Sand Land <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>(Me) <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>(Kids)

Sand Land (Me) (Kids)

Popped down to Palace cinema in the city for a packed screening of Sand Land, part of the Japanese Film Festival Australia. Created by Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball fame), this started as a manga book series in 2000. It seems this film was made slightly before, or at the same time as a TV series covering similar ground. That ground being a Mad Max style wasteland where the water supply is controlled and sold by a rotund King (Chafûrin). An old, local sherriff, Rao (Kazuhiro Yamaji), suspects there's a source of water in the desert a few days drive away and so decides to investigate. Knowing he'll need help, he approaches the gang of demons who live nearby.

The demons chosen to accompany Rao are the keen Beelzebub (Mutsumi Tamura) and the less enthused Thief (Chô). The trio head off but are soon beset by issues, including enormous sand snakes, marauding punks and the King's military units. As their vehicles tyres were punctured by said punks, Rao commandeers a tank, setting the might of the state onto them. Enter two main antagonists, preening General Are (Satoshi Tsuruoka) and megalomaniacal General Zeu (Nobuo Tobita). These guys harry our small band of heroes until certain truths are uncovered about Rao and his past.

There are plenty of oddities in this story, none less so than The Swimmers, a family of mutants in small budgie smugglers, who take pleasure in chucking spanners in all the works. Directors Toshihisa Yokoshima and Hiroshi Kôjina don't shy away from the heavier themes either, with the assumed genocide of a tribe called the Picchi acting as a motivator against royal power. The animation is fine in a cutesy manga way and the writing, by Hayashi Mori and Toriyama has some winning elements to it, especially for the junior folk. The gimmick of naming charcters after various cultures' gods is a nice shout (see Ra, Zeus, Ares, Shiva, and others I have likely missed).

It looks like this is the final work from Toriyama, as he succumbed to a brain tumour in March of this year. He's left quite the legacy, especially for manga and anime otaku.

Sand Land screened at the Japanese Film Festival but will probably be available on some streaming platform soon enough.

See also:

Not too similar, I know, but Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll (1993) was a fun watch, and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell (1995) is a touchstone of Japanese anime.

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