Japanese entertainment giant Toho is moving ahead with a third season of Dorohedoro, the cult dark-fantasy anime adapted from Q Hayashida’s long-running manga, the studio revealed Wednesday.
The renewal arrives alongside the season-two finale, with returning director Yuichiro Hayashi marking the moment with a commemorative illustration (full image). MAPPA — the powerhouse studio behind Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Attack on Titan: The Final Season — will also return to produce the new season.
Dorohedoro follows Caiman, an amnesiac man whose head has been transformed into that of a lizard, as he searches for the sorcerer responsible for the curse alongside his partner Nikaido. Hayashida’s manga ran for 18 years across 23 volumes starting in 2000, building an international cult readership on the strength of its grotesque body horror, deadpan humor and bleak surrealist worldbuilding.
The anime adaptation’s first season debuted on Netflix Japan in January 2020 as a streaming exclusive, before rolling out globally on the platform that May. It remained a Netflix-only title outside Japan for nearly six years. In March, Toho inked deals for the title across platforms. Dorohedoro‘s first and second seasons are now streaming in North America on Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu/Disney+ and Rakuten Viki. Season two premiered April 1 in a simultaneous global rollout.
The first season was nominated for Anime of the Year at the 2021 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, losing the top prize to fellow MAPPA title Jujutsu Kaisen. Critical reception was strong across both runs, though the franchise has remained niche relative to MAPPA’s larger commercial properties.
Toho has not yet revealed a release date or distribution partners for the third season.
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