Dragon Ball Creator Brings New Anime To Disney+
In the anime fandom, few names are spoken of quite so reverently as Akira Toriyama. It’s not hard to see why: when he wasn’t busy designing characters for games like Chrono Trigger (arguably the best RPG ever made), he was creating Dragon Ball, the manga and anime series that essentially served as the face of Japanese animation for Western audiences in the late ‘90s and beyond. Good news, Toriyama fans–the king is back, and his newest anime Sand Land will be premiering on Disney+ and Hulu on March 20.
Of course, calling Sand Land “new” is only half-true. The series won’t premiere until March 20, but it is based on a manga that Toriyama created over two decades ago. That may be good news for manga fans, as you now have over two weeks from the time of this writing to binge-read as much of the comics as you can before the show premieres.
Although the anime is filled with the many colorful characters we’ve come to expect from Akira Toriyama… is the oddball relationship between Sheriff Rao and Beelzebub.
If you’re a bigger fan of watching anime than reading the manga it’s inspired by, then you can still do a little homework ahead of the show’s premiere. Last year, there was a Sand Land movie that was released to generally widespread acclaim. Critics praised how the movie blended 2D elements and CGI elements into an engrossing story that balanced cool characters with a story containing powerful statements about everything from environmentalism to war.
At this point, you probably have two big questions. First, if Sand Land already came out as a film, then what is the upcoming TV show about? That answer is simple: the TV show is an expanded adaptation of the manga, one that effectively turns the one-hour, 46-minute film into 13 shorter episodes.
Sand Land is an expanded version of the film of the same name that bowed last year.
That makes the TV show kind of a middle-of-the-road option for fans who want a story that’s a bit longer than the movie and that more faithfully adapts the manga (which only had 14 chapters to begin with).
The second big question: what is Sand Land about, exactly? It takes place in a Mad Max-style world where water has become wildly scarce, causing a brave Sheriff to team up with the demon prince Beelzebub to find a new water supply. Together, this unexpected duo faces many dangers, but none are quite as persistent as an evil king who hopes to hoard all of the water for himself.
Although the anime is filled with the many colorful characters we’ve come to expect from Akira Toriyama, the central appeal of the show, like the manga and movie before it, is the oddball relationship between Sheriff Rao and Beelzebub. The two personify the odd couple dynamic that makes Dragon Ball Z scenes between Goku and Vegeta so entertaining. At the same time, Sand Land has more of a message than DBZ, and the growing camaraderie between these two very different characters who would otherwise be mortal foes is downright inspirational.
{Sand Land] takes place in a Mad Max-style world where water has become wildly scarce, causing a brave Sheriff to team up with the demon prince Beelzebub to find a new water supply.
As for us, we really dug the Sand Land manga and movie, and the upcoming anime looks like it will be a hit when it premieres on Disney+ and Hulu on March 20. It may not become the instant hit that Dragon Ball did, but when someone is as talented as Toriyama, even his most average work is leaps and bounds above the competition. If we had to guess how many stars this upcoming show will get, there’s only one answer: “it’s over 9,000!”
