Statistics
All Anime Stats Anime Stats
Days: 106.8
Mean Score:
6.80
- Watching8
- Completed261
- On-Hold21
- Dropped15
- Plan to Watch294
- Total Entries599
- Rewatched0
- Episodes6,464
All Manga Stats Manga Stats
Days: 24.6
Mean Score:
6.60
- Total Entries93
- Reread0
- Chapters1,341
- Volumes167
All Comments (16) Comments
I would summarize your criticisms like so:
- There are no consequences because of OP abilities or because commonly lethal wounds and damage doesn't result in death of any kind.
- The story goes nowhere because at the end the primary goal of learning about Caiman's backstory wasn't accomplished, no one died and Nikaido and Caiman are "friends".
- Nikaido has no personality or at leas they don't give any reason to care about her.
- Noi and Shin are OP.
I can't help but think about superman. Most of the problems people have with him are "He is OP" and "He has no personality", but I think we can't say there aren't good stories with superman as one of the main points.
Personality is often something subjective and we often then to label characters with with less bombastic or exaggerated personalities as having none at all (specially in anime circles), also the same applies in reverse (not because a character is bombastic or exaggerated that means they have a complex personality or any personality at all), so firstly I would invite you to reflect on characters you've seen where you can see this.
OP characters are a complicated subject all around. Most often than not having an OP character, power, etc. is a signal of a bad story but there are awesome stories with OP elements. I would say that most of the time bad stories with OP elements are the ones that result in the OP elements breaking or making irrelevant the story elements that the reader or spectator cares about, here are some examples (These examples don't mean the stories are bad, they are just some things I though could exemplify my point) Power levels being through the roof on Dragon Ball Z when you care about technique and complex fighting, Saitama beating everyone and everything in one punch when you want a long fight with both sides struggling where you don't know who's gonna win, Naruto and the talk no jutsu in case you would like complex themes than can't be solve just with the power of friendship, etc. you can make this with all media, good or bad. I would invite you to reflect about what a story and author are trying to do and see what they do to try and succeed in they goals. Also being OP in one area doesn't mean you can't have meaningful consequences in other, the classic example is the triad of strength, mind, heart where you can have emotional and physical consequences.
I guess the last thing to address is nothing happening. That kinda is addressed in the previous point but being totally honest I kinda agree with you. Dorohedoro's anime ended in the beginning and I have positive and negative thoughts about it. I hate the kind of stories where they don't tell a story and their only purpose is to set up a franchise, that being set I think Dorohedoro focused in introducing the world and it's characters and ended in a place where we can better understand whats going on but there is no real reason why you can't do that and tell a story. Now, I don't think there isn't a reason why a story that begins and ends in the same place can't be good but I think doing that is a hell of a lot harder (Kinda like writing stories for a character that can't die, is invincible an has basically no weaknesses).
TL;DR
I liked Dorohedoro's anime but I know it's not for everyone and maybe it's not for you, but your observations can be applied to other stories but aren't an automatic way to tell if a story is bad. It's a cliche but it's true, there are no rules for stories, you can make have OP elements, your story arc can lack consequences, all your characters can be immortal demigods and you can still end up with the best story of all time.
P.S.
Commonly lethal damage not resulting in death doesn't mean characters can't die in a story. In the end the story is limited by it's author, there are multiple ways to kill a character even with OP abilities (JoJo's bizarre adventure and HxH come to mind, adding detail to the way abilities work allows for more interesting battles and stories, also you can also remove OP abilities either by doing just that or making the OP characters unavailable ("Double parenthesis" and super spoiler warning if you haven't seen JoJo's bizarre adventure part 4,
I'm thinking of the dead of Shigechi just before when he was about to reach the one character that could have save him... I'm actually crying while writing this.)).
I just dropped the show. I wanted to like it but it's so boring.