サンドランド映画とストリーミングレビュー：スコットランドはアニメが大好き 2024

I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but despite being an anime fan since my childhood in the 1980s and 90s, I’ve never read a single page of manga drawn by, nor watched a single episode of anime associated with, legendary mangaka Akira Toriyama. While best known for his long-running Dragonball manga (an anime incarnation of which continues to run today), he also wrote and drew multiple other serials during his lengthy career. Dragonball and its endlessly drawn-out fights never appealed to me, and in fact I’ve tended to studiously avoid other long-running battle-centric shonen like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece as a result.

So, it was with some trepidation that I attended the Scotland Loves Anime 2024 Glasgow Film Theatre showing of Sand Land, an adaptation of Toriyama’s 2000 single-volume manga. This was an odd choice of film to screen at the festival, because it’s been available to stream in its episodic format on Hulu/Disney+ since March. Sand Land’s movie incarnation is its original form, however, as released in Japanese theatres in August last year. Its worldwide episodic streaming release seven months later was timed to coincide with the PS4/PS5/Xbox/PC release of the Sand Land tie-in videogame, which seems to cover more or less the same story beats.

Disney being Disney, they completely failed to publicise the Sand Land anime, despite it being the final work directly associated with Toriyama, a creator beloved wordwide by hundreds of millions of fans. Disney dropped it onto their streaming service with a barely audible whimper, a mark of shameful, negligent disrespect to an important, talented man who died from a subdural haematoma only nineteen days prior to Sand Land’s streaming premiere. There are no doubt many English-speaking Toriyama fans out there who have yet no idea that the Sand Land anime even exists. Shame on you, Disney.

On Hulu (US)/Disney+ (everywhere else) you’ll find thirteen Sand Land episodes, the first six of which, covering the first arc The Story of the Fiend Prince, are what comprise the movie showing at Scotland Loves anime in Glasgow (last weekend), Edinburgh (this weekend), and London (next weekend). This arc adapts the entirety of the original Sand Land manga. Episodes seven to thirteen are an all-new, anime-original story written by Toriyama himself, The Story of the Angel Hero, while he also designed the new characters appearing in it. Sadly, Toriyama did not live to see the reception to his new story. In this review I’ll cover both arcs, as after viewing the movie I then watched the remaining seven episodes on Disney+. I’d advise anyone interested in Toriyama’s Sand Land to watch the whole thing.

Set in the far-future post-apocalyptic desert country “Sand Land”, humans struggle in a dry, hostile environment, barely subsisting on the over-priced bottles of water sold to them by their tubby, corrupt monarch. A society of demons co-exist with the humans, though are generally feared and distrusted. The demons are ruled by King Satan (somewhat innacurately translated as “King Lucifer” in both sub and dub. Any student of Hebrew/Christian mythology will tell you these two titles are often incorrectly conflated together — they do not generally mean the same person). In the Japanese audio, King Satan is most certainly referred to as “Satan-sama”, not “Lucifer”. King Satan’s diminutive pink-skinned, spiky-haired, pointy-eared son Beelzebub (Belz for short) is our protagonist. Toriyama is known for centering short characters in his manga — look at Arale in Dr Slump and Goku in pre-timeskip Dragonball. (Just because I’ve never read Toriyama doesn’t mean I’ve been able to escape his outsized influence on popular culture!)

Accompanying Belz on his journey to find an alternative source of water to supply the parched Sand Land residents are his demonic retainer Thief, and human sheriff Rao. Each of the three main characters demonstrate hidden strengths and personality quirks, with the tank-driving Rao particularly struggling with guilt from past trauma. Toriyama’s apparent initial idea for Sand Land was that he wanted to draw a manga about an old man driving a tank, and somehow the rest of the characters and story developed around that. In terms of plot structure, it’s weirdly almost identical to 1995’s Tank Girl, except of instead of a rebellious, hedonistic Lori Petty we get a stoic male ex-soldier; instead of a half-kangaroo sex buddy we get a pint-size pink demon (thankfully without the sex buddy part), and instead of Malcolm McDowell chewing the scenery as a water-hoarding corporate overlord, we get a greedy, obese king keeping the water supply artificially scarce. The first arc’s ending is basically the same as Tank Girl’s too. Sand Land’s story is completely fine, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Compared to Scotland Loves Anime 2024’s other films, the relatively light-hearted and action-heavy Sand Land comes off as junk food entertainment — bright, enjoyable and fun, but leaves little to digest once the curtains close. I found the endless well-staged action scenes to blend into one another as the film progressed, and I struggled to maintain consciousness towards the end. This may partly be due to it being shown as the final movie of the second day when I was already feeling fatigued, but my eyes often start to gloss over in movies where action is prioritised over character and story.

