How was the Dorohedoro anime made?

The characters are drawn by hand; the Hole itself is largely built as 3D environments, so the camera can move through streets as cluttered as the manga’s. Hayashi has said he handled the background layouts personally on the first season, a director doing an art department’s work to keep the world faithful.

Twelve episodes, 12 January to 29 March 2020 on Tokyo MX and other Japanese channels, with Netflix carrying it in Japan at launch and worldwide from May 2020. It adapts roughly the manga’s first forty chapters.

The Japanese Blu-ray boxes added six short bonus episodes, pieces of the manga’s everyday comedy that the season had no room for. They remain the strongest argument for the physical release.

A sequel season was announced in January 2024, four years after the first, and first planned for 2025. In October 2025 the makers moved it, openly, to spring 2026, with a new key visual by Kishi.

It premiered on 1 April 2026, eleven episodes, streamed almost simultaneously worldwide on services including Crunchyroll and Netflix. Hayashi and Kishi returned. Behind them the workflow had been rebuilt: background layout went to MAPPA’s art team, and the 2D and 3D sides were staffed as separate dedicated teams, where the first season had doubled the roles.

In interviews around the second season, the staff describe the goal plainly: keep the first season’s look, and get the characters’ expressions closer to Hayashida’s own. Fidelity to her line was the brief, six years on.