Let me set the scene for you. The city is grungy and dark, sitting beneath a sky that is perpetually choked with smog. While not exactly post-apocalyptic, it doesn’t feel that far off either. On the streets, two masked men clash with a blonde gyoza cook and her hulking lizard-headed friend. The masked men shoot smoke from their fingertips. The lizard man bites down on one of their heads. Inside of the lizard man’s mouth, the masked man sees a person crawl up from inside of the throat, who then looks at him and claims, “you are not the one.” This is Dorohedoro.

Look, I’m always late to the draw when it comes to anime, but I’m at least talking about this one within the year of its release so that means I’m getting better. Dorohedoro is a Netflix original based on a manga written and illustrated by Q Hayashida which ran from 1999 to 2018. It takes place mostly in a downtrodden grungy city called The Hole. Parallel to The Hole is a world of sorcerers, and they like to pop in via dimensional doorways from time to time and practice their bizarre spells on the humans who inhabit The Hole. Evidence of this can be seen literally everywhere, and it manages to bring a certain weird charm the world.

These sorcerers using humans as guinea pigs is actually why the aforementioned lizard headed man has a lizard head in the first place, and it’s this fact that sets everything in motion. To be honest however, the overall plot is the least captivating aspect of this particular anime to me. I’m much more interested in just exploring this world and learning about these characters. While initially set up with a clear class divide and good guys and bad guys, they shatter those expectations almost immediately. You spend just as much time with antagonists and by the end of the first season’s run you may not know who to root for.

Aesthetically and tonally, everything about this is my jam. It feels vaguely post-apocalyptic, but it’s also full of weird magic. It’s extremely violent, but also hella goofy. In the first episode you see a man cut into pieces in a move that calls back to the opening of Cube. Later on, you get to see a 6 foot tall cockroach play baseball. There’s moments of body horror and moments of slapstick comedy and I think they juggle these tonal shifts extremely well.

On top of that, every single character and every environment looks dope as hell. The backgrounds are dripping with atmosphere and detail. The characters all look like someone that I would immediately pick up and main in a fighting game. The only slight knock against the visuals I would give are with the use of CGI. Sometimes it looks great, but occasionally it’s a little off-putting. For point of comparison, it looks way better than the recent Berserk series, but not quite as good as the ArcSys games like Guilty Gear Xrd or Dragonball Fighter Z. With how detailed everything is, I get it. I’d have liked more traditional animation, but I get it. Even with that though, the overall visual style totally makes up for it.

Seriously, Dorohedoro is dope. If you any of this weirdness sounds cool to you, check it out. I haven’t even gotten into the demons or the dude that turns people into mushrooms. There’s so much weird stuff in this show. It’s on Netflix. Watch it.