The History of Dorohedoro
A debut in a magazine’s first issue, an eighteen-year run, and a finish line crossed in a third home.
Dorohedoro is Q Hayashida’s dark fantasy manga: a man with a lizard’s head and no memory hunts the sorcerer who changed him, through a city called the Hole. It ran from 2000 to 2018, 167 chapters in 23 volumes, and it survived the death of two of the three magazines that published it.
This page is the publishing record: where it started, what it outlived, and what it became after the final chapter.
THE ROAD TO THE HOLE
Before 20001997 · Sofa-chan
Hayashida debuts with the short story Sofa-chan, a runner-up in Monthly Afternoon’s Shiki Prize for new artists. She had trained as an oil painter at Tokyo University of the Arts.
1999 · Maken X Another
Her first serial: the manga of Atlus’s game Maken X, in Magazine Z. Demons, blades and body horror, drawn a year before Dorohedoro begins.
30 November 2000 · The first issue
Dorohedoro starts in the debut issue of Shogakukan’s Spirits Zokan Ikki, a seinen magazine launched around it and its stablemates. Chapter one introduces Kaiman, Nikaido and the question the whole series asks.
THE LONG RUN
Ikki years2002 · The books begin
Volume 1 reaches shelves on 30 January 2002, under the Ikki Comix label. The tankobon run will keep that label for all 23 volumes, whatever magazine the chapters appear in.
2003 · A new name overhead
The magazine rebrands as Monthly Ikki. The series settles into a monthly rhythm, at the pace of one pair of hands: volumes arrive roughly yearly, sometimes slower.
2009 and 2010 · English, in two steps
Viz Media licenses the series and launches it in English digitally through SigIKKI, its online edition of Ikki, in 2009. Print follows on 16 March 2010.
THE MOVING YEARS
2014 to 20182014 · The first death
Monthly Ikki ceases publication on 25 September 2014. Dorohedoro is left mid-story, fourteen years in, with its ending still four years away.
2015 to 2017 · Hibana
Shogakukan’s replacement magazine Hibana takes the series from 6 March 2015, then folds itself on 7 August 2017. Two magazines gone; the manga is not.
2018 · The ending
In Monthly Shonen Sunday the series finishes on 12 September 2018 with chapter 167. Volume 23 and the expanded All-Star Directory arrive together on 12 November 2018.
AFTER THE END
2019 to today2019 · Dai Dark
Hayashida’s next serial opens in Monthly Shonen Sunday in March 2019: the same grime, pointed at deep space.
2020 · The screen and the art book
MAPPA’s anime runs January to March 2020. The art book Mud and Sludge follows in February, an exhibition of her original drawings opens in Tokyo, and a 14-page special chapter appears in the magazine on 12 February.
2026 · The sequel and the crossover
The anime’s second season premieres on 1 April 2026, eleven episodes, streamed worldwide almost simultaneously. In September, Viz publishes Mud and Sludge in English as a hardcover, six years after the Japanese edition.