Those who never heard of Akira Toriyama before his passing may have been puzzled by the commotion caused by his death. It was one of the big ones popping up in every newspaper, like Michael Jackson or Queen Elizabeth II. Except, he was not the King of Pop or the Queen of England, but rather a reserved Japanese artist who few would recognize if they saw him on the street. Goku, on the other hand, is recognized even by my mother who used to watch Dragon Ball on TV with me everyday and laugh at the jokes written by a self proclaimed country bumpkin who lived three continents away. You might not have read Toriyama’s work directly, but you most likely have read something influenced by him. It is the case where he might not be your favorite, but he’s quite likely your favorite’s favorite. Even Eiichiro Oda, who greatly admired Toriyama, decided to take a very rare three-week break from One Piece to take care of his health after hearing the news of Toriyama’s death.
As I grew up with Dragon Ball, I sometimes assume everyone has read it. However, as new generations come along and people start getting into manga all the time, it might not be the obvious choice anymore with so many newer and popular titles around. Dr. Slump, Toriyama’s quirky comedy masterpiece, is even less of an obvious choice (though its protagonist, the cyborg Arale, is arguably more popular than even Goku in Japan). Dragon Ball’s lengthy 519 chapter run and Dr. Slump’s nonsensical sense of humor could both be an entry barrier for some. Sand Land, on the other hand, is a single volume story with a much more tame sense of humor, pretty much free of depraved jokes about older men trying to see young ladies’ panties and getting nosebleeds.
In Sand Land, Beelzebub, the prince of demons, spends his time robbing water supply trucks to distribute water to his fellow monsters. Water is a monopoly of the King – a chubby, greedy monarch, who uses the army to control his subjects – in this desert world the characters inhabit. After another successful heist, Beelzebub is approached by the human Sheriff Rao who tells him the tale of a mythical lake hidden away somewhere in the desert. Rao is on a quest to find this lake and is willing to side with the despicable demons to achieve his goal. Fortunately for him, he asks Prince Bub for help – possibly the only demon who would be willing to tag along with him on his journey. Bub is a playful demon child and a fan of the Dragon Quest games (who famously Toriyama was the character designer for) and would hardly pass on the opportunity to go on a quest himself.
There is nothing too complex or convoluted to Sand Land’s plotline or worldbuilding. Toriyama himself said he only worked on it because he wanted to draw a story about an old man and a tank for his own amusement. Sand Land doesn’t need a ton of lore and backstory to make its world come alive. It only takes time to do exposition dialogue when necessary. And when it does, it tries to surround it with enough jokes to keep it amusing. Most jokes are in Toriyama’s dialogue. However, there are visual gags all over Sand Land’s pages. You can see Bub popping up in the panels to witness events when the manga explains what happened to the world. There is a confused demon fish sitting on a dry river bed when he wants to show that due to the desert apocalypse the poor aquatic creature no longer has a river to swim in. In a less subtle gag, the King of the demons reads Faust when he permits his son to make a deal with the human Sheriff. While his subjects are dying of thirst the King is portrayed floating on a pool of water. The desert is the home of a gang called “The Swimmers”. They wear nothing but swimming gear even though most of them only heard stories about pools of water large enough you can immerse your whole body in. Those little details go a long way to make such a short manga feel much bigger than it actually is.
It’s an old trope, but Sand Land also plays with the notion of humans being more evil than the demons they fear. Bub and most of his friends are just tricksters and either do wicked things out of necessity or to have fun. It seems they don’t even need to find this lake in the first place as the demons can survive easily by stealing water from the King when they need it. Perhaps, the demons could even overpower the King’s army if they wanted to. The humans, on the other hand, are the ones who destroyed the world with their wars and turned the world into a desert wasteland. The King is the one monopolizing the only water source for profit creating a world of misery and scarcity.
Like Arale and Goku, Beelzebub is a strong child in a world often controlled by morally bankrupt adults. Toriyama really liked pitting the innocence of children against the malice of adults in his jokes, Goku, for instance, can’t really tell a man from a woman, which makes for many awkward and funny situations. In contrast, Bub is only innocent in the sense of being a kind-hearted kid. As a demon who lived through human wars, he knows the world can be violent and cruel. Even so, following the theme of demons being more innocent than humans, when trying to brag about his evil deeds, he can only come up with things like going to bed without brushing his teeth.
In Dragon Ball you see power levels escalate from a monkey boy who can casually throw a car away like it’s made out of cardboard, to people who can blow the moon up with an energy beam or even destroy entire planets. Sand Land brings a nice change of pace with the action focusing more on over the top tank battles. Power levels are replaced by characters trying to figure out things like how to make a tank shoot straight up. It’s good to see Toriyama exploring new ways of developing action scenes, especially considering what battles had become towards the end of Dragon Ball, with characters getting so strong that the fights became somewhat stale and at times even boring.
In 2023 a movie adaptation was released and now there is also an anime series that expands the story created by Akira Toriyama. SAND LAND, an action RPG video game based on the manga is also about to come out. For such a brief manga, it is a bit absurd that there are so many adaptations of it suddenly being released. It shows how much people enjoy Toriyama’s oeuvre when even one of his minor works is being juiced to that extent. Adaptations aside, Sand Land is better enjoyed as the one shot manga Toriyama made to entertain himself after concluding Dragon Ball and works as a solid introduction to one of the greatest manga artists of all time.
Sand Land can be found at good comic book shops, online retailers, eBay, and Amazon/Kindle.
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