it's over 9,000 [Music] w [Music] [Music] welcome super Elite Warriors to final forum a podcast for the discussion of all things Dragon ball I am your host jelly and Elite recruiting member of the Frieza force on a mission to find the best Warriors from across the Galaxy to join the greatest arm of all time and I am joined as always by my new recruit co-host this is the bikini and this is our Dragon Ball aeen we have no time for frivolousness and foolishness like we usually indulge in
well no we are super serious in the Frieza Forest what are you talking about we have we have no time for for silliness today we got a lot to get through today and today I'm pretty sure you noticed from the title of the episode but if for some reason you didn't look at the title of the episode today it is episode one of well full episode one of Dragon Ball aeen and we're going to be talking about sand land cir Toriyama’s uh manga and now anime and video game
franchise at this point is it like is it Toriyama’s third biggest franchise at this point I guess you how do you how do you quantify Dragon Quest well I would say Dragon Quest is probably his biggest do you think that's his though because well I mean it's it's kind of synonymous with him because okay it's its entire art style is based on his and he's done a ton of character designs for for Monsters and characters and all throughout the the life of that Series so then that would
drop uh sand to Fourth I would think then so yes today we're going to be talking about sand land and we're going to do our best to cover every element of it I think yeah I I got a little uh a little snippet here I could I didn't want to do normally when we watch you know episodes of of anime I do like a an episode recap I didn't want to do that here because honestly I feel like this is something that people should ex should experience kind at least a little bit blind to it about what's going to
happen because there's they do some interesting things with the story and it's on Hulu yes it's on Hulu and I I think is it on Disney plus as well yeah it's on Hulu in the US I think in other countries it's on Disney plus we'll try not to be spoilery if we do like eventually we're going to get into spoilers and when we do I think we'll th try and throw a spoiler tag on it yeah I don't I'm pretty sure I don't have any any spoilers in here so we should be good we should be good for this part at
least I think all right so 50 years ago the entire world turned turned into a desert humans started fighting in a desperate attempt to acquire water the rain ceased and the rivers ran dry water now only comes from a single source and that source is controlled by the king sounds like something out of mad max doesn't it well you're not far off in my opinion sand land I believe is Toriyama’s take on the post-apocalyptic dystopia he touches on some very adult topics like
corruption colonialism and genocide uh but he also talks about things like honor Redemption and responsibility uh he makes a few very Salient points about the Restriction of resources in a society to prop up the ruling class and if Dragon Ball was apolitical it's very hard for me to assume the same thing is going on here however despite having a lot to say about such heavy topics Toriyama still manages to infuse this short series with an immense amount of charm and the cast
including minor characters like the swimmers have rewarding story arcs that pay off beautifully in the conclusion of the first part of the story The Art is very much what we've come to expect from the creator of Dragon Ball and his technical drawing skills really shine in the vehicles and Technology of the setting the jux Theos of these masses of metal and Engineering against the classic Toriyama character designs sort of mirrors that Clash of serious topics and irreverent humor that's that's
present in the story itself uh it's actually very fitting I think that we are talking about sand land after finishing Dragon Ball as this feels as close to a spiritual successor I think as anything I've ever seen I could see that following the end of Dragon Ball Akira Toriyama did not cease working entirely and when I say the end of Dragon Ball I'm not talking about the Dragon Ball portion of Dragon Ball where we are right now I'm talking about the end of his original run of
Dragon Ball which includes what we call Dragon Ball Z mhm so he got to the end he didn't just stop working entirely he still produced various one shot shots and short works for shua including alien peky and toim meca babou of demon Village Kawa and Ka kajika from 96 through 98 and I think Kawa actually if you ask him asked him he had said for a long time that was the favorite thing he ever made so we'll have to track that down at some point definitely the workload though on
all this was much lessened for him as these were more casual gigs and they'd run once or for a few short weeks with his involvement being a selling point to try and pump up sales of whatever shua magazine they found themselves in sand land was serialized in weekly shown and jump from May to August 2000 and collected into a single tono Bond or trade paperback in November of that year for its US release it started running in VI media's Shonen Jump magazine in 2003
