As every Dragon Ball fan will know by this point in time, Akira Toriyama sadly passed away in March of this year. I won’t spend too much time eulogising him, many others closer to him have put it much better than I ever could, but it was obviously a monumental loss for the world of anime and manga. And games, too.
There quite literally is no Dragon Quest or Chrono Trigger, amongst so much else that his work inspired within video games, so Sand Land – based on one of his own worlds and stories – finally getting its due in both the form of a film (later released as a series in the west) and as a video game felt more than appropriat. It felt like it was always meant to happen. The final result isn’t perfect, granted, but I came away loving it specifically because of how strongly the themes you find in Toriyama’s work come through. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let’s set the scene.
Sand Land is a much lesser known manga title from Toriyama’s catalogue, originally releasing in the year 2000, only consisting of a single volume following Beelzebub (the prince of all demons), Rao (the aforementioned old man), and Thief (another demon that serves as a guide to Beelzebub). The game and series actually added a fourth member to the crew, Ann, a mysterious young woman and mechanic whose story ventures into spoiler territory. They all reside in Sand Land, a desert area ruined by climate disaster and war, and the main setting for the game which you traverse around as you set off on a quest to find a Legendary Spring so that the country’s people have easy access to water again.
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