the thought that the only difference between that trope and a mass-murderer is will and means.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Blood Will Tell is a solid action-adventure hack & slash game. The story from the manga stands out in a good way, and the recovery of body parts is nicely tied into the game mechanics. Plus, the game provides its own satisfying ending to the story.
• Protagonist Title Fallacy: No, the Dororo of the title isn't the tall man with prosthetics—that's Hyakkimaru. Dororo is the child that travels with him, and while important isn't the main character like Hyakkimaru is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Later fans of the series would usually say this in regards to the treatment of Hyakkimaru's missing parts in the original manga. While the adaptations tried to play with how messed up his body really is, they argued that the original didn't go far enough to show us his condition, and he was otherwise a normal person if you ignored the telepathy explanations.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Around the 2010s, the title character often got pegged as a fledgling trans boy, due to being Raised as the Opposite Gender since birth for protection and even after figuring out her birth sex from Hyakkimaru sees no problem in identifying as she has been, at least in the original manga. She also showed some discomfort in how Hyakkimaru treats her after discovering she's female. Many adaptations make clear that Dororo eventually identifies as her birth sex, however.