and then was released in a single volume in December of that year a full Ken bond with some color pages and original rough sketches from Toriyama was released in Japan in 20123 and a full color version began running in Psycho jump in September 2023 to replace the full color run of Dragon Ball GT's animanga which ended at that time and an animanga is a manga based on an anime as opposed to the more traditional other way around prior to the release of Akira Toriyama’s manga theater by viz in
2021 sand land was one of the few Toriyama works that was actually licensed and released in English so you had like obviously Dr slump and obviously Dragon Ball and sand land I can't remember if Kawa was and then I think the only other one that was at that point was nekom Majin but not even all of nekom Majin Toriyama said that he wanted to try his hand at a more Bleak world and darker story but that he also had no interest in writing or drawing things that are more realistic and down
to earth he figured if he was going to take the time to write something it might as well be Fantastical He also mentioned that he has long been interested in the subject the idea of a world subjected to drought and that bears out as he previously wrote a one shot called mysterious rain Jack and another called pink the rain Jack and that one like I mentioned it is it's actually available in Akira Toriyama’s manga theater pink the rain Jack and it received an anime film adaptation also I
did watch that actually recently it's not bad but oh okay we'll talk about it like maybe separately or something another time all right he intended for sand land to kind of be his last Harrah and wanted it to be his so much so that he didn't utilize an assistant and he drew the entirety of the work himself every single week in terms of what for lack of a better term we might call real work he held fairly True to this being his last thing for about 13 years after sandan wrapped up he wrote a few
chapters over the course of several years of nekom Majin Z and nekom Majin Z is a cat-based Dragon Ball Z parody so he also worked on a a one shot with one piece Creator hro Oda called cross Epoch he did character work for the game blue dragon and it's accompanying anime animation and did a few one shots in 2008 and 2009 and now that might sound like a lot but over the course of 13 years it was by my count like 12 total manga chapters and character designs for one game that's
not all that much he's still working obviously but very casually very much on on his own terms up until Dragon Ball Evolution makes him decide to come back to drag ball and he starts working on it heavily with the movie Dragon Ball Battle of Gods uh which wound up pulling him back more into regular serialization with Joo the collective patrolman and then his work with toyotaro on the Dragon Ball on Dragon Ball super and the Manga and Anime and everything there and then
really his last big contributions to everything are the Dragon Ball super movie uh superhero uh sand land which is now out and ready for everyone and has been for months and then there's daa which at the time that this gets released I think we'll already be starting I hope so I'm looking forward to it I'm looking forward to Da but da will be like the last thing with a lot of Toriyama influence well a lot of Toriyama direct oversight yeah speaking of Toriyama he stated once
in an interview that he lost the hand grip pen holder he used throughout his career shortly after the end of sand land and couldn't find a new one that felt right in his hand it's basically his excuse for why he hardly wrote anymore Toriyama said he wanted sand land to be something he did for himself that he would enjoy which was why he had a demon as the main character included a tank as a major piece of the story and set it in a desert where backgrounds would be easy
to draw he wound up finding the tank extremely time-consuming to draw which I can understand because once you see the art for it you see that he was very detail oriented on that mhm and regretted bringing it in but had already committed to it and for once in his career had the entire storyline planned out and the tank was part of it and he had to keep drawing it week after week which he claimed led him to barely sleep with the story being more mature in his mind and incorporating themes of
Fates intertwin through past events Toriyama knew there would be or there would have to be many older characters but also he wanted the story accessible for Shonen readers so he circumvented the challenge by having Beelzebub be very old old in human years but still very young in the demon realm he got to have an immature boyish character who was simultaneously old enough to have some connection to the past history of the world he said Beelzebub was his favorite character in
the story ultimately because he found the character had just the right amount of strength and wasn't too far beyond normal human strength in the way his past characters were uh how about some classic Toriyama subversions and inversions uh he makes demons the heroes of the story he has a character be elub who outwardly says that he's nasty and evil but is perhaps the most heroic character in this story in an interview he said he completely inverted his story of creation the