Production studio Kamikaze Douga animate the majority of Sand Land in cel-shaded CG that suits Toriyama’s simple, clean character designs very well. That the movie looks videogamey at times only confirms to me that it was likely produced mainly as a promo for the possibly more profitable game. When characters aren’t important enough to have their own 3D model, they’re instead animated in 2D, which is reasonably well integrated, if often noticeable. Backgrounds can rotate and swoop in 3D, adding to the videogame-world look, but occasionally they’re also painted backgrounds, depending on the mood desired by the director.

While Belz is the supposed protagonist, most of the emotional depth comes from Rao who struggles with his past as an unwitting bringer of death and catastrophe. There’s a strong anti-war, anti-nuclear weapon message to Sand Land that I can’t imagine being too controversial to anyone except wannabe death-mongering warlords. In typical shonen fashion, characters who initial appear as antagonists eventually come around to the main characters’ point of view, and become valuable allies. I hear Dragonball did much the same thing. I particularly like the four “Swimmers”, mostly-nude speedo-wearing troublemakers who are both unbelievably powerful yet somewhat pathetic at the same time. Enormous-chinned, slicked-haired General Are is good fun too. I didn’t find cackling villain General Zeu particularly interesting, however.

Overall, the movie version of Sand Land, covering the first six episodes, is fun, if disposable entertainment. The second arc, exclusive to streaming, carries on directly from the first, with its opening moments doubling as the movie’s post-credit sequence. Belz, Rao, and Thief are once more on a journey to fight against corrupt rulers, this time accompanied by blonde-dreadlocked female character Ann. She’s essentially Sand Land’s version of Tank Girl’s Jet Girl, in that she’s a talented mechanic. She’s also the franchise’s first female character. Yeah, the entire first movie is filled only with male characters, the single female appearance is via a photograph of a character’s dead wife. I guess that’s one way of spectacularly failing the Bechdel test.

Ann brings a lot of fun and energy to an already enjoyable cast, and I love her design. We also meet a cool female demon, Lilith, whose role is a bit of a spoiler. The setting moves to the neighbouring country Forest Land, which as one might expect has a significantly different climate to Sand Land. These differences become very important to the plot. This time the antagonist is self-titled “Hero” Muniel, an angel who is a sanctimonious little prick, and one of the most punchable anime characters I’ve ever seen. Some of his actions border on genocidal, and when he gets his hands on a potentially world-conquering murder machine, we’re back to the old “nuclear war is bad, m’kay?” plot again.

Rao’s past experiences prove important here, as he’s desperate to prevent a similar atrocity to the one he’d caused in the past. Overall, I feel the plot of the second arc is stronger than the first — it’s more emotional, and a little more complex. It builds very well on the themes and characters of the first, and while it remains action heavy, that action is really cool. With the enormous death-star-like mega-weapon, huge bipedal mechs, and multiple tank battles, it feels a lot like those old anime sci-fi epics of the 1990s I used to love.

Watching the second arc has helped to elevate my overall impression of Sand Land. While I doubt it will send me down a Dragonball binge rabbit hole, I’d certainly be more open to watching other Toriayama-related things in future. Dr Slump looks fun, so maybe I’ll give that a try? I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Cowa, another Toriyama one-shot manga on a shelf somewhere. I should dig that out and read it! I’m almost finished with my SLA 2024 writeups now. All I have left is the 4K restoration of Hayao Miyazaki’s Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro. I’ll be back with that one at some point over the next couple of days!

Sand Land
Director: Toshihisa Yokoshima
Screenplay: Hayashi Mori
Character design: Akira Toriyama
Based on: Sand Land (manga) by Akira Toriyama
Music: Yugo Kanno
Studio: Sunrise/Kamikaze Douga/Anima
JP theatrical release: 18th August 2023
UK theatrical premiere: 2nd November 2024
UK Streaming release: 20th March 2024
Runtime: 106 minutes (movie), 13 x 24 minute episodes (streaming)
UK Streaming: Disney+
Language: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio available on streaming
BBFC rating: 15