That aid comes in the form of Sand Land’s demon residents, the much-feared Beelzebub and his sidekick, Thief. Rao harbors a big secret, but before he can spring that news he must first enlist aid for his cause. The Sheriff intends to seek out rumors of a secret government water source so that Sand Land can be restored to some semblance of life. Into this fray comes Sheriff Rao, a small-town law officer with a huge axe to grind against the government. In this case the scarce resource is water, as the government has hoarded all available water supplies and sells them to the embattled populace of Sand Land at massively expensive prices. Survivors of a terrible environmental disaster must compete for scarce resources while trying to navigate the military occupation ordered by their manipulated monarch. Sand Land reads like a typical post-apocalyptic story. Originally serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in the year 2000, it was released as a single-edition manga in the U.S.
Sand Land started out as a personal project for laughs, but Toriyama had so much difficulty drawing the tank that is central to the story that he felt compelled to complete the project as a full-fledged manga series. Toriyama did a number of short manga series in between his other projects. I started with a fun little manga titled Sand Land, written and illustrated by the legendary creator of Dragon Ball, the mighty Akira Toriyama. As such, I have been pulling a lot of graphic novels and manga off of the top of my “to read” pile. Summertime is a good season to catch up on a lot of my light reading. Sand Land is a readable comic but not a very compelling one - even as an Akira Toriyama fan I wouldn’t recommend it. Also I was distracted by how limited Toriyama’s art is - so many of the characters look like Dragon Ball characters! Shiba is like Hercule, Prince Beelzebub is like Son Goku, and Satan IS Dabura! The tank design was cool and Toriyama is still king of the fight scenes - the only part of the book that really grabbed me was when Prince Beelzebub/Goku took on the insect monster towards the end. Nothing terribly interesting happens, the world is unremarkable and the characters are dull. It’s a pretty boring quest for the most part.
Water is a commodity in this dry world and a group of characters set out to find a free water source for the people - the evil King and his forces set out to stop them. Sand Land is derivative of any post-apocalyptic story, though, with the emphasis on tanks and vehicles racing across the desert, it really feels like Mad Max manga for kiddles. For Dragon Ball alone, Akira Toriyama is one of my favourite comics creators ever but, having recently read the first volume of Dr Slump and now Sand Land, he unfortunately doesn’t seem to have made any great books outside of Dragon Ball!
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