backstory of sand land in his mind is that God created almost all living things but the devil created demons and Humanity uh Satan created humans on a lark and gave them lessoned abilities and in intelligence getting basically his jollies from watching them flail around uselessly uh eventually humans however exceeded the power they were originally granted I'm assuming through technology uh bringing complaints from God and so Satan struck them down bringing them
Calamity from which they would have to rebuild he also said he modeled the tank after a penguin which I can kind of see now that now that I read that uh both in opposition to the desert setting and against what one would expect from a tank normally being kind of like lower to the ground very low profile and boxy yeah and he he said like my tank would be super easy he he has like all this if you read the interview inter that I read which I found the interview on Ken shu's
website mhm if you read the interview he has like all this like really in-depth backstory it seems like for this you know like I said all this stuff with that that you just mentioned with God creating everything but but the devil created humanity and then and and these things are also never mentioned in the manga by the way never these are all just extraneous things that he thought of and then like with with the tank being designed after a penguin he said like yeah normally a tank would be super
low profile so that it wouldn't so it wouldn't flip over he's like my tank is super top-heavy it would flip over immediately which is why they had to use the anti-grav stones oh okay that makes sense in order to lighten the top heaviness of it and make it able to like roll around on the ground there's this things in these in these tanks that make them that are called anti-grav stones that are just meant to make the tanks light it's just it's it's magic don't don't
don't think about it too much but but so before getting further into these notes I think like I'll try ripping the story a bit Yeah is is it's the story of a sheriff Ral who is trying to find a spring cuz he has seen these birds that are water birds and he sees Fishers or something like that yeah he sees them every every year at this time of year and he thinks they're on like a migratory thing to a spring and everyone's like that's crazy there's no water water the only person
who has water is the king and he's like yeah I think cuz he has this spring and he's not telling us about it we got to go find this spring and so it's it's like a road trip movie with with uh raal and beelzebub and a character that they call thief and they have to go on this road trip to find the water and then there's a a lot of stuff with them and interacting with other people and po Shenanigans and Sue and potentially finding the water and then like and with the the anime adaptation so here's
here's what happened there was a movie that came out in Japan was it last year was it 2023 it's kind of not all that important because the it came out as a movie that was like I think 107 minutes long like I think an hour 47 and then when they announced that it was looks like was J sorry it it July of 2023 is when it was released okay so July of 23 it was released as a movie in Japan and then they announced that it's coming to the US except it's not coming as a movie it's coming as a series and
that initially when I first was reading about this I was like that's very confusing why aren't we getting the movie and I originally very much intended to watch the series and then try and track down the movie and then I watched the series and it's not that I actually wouldn't watch the movie I actually will maybe talk more about this well whatever we'll just kind of let the the thoughts flow for a bit but I maybe would watch the movie because I would potentially be
interested in seeing a short shorter version of it but what the show is for the first I think six episodes is it is the movie Just with some more scenes added so each episode of the show is about what was it like 22 or 24 minutes yep and there's like an intro song and an outro song so each episode is actually about 19 to 20 minutes time six me I I do want to jump in real quick the the the the opening and ending theme are worth a watch too by the way they're really well done the
opening theme was I didn't watch the ending theme ever cuz oops because the story was so good you just wanted to get to the next episode yeah yeah but uh so they there's about about 2 hours of actual animation within sand within this sand land anime the first six episodes and so like 13 minutes-ish 10 to 13 minutes probably of like additional stuff that wasn't in the movie so really it's not that much different of an experience I wouldn't think although 10 minutes could kind of
be a lot and then what they did when they when they released it here is they released those first six episodes and the seventh all in the first day because they're like H everyone knows the story of sand land right so here's seven episodes and I think they were hoping that people would just throw it on kind of knowing what sand land was thinking there's seven episodes and then the seventh episode is actually like the start of a whole new storyline for our three main characters
