Tag: dokurobei

Yatterman Night Character Biography: Dokurobei

(It goes without saying that this spoils a good deal of Yoru no Yatterman / Yatterman Night, so watch the series first if you’re interested, or check out what Doku-chan did in prior Yatterman media)

For the most part Dokurobei is mentioned in passing throughout most of Yoru no Yatterman / Yatterman Night. However, his presence is hinted at from the beginning of the first episode and the ominous looking skull shaped moon (normally a gag from the end credits of prior Time Bokan series, here not so much.)

He shows up in person on the throne of the Yatter Kingdom, “celebrating” the arrival of Leopard and her friends. Confused and unaware of Dokurobei’s origins and his nature they question how he is there and how he is still alive. After Dokurobei explains his past to the group, he states present. He is “Lord Yatterman”, the ruler of the Yatter Kingdom and the cause of so much pain and suffering.

Instead of being a skull shaped stone like before, Dokurobei somehow gained an actual, tall humanoid form .His mustache now goes down his face (or it’s part of a mask), the glasses have been traded in for a monocle, and he now has grey hair with a patch of black sticking out, although the tuffs remain intact. His personality and mannerisms are the same, although played in a darker light.

Somehow, both the original and 2008 happened and the Yattermans’ meddling in the former led to the latter show apparently being Dokurobei’s attempt at revenge towards them (even though are clearly the only characters who aren’t the same in both versions, and was seemingly indifferent to them as well).

Constant failure led to Dokurobei taking matters into his own hands and going all out on Earth itself, wiping out a good deal of it’s population, shattering the moon, banishing the Dorombo gang, and defeating the Yatterman. (whether or not he flat out killed them is never specified)

This wasn’t enough for him, and not only did Dokurobei pose as the Yatterman to taint their reputation and enslave and break humanity under his grip, but he also used propaganda to blame the Dorombo gang for everything bad and that the oppresive Yatter Kingdom, the only inhabitable place on Earth that he rules, is the people’s only salvation.

For some reason being split into four pieces and surviving for eons like that doesn’t mean Dokurobei’s immortal, so to maintain his immortality he has several people work their lives away at a factory to give him power, and plans to exhaust every last human being to death.

To that end, he created robotic shells of the Yatterman and their mechas to serve as his army, and brainwashed and rewired twelve innocent folks into his personal “Yatter-Guardian Gods” to maintain his law and order.

For old time’s sake, Dokurobei offers Leopard and her friends. But knowing that they wouldn’t accept the offer, he quickly refutes and decides to throw them in prison.

After they barely manage to escape, Leopard, Voltkatze, and Elephantus hold off the Yatter-Guardians while Galina and Alouette, taking up the mantle of Yatterman and onboard a newly built Yatter-Wan, proceed to fight Dokurobei, who grows to a colossal size to fight back.

After a long and tense struggle, the new Yatterman are able to strike down Dokurobei, seemingly ending him and his chaos once and for all.

Yatterman 1977 Character Biography: Dokuobei (Part 1)

Since he appears several times throughout the Time Bokan series with different goals each time, I’ll be covering his bio bit by bit, starting with the original 1977 Yatterman.

The self proclaimed god of thieves, Dokurobei (alternatively spelled as Dokurobey or Dokurobee) is the enigmatic man who leads the Dorombo gang on a hunt for fragments of the Dokuro Stone (or Skull Stone if you prefer). Claiming the stone to be a family heirloom that contained a map to a huge gold deposit, he promises to share half the fortune with the trio if they can find the fragments for him.

Dokurobei possesses a deep and intimidating voice and for the majority of the show his true appearance is shrouded in mystery. He is very self-centered and egotistical, and is prone to getting angry at any sign of trouble or disobedience from the Dorombo trio. He also has a crush on Doronjo, something she’ll occasionally try to exploit to get him to reveal to his face to no avail. The Dorombo gang, Boyacky especially, have a habit of calling him “Doku-chan” or some variation much to his annoyance.

He tends to add “Beh” at the end of most of his sentences, much like how his name is simply the Japanese word for skull, “dokuro” with “bei” added at the end. He also tends to shout “Akapontan” at the Dorombo trio, a combination of the Japanese words “anpontan” and “sukatan” which equates to “idiot”, “nitwit”, and the like.

Dokurobei delivers his messages to the Dorombo gang in the form of robots or devices disguised at food, animals, or such, usually in relation with whatever scam the gang was pulling. He informs them about where a Dokuro Stone fragment is possibly located and supposed facts about the area and the fragment is there. This information tends to be faulty at best, which he later acknowledges but unfortunately cannot do much about.

After he’s done explaining, whatever he used to relay his message explodes. At first these were harmless,  but it wasn’t long before they blew up the Dorombo gang. Later on in the series the trio would try to avoid getting caught in the explosions with varying degrees of success.

Every time the Dorombo gang failed, Dokurobei would give them a punishment “worse than their mama”. His excuses were them not finding a Dokuro Stone fragment or losing to the Yatterman, despite his misinformation being partially to blame. Even when they actually got a fragment, he still punishes them anyways seemingly out of habit. He signaled the punishments with a music cue, usually the opening notes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

Dokurobei can be seen as a parody of Gatchaman’s Sosai X (Leader X). Both are unseen forces that have others do their bidding, and it’s through their advice that their subordinates act on and wind up taking the blame for when they lose.

(Spoilers for a 30+ anime ahead)

Eventually the Dorombo gang encountered Dokurobei with the completed Dokuro Stone in an abandoned castle. He looks like a short, portly man with glasses and a long handlebar mustache, balding with tuffs of hair on the sides and a little skull on his forehead. He also wears a purple shirt and skirt, dark purple gloves, boots, and cape, and either tan coloured pants or no pants on at all.

However even his “human” form was yet another robot decoy, and his true appearance was none other than the Dokuro Stone itself.

“Dokurobei” was an alien from the Dokuro planet, renamed Planet XYZ in subsequent media, who had visited the Earth when it nothing more that a ball of magma. The extreme heat split his body into four pieces, and he has spent eons trying to put himself back together.

When nobody would aid him, he made up the story of the Dokuro Stone to sucker somebody into retrieving pieces of his body, and that turned out to be the Dorombo gang. Back in one piece, Dokurobei went back to his planet and left the trio with nothing but broken promises, causing them to disband shortly afterwards.

This too parodies Sosai X. Both were aliens that were stranded on Earth that turned out to have different goals in mind and left when they were seemingly completed, although Sosai X’s were far more cruel and malicious in nature. (ie. blowing up Earth.)

Although Dokurobei’s intentions were innocent enough, his way of going about it and his treatment of others was harsh, and every subsequent appearance made him more villainous than before.