Akira Toriyama needs no introduction, but most of his non-Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump related works do often fall through the cracks, so to speak…. so one wonders why the hell in 2023 and 2024 there was a sudden deluge of adaptations of his Sand Land manga series.
Even here we got a new edition for the manga as a small volume or a deluxe big one inclusive of extra material, alongside the film, the anime series on Disney Plus and even a videogame for PS4/PS5/X-Box Series and PC was made.
It wasn’t even an anniversary thing as Sand Land was released in 2000.
I guess why not, 2023 was kind of a slump for most DB related projects, mostly leading up to the announcement of Sparking Zero, and i guess why not, just using the Akira Toriyama name ensures sales, and unlike most of his other short stories that were eventually compiled in volumes alongside other one-shots (like Pola & Roid, for example), people knew of Sand Land existing, as the “desert manga with demons and tanks made by the Dragon Ball guy”.
Sure as hell was more well known than Nekomajin.
So i figured let’s give the thing a review and see how it holds up, as it became an accidental elegy of sorts as Toriyama would pass away mid-way through the anime adaptation’s broadcast.
In a world devasted by natural disaster and conflict, water has become scarce, the main river bringing most of the human country having dried up, leaving people to pay excessive prices to buy water from the king’s protected supply, and also a lot of robbing each other of the precious liquid.
In this desertic world, one day Sheriff Rao, one of the major soldiers in the king’s army, gets fed up with the greedy despot, and approaches the demons of Sand Land in order to search for a new source of water, and they agree, with the prince Beelzebub and his fellow demon friend Thief agreeing to this peculiar team effort.
In their quest they have to eventually steal a tank from the king’s army, which puts a target on them, but their combined powers and expertise led them to discover the supposed dried up source , they find a lake that acts as the king’s reserve that let him have a monopoly over water, and they eventually overthrow his regime by destroying the dam and restoring water to the country.
It’s a pretty simple story, it touches upon the expected themes (climate change, war, race prejudice) but not any deeper than the target demographic would understand (this was also published in Shonen Jump), it’s not too deep, but the setting is unique, something different from most of Toriyama’s usual fare, the characters are likeable, they have good designs and chemistry, plus Toriyama gets to drawn tanks, he does loves his machines, plus he gets to make another adventure, which fits his writing style more.
Even if Sand Land is less of a comedy and slightly more “serious”, an epic adventure where there are actual stakes for everyone, humans and demons alike.
I love how Beelzebub’s father is just Darbula with horns an a goatee, and how the initial “collab request” is expedited by Rao just giving the prince a PS6 and some games. XD
Saving the world from a water shortage is important, but getting to play Dragon Quest XIII is what really sells it.
While this is post-original DB Toriyama,… actually, you can tell that he still had it, so to speak, even though its kinda hard to believe that this is him post-DB where he didn’t have Torishima giving him a lot of critical feedback to make the final product better.
Most likely because this was never meant to last any longer than it did, so Toriyama didn’t get distracted as much and had to be reined in pre-emptively. Maybe.
Regardless of that, i do find Sand Land to be ultimately quite decent, it’s nothing that spectacular or deep, but it was never meant to be that, just a fun desert adventure in a fantasy sci-fi setting where demons and humans face a world-wide drought and really like driving tanks, and it’s quite the nice little manga, the main trio has good chemistry, and as said before it’s a case of Toriyama doing a slighly more “serious” shonen manga AND reining in his usual style of comedy to avoid it overtaking the plot and tone, a combination that actually works nicely in this case.
It’s enjoyable read but again, it’s just decent, and even if i do believe the new wave of adaptations was – ironically – due to a drought in DB content overall, it’s still weird that all of a sudden THIS short series became a franchise between 2023 and 2024.
We’ll get to those adaptations eventually, i have no hurry, though i mostly wanna cover the game, since it was developed by ILCA, which previously did another anime RPG, One Piece Odissey, which i quite liked.
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