and then they released one episode every week for a while until they got to the 13th episode so who are our characters in this let's talk about them a little bit there's our main character kind of be alub and I say kind of because I think it's between him and Ral I would argue that Ral is actually the main character for this show I kind of would too but Beelzebub is like who the marketing is all focused around yeah and he's yet another case of Toriyama inverting things and playing on
culture to create something different sand lands Beelzebub is a young Brazen handsome prince of the demons and the hero of the story Beelzebub culturally is one of the great Demons of the Christian religion Beelzebub is also known as Lord of the Flies one of the seven princes of hell and is even sometimes used as another name for Satan himself opinions differ slightly on what exactly the name means as it may also translate to Lord of all that flies but it derives from
ball zabb with ball being given the title given to gods of the semitic people and ultimately used to describe Phil philonic Gods who were not Yahweh the Jud the Judeo-Christian God babab was a god of ekron and was often depicted as expelling flies the cause of people's sickness thus he's the lord of the literal flies themselves there's also a possibility that the name derives from Bal zul which means lord of the Heavenly dwelling and was used as a derogatory pun by the Israelites to
describe a God who was not their own and thus had no power over centuries and thanks to the works of various exorcists and even John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost Beelzebub has come to be seen as a high ranking demon of Hell often the second in command after Satan and one of the most prominent fallen angels of Christian religion and be zuub is like I said he's the hero of this story and it's actually like it's one of the kind of recurring jokes is he's like I'm
bad and you should never say that I'm good or a nice guy in fact just yesterday and he like talks about all the bad things he did and it's always like I stayed up without going to bed like I didn't brush my teeth yeah and you know as Ral is getting to know him he's like you've never like killed anyone and he's like why would I kill humans they're so weak and stupid why it's like dumb to even kill them and R's like huh and and then later on he's like R is like I killed many people in in the
war and Beelzebub and and and Thief are like what so that's like a like a recurring like theme is that that yeah the demons the demons in general are like less evil than everyone thinks then there's Sheriff Ral and he's another character with some layers to him not only in a literary sense but culturally R is both an Indian and a Chinese surname and researching the word and name Ral led to some interesting parallels especially considering who this character is in
this story starting where Toriyama might actually have drawn some inspiration from ra is a character in the greyhawk campaign of Dungeons and Dragons and is a God of Peace reason and serenity his symbol is of a simple white heart and if you look at some of the early colorization art of RA Sheriff R the badge over his own heart appears to be whitish in color so maybe um I'll try to remember to post some of these images to social media as well um but raal the
name Ral that's also the name of a main antagonist in Fist of the North Star and he's dubbed the supreme ruler of the Century's end Toriyama was likely playing on inverting the main antagonist of a manga that provided him some inspiration as if you remember Kazuhiko Torishima told Toriyama he should look at some Fist of the North Star for tips on how to make Dragon Ball more popular or he was directly playing on a Dungeons and Dragons thing digging around further I also found that raal is
also a variation of the title Raj or ra Ry which is a historical title of nobility in the Indian subcontinent derived from the word Raja or King raal were given immense power even during British rule and were considered autonomous native rulers with the title ra bahodur being an honor bestowed upon individuals for outstanding access service to the empire did Toriyama know that unlikely but it is just kind of a super interesting parallel with a lot of this sand lands themes of like about
colonialism and especially like with the character of raal and kind of his reveals as now we're going to get a little more spoilery he like was a former General working for the army of the king yeah then there's also how General Ral is also known as or Sheriff Ral rather is also known as general Shiva this is obviously meant to be an intimidating name and it's one that Ral is attempting to leave behind as Shiva was the destroyer of Hinduism and ra no longer wishes to associate himself with
that past history of Destruction again we're probably going to kick the can of Shiva discussion further down the road because we can talk about like gods of destruction in Dragon Ball super that seems like a good idea but I found some of that stuff with Ral interesting then there's Thief he's the third of our main Trio and it's interesting he's this old demon that that Beelzebub insists come with them on their Adventure because really because none of the other demons want to because
