I PLAYED WITH FIRE

I PLAYED WITH FIRE - Story by Michael Derrick - Art by J. Paul Schiek

MILLENNIALS #0008 "Comedian"

Sand Land (review)

In an industry where the most popular manga series span dozens of volumes—where the telling is measured not just in page count but in years—it can feel like a minor miracle when a well-told story comes along that doesn’t require a lifelong commitment or exorbitant financial investment. Because as much as we may love One Piece, those eighty-plus volumes don’t come cheap, and it still has a long way to go to reach the end.

So when a short, well-told story comes along…and it’s written and drawn by one of the most legendary and influential manga creators of all time? Well, if that doesn’t pique your interest, you’re just not paying attention.

Enter Sand Land—a short-but-sweet manga created by the one-and-only Akira Toriyama.

You may have heard of him.

Featuring Toriyama’s continued fascination with hodgepodge demonology and Red Ribbon-style paramilitary antics, Sand Land tells the story of the feisty young Prince of Demons, Beelzebub, and his journey—along with a couple of old men whom you’ll learn to know and love—as they brave the dangers of a drought-plagued desert in search of a mysterious water source known as the Phantom Lake. Plenty of obstacles stand in their way, of course, and by the end you can bet some bonds are forged and lessons learned.

While the commercial benefits of short, one-and-done manga such as this are self-evident, there are some genuine artistic merits as well. Because of the limited page count, Toriyama wastes no time getting right into the meat of the story—and without taking any shortcuts, he manages to tell a compelling tale inside a fully-realized world, all in the span of a mere fourteen chapters.

Ironically enough for a story set in a barren wasteland, one of the most enjoyable aspects of Sand Land is the lush detail Toriyama puts into the artwork. Every page and every panel is packed with delicate but intensely-detailed line art, and while the story moves at a brisk enough pace, you can’t help but feel compelled to slow down and take in the scenery. 

Further cementing Toriyama’s artistic triumph is the A-plus character design of the protagonist, Beelzebub. This little demon is an archetypal Toriyama hero to a T—stout, young, and powerful, with a heart of gold—but there’s just something special about this particular design that really makes you feel compelled to turn the page and see what the little demon does next, whether he’s bouncing around in one of the many fight scenes, or emoting in those quiet character moments. 

Maybe it’s the horns.

 

Tonally, Sand Land can be surprisingly serious at times. It’s not the out-and-out comedic farce you might expect from Toriyama, but rather an emotionally resonant adventure that—while certainly containing its fair share of silliness—never descends into outright Dr. Slump-style absurdity.

As the front cover of the volume implies, the main mode of transportation for Beelzebub and the gang is a good-old-fashioned tank, which at times during the story almost feels like a character unto itself.  Perhaps the tank exists solely to give Toriyama an excuse to draw plenty of crowd-pleasing explosions. Unfortunately, the tank battles are just not as dynamic as you might expect, and at certain points they’re even a bit hard to follow. Only the occasional “full-speed ahead!” close-up helps to orient the reader as to what exactly is going on during those tense sequences. 

And while the vehicular warfare is nonetheless entertaining, it’s the one-on-one fisticuffs starring Beelzebub that really give this manga its action-packed credentials.

In Toriyama’s brief commentary on Sand Land, which is the first thing you’ll see when you open the front cover, he talks about how difficult a project it was to create—specifically due to the tedious artistic demands of drawing that highly-detailed tank over and over again. He even goes as far as to say he “went through hell drawing the whole thing.” It’s a rather negative and even ominous statement to make to your readers right before they dive headfirst into what is ultimately a high-spirited romp, but the truth is, none of the difficulty Toriyama references is evident in the art: the quality never dips, and the story itself never loses its sense of momentum or fun. Perhaps it’s fitting that Toriyama went through hell creating this magnificent work of art...

Because just as Beelzebub and his friends end up learning the hard way: if you want to reach the oasis, you must first cross the desert.