Chainsaw Man fans have been eating well for a minute now with its weekly manga chapters continuing to be short, sweet, and impactful; Mappa’s Reze Arc film being good kino you can watch at home before that other anime award-nominated film; and season two now in production. But you can’t consume one piece of media forever and call it a good diet, which is why I’ve been recommending new material to diversify folks’ palates with something similar to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s vibe. Today, however, I’m not gonna recommend not one, but two manga folks should read: Dorohedoro and Dai Dark. Not because they’re similar to Chainsaw Man, but because their creator inspired its whole flow.
I’ve long held the belief that female mangaka, by and large, have a way better batting average with dropping certified classic manga than their male counterparts. Look no further than Rumiko Takahashi, who is making works like Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2, and Urusei Yatsura; or Hiromu Arakawa, making Fullmetal Alchemist. Takahashi’s works continue to influence the modern landscape of manga, with series like Gokurakugai and Dandadan paying homage to the series in their very DNA. Meanwhile, Arakawa’s FMA is still widely and rightfully regarded as a masterpiece that fans readily recommend to folks at the start of their manga and anime journeys, to give them a taste of what the medium has to offer.
But one thing that’s exceedingly rare to see is a mangaka who can bridge the chasm that exists between fans of sci-fi and fantasy with works that excel at both. So far, no one is doing that quite like Q Hayashida with her dark fantasy series, Dorohedoro, and her sci-fi epic, Dai Dark.
In fact, the former is what Fujimoto himself jokingly said Chainsaw Man was a ripoff of (alongside Jujutsu Kaisen) when his series was adapted into an anime by Mappa. While the two share Mappa as an animation studio, Fujimoto’s joke has a lot of truth in it when you look at the series itself and how it jumps from being macabre to hilarious on a dime. So, in that spirit, let’s dive into what Dorohedoro is all about first.
Dorohedoro is best described as a manga with a split personality, veering between ultra-violent dark fantasy and deadpan comedy. It follows Caiman, a man who wakes up with no memories, a giant lizard head, and a mysterious person living inside the void of his mouth. Convinced his current predicament is the work of sorcerers, who’re notorious for crossing through dimensional doorways to the Hole, a grimy, dense city Caiman calls home, to test on humans, he teams up with his best friend Nikaido to hunt down every sorcerer they can find.
Their plan: shove a sorcerer’s head into Caiman’s mouth and let the man inside declare whether they’re the one who cursed him. Their investigations (if we’ll call them that) put them in the crosshairs of En, a powerful sorcerer crime boss whose subordinates keep winding up dead. So, En sends his enforcers, Shin and Noi, to eliminate them, kicking off a chaotic cat-and-mouse war between two worlds that only gets stranger, bloodier, and funnier as it unfurls.
While Mappa’s anime adaptation of the series is great, with a unique fusion of 2D and 3D CG animation, a soundtrack that’s a real bop, and a second season due later this year, there’s honestly no comparison to the artistry of Hayashida’s manga. Pound for pound, Dorohedoro is leagues more gnarly a read than Chainsaw Man when it comes to the huge wipeouts its sorcerers experience. Like, we’re talking Mortal Kombat-level gore. Plus, its panel work is truly a marvel to behold, giving sharp clarity on every gruesome unaliving on par with the late Kentaru Miura’s penmanship on Berserk.
Don’t let the series’ grimdark imagery fool you. Dorohedoro is overflowing with as much grotesque body horror as it is cutesy, disarming charm. In fact, it might be the closest thing in manga to a physical embodiment of that razor-thin line between horror and comedy. Just as often as either side of the aisle is beating the lights out of each other, they’re also shooting the shit, cooking gyoza, eating under the loving warmth of a kotatsu, or making movies of their exploits. Its cast is irresistibly cool, from its gentlemanly himbo bruisers, Caiman and Shin, to its statuesque muscle mommies, Noi and Nikaido.
You’re bound to find someone to like in its ensemble (I’m partial to En) because while the series has a lot of spinning plates, it never fails to give everyone play as characters worth rooting for and white-knuckling when they inevitably cross each other’s paths. Plus, its grimy world, teeming with sorcerers, bounty hunters, giant bugs, and devils, feels so vividly lived-in, with world-building so engrossing that it feels like a miracle to witness it get even better with every chapter.
🦎Dorohedoro Season 2
Worldwide streaming starts on April 1!
Check out the brand-new chaotic and stylish key visual.Season 1 will be available on even more platforms on March 8, so catch up before Season 2 begins!
Stay tuned for more updates!#Dorohedoro #TOHOanimation pic.twitter.com/m93P8Rhh8T
— TOHO animation EN (@TOHOanimationEN) February 8, 2026
It’s no wonder fans have been losing their minds for years, begging more people to read it and praying that Mappa puts down all of its other projects and gets back to it as soon as possible. Thankfully, there’s more than enough time for curious folks to check out its manga and watch the first season of the anime, which’ll soon leave Netflix jail, by the time season two arrives in April. But if you’re looking for something with more of a sci-fi edge, look no further than Dai Dark.
While Dai Dark‘s cover gives the impression that it’s another dark fantasy series, this one actually takes place in outer space while maintaining the winning quality of Dorohedoro‘s unique art style in a different story, in a similar fashion to mangaka Hiro Mashima reusing his “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” character designs from Fairy Tail. Like Dorohedoro, it too follows a teenager named Zaha Sanko. Only this time, instead of hounding for answers to an overarching mystery, Sanko is the one being hunted across the galaxy. You see, legend has it Sanka is built differently. More specifically, there’s a rumor that’s spread across the galaxy that whoever collects his bones, Dragon Ball-style, will have any wish granted to them.
Sanko teams up with Avakian, his sentient skeleton backpack; Shimada Death, the gender-ambiguous physical embodiment of, well, death; and Hajime Damemaru, an immortal man. Together, they’re “four little shits.” They trek across the stars, battling religious cultists as they hunt down whoever cursed him. Yes, that sounds pretty much like Dorohedoro‘s premise, but trust me when I say that Dorohedoro in space is as cool a premise as Dorohedoro is on its own.
While Dai Dark is a touch more aimless fun than Dorohedoro‘s clearer logline for where the story is going, the series spending so much time dedicated to its misfits’ downtime to goof off is a huge part of its charm. If anything, their ignoring the main quest for sidequest funsies—like making “meapwiches,” arguing over naming a pet spider, or haggling over selling the bones of their would-be assailants as currency to their Resident Evil 4-looking-ass merchant, Misetani Box, as they blast off in their dog-shaped spaceship—has big Farscape energy, wrapped in a scary-cute manga package.
The only caveat to Dai Dark is that it’s still ongoing (and is currently on hiatus). So if you have any interest in getting in on the ground floor with a creator Fujimoto has jokingly admitted to “ripping off,” we’d recommend checking out Dorohedoro first, what with it having more going on, and then switching lanes to check out Dai Dark before hitting hiatusville. Though if you’re more partial to sci-fi than fantasy, by all means crack open the spine of Dai Dark first. The more people know how goated Hayashida is, the better.
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