it's going to be very dangerous and they're going to have to be working close with a human and none of them trust humans very much but his character in Japanese is Shifu actually is his is his name and that's means like master or teacher now why it was changed to Thief for English is kind of anyone's guess now granted he does steal things and he is stated to be like a master Thief yeah and he like dresses as Santa Claus whenever he does it because it's the perfect disguise
because nobody would suspect Santa Claus of stealing things and and he's like because if you get doesn't he say at one point like if you get caught you could just pretend you're Santa delivering gifts or something or on a dve or something he says something like that I feel like yeah it's it is just like it's like in case you get caught no one will think you're a demon they'll just think you're Santa but like we know English audiences can handle a character named Shifu thanks to Kung Fu
Panda I think it has to do with how his name is said in Japanese and it comes across more as sheath instead of Shifu and I think maybe there was a mix up there in Translation where somebody's like she like like oh well he steals things they call him sheath and in order to kind of like sync up the voice lines a little bit better maybe we just call him Thief like that's kind of my my thought there maybe yeah but yes so he's like this like it would make more sense for
him to be Shu he's this older and then what's what's actually again this is like another Toriyama playing on subversions and things he looks way older than Beelzebub and he is like his kind of he's he's kind of his adviser or his like right-hand man or his vizier or whatever you want to call it right I I I actually kind of because of the way Beelzebub’s father kind of uses him as as his eyes when he can't be around him um I I kind of like interpret him almost as like a
retainer yeah yes and he is positioned as being like he he's drawn considerably older than Babb but then when they talk about how old everyone is he says he's not that much older than b actually he just look he just was really unlucky in the looks Department nobody you can't you can't hate people for that I think it's beyond their control I do I think that's Toriyama like playing with subversions and everything again is you think here's this character who looks so much older
and has plays sort of a mentor part and then you find out that he's basically the same age as this like young fool then there's a few other characters so one of the other main characters is General AR and this is a character that our Trio come across early on and they have like an interaction with them where they because they're stealing this tank in order to get across the desert safe cuz the desert is a dangerous place he's trying to stop them cuz you don't want someone stealing your
tank Sheriff Ral manages to with such pinpoint accuracy de demobilize the other tanks without hurting anyone that this General ra is like oh this guy's you are General Shiva like you're the guy I've heard of right and he's like yeah I am if you'd like to remain spoiler-free on sand land skip ahead to 49 minutes and 40 seconds and you should be safe and this ra becomes sort of a an ally yeah he almost he basically switches sides yes talking about ra gets into talking about some of the
differences between the anime and the Manga version yeah and I thought his what he did in the I think it was the anime actually worked a little better for me than in the manga in the anime he picks up his headset after he meets Sheriff Ral and they have their their try I'll try not to keep it super spoilery but they have their discussion of what's really going on mhm and AR gets his headset on and first he says to his menboy it's a shame that we didn't see general or Sheriff Ral and general
Shiva isn't it we like never and his guy his guys are like oh yeah yeah it is a shame and then he gets on his headset and he says if in the in the anime this is he's like if anyone is at the headquarters which is at the South End of the base or the river repeat that that's the headquarters at the Southend like he's basically giving away the location without giving it away he's like got plausible deniability here versus in the manga he just gets on his headset and he tells Shiva like hey
just so you know the base is there go attack it like yeah it just made him seem less like the the anime made it seem like again that plausible deniability thing that I I kind of thought it just was a little bit more clever so there's General AR and he is the son of General Apo who was a friend of sheriff Ral in the Great War that caused sand land to be the way that it is they all worked under General zuu now zuu APO and AR are all plays on gods there's zuu isus APO Apollo and AR
Aries here we got torama is is stealing from Christian demons Hindu deities and Idol and Greek gods to create something of his own and now why did he choose Apollo Aries and Zeus I mean aside from like just the idea of like the the main General being Zeus and like that's the main leader of the Gods and stuff Apollo and Aries are both sons of Zeus with Apollo being like a favored son and AR and Aries being disliked we could see some typical Toriyama subversions here
too as Aries is typically a God of War but en AR is a bit less prone to violence so it's again this is another it's like a kind of interesting one where Toriyama’s playing on a lot of he's like both playing into things and subverting them he's playing into Zeus is the the leader and the head and and Apollo is the more favored and like you know APO was more liked by by zuu than than ARA is so he's like playing right into those things but then he's also playing against type with with General
AR being a little bit like more levelheaded and less of a warmonger and Beelzebub could basically be a Saiyan if he was colored differently zuu looks like Frieza in his floating chair and characters all have like theme named puns the Fingerprints of Toriyama are just all over this thing you've got you know all the everyone in the Army's got like some kind of Greek god pun name and then there's like the swimmers oh I love the swimmers so much oh they're so great
they're this they're this roving band of like desert Bandits who a call themselves the swimmers which there's no water around there's no water around in sand land and then B they're all named at like there's what is there there's like shark and guppy and yeah they're all like named after like fish and stuff aren't they yeah Pike is one of them yeah yeah all right so the anime adaptation on December 8th 2022 Bandai Namco opened a website for sand land prod project and uploaded a teaser video
featuring Toriyama’s art the website featured a countdown that ended on December 17th when it announced that sand land would receive a CGI anime adaptation the anime is co-produced by Sunrise Bandai Namco’s primary animation arm as well as kimaz Doga and anima the anime is directed by Toshi shisa yokoshima who began his career as an animation director for the Mega Man X Series working on Mega Man X Command Mission and mega man X8 before debuting as a director in 2017's c-collar a
45-minute film in which Humanity attempts to survive in a world where ash perpetually falls from the sky after Mount Fuji has erupted I didn't see this but I you I think you did right you like I I looked it up cuz it sounded possibly interesting and it looks pretty cool maybe from a very quick glance like I might try and track it down and watch it yeah maybe maybe we could do a do it work it in here somewhere maybe I don't know supervising Direction was Hiroshi Kina a
well-established director who has worked on Hunter Hunter and is currently the head of Studio live which I feel like we've mentioned before uh they're they're an animation studio that's lent their talents to them basically everything you've ever heard of in terms of anime uh they did like 22 episodes of Dragon Ball 53 episodes of Dragon Ball Z several of the movies even the plan to the to the plan to eradicate the Super Saiyans OVA which we'll get to at some
point in the future music was composed by Yugo cono who has done music for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure great show highly recommended and Batman Ninja among many other titles Batman Ninja crazy we should we should get to that at some point I would gladly watch that one again that's a great one Toriyama did the character work on all the new characters that were part of the anime yeah or at least all the ones that like matter like um the big ones yeah like the the an Agonist
of the the second half for sure and the girl that ends up befriending the group and the cyborg General guy he definitely did all those but I don't know if he did like villager 14 um I know that originally when they were doing the second story for sand land they actually didn't have the the main antagonist in there he wasn't part of it it was just the the cyborg General and then Toriyama actually was like yeah no we should definitely put this character in there so it was actually being developed
without that character and he stepped in was like no we should totally add this guy in here ah okay so on the voice cast piece we won't go through everyone but I wanted to do the main Trio and then people who have special connections to this podcasts areas of Interest so matsum matsumi or is be alub he's a prolific voice oh she I'm sorry matsumi Tamora as Beelzebub is a prolific voice actress with narut Naruto shuin and Dragon Quest among her many many titles and then there's Kazu hero
yamaji as ra which this guy does Dragon Ball super he does hit in Dragon Ball super Cho is Thief this is another prolific actor with roles in one piece Inu Yasha Black Clover Hunter Hunter Naruto shipan and Batman Ninja and there's chauran as the King which is Dragon Ball GT's Hayes Shenron why why did we add this guy to the list sorry I had to I had to get my my jab at Dragon Ball GT in we're good no Keith Silverton is the English voice actor for Satan or as he's called in the
English version just Lucifer they don't call him Satan um can't have those Suburban moms you know getting offended this gives us uh Godzilla reference here as Keith previously lent his voice to the Godzilla anime Trilogy of films made for Netflix by polygon which I will not hold against him or at least I'll try not to those are three of the absolute worst Godzilla things that have ever been created they're terrible and then there's also tomokazu sugita as Papa the leader of the
swimmers who is Lemo in Dragon Ball super and was also in the polygon Godzilla movies and I might hold that against them slightly more nice I think before getting into the video game talk about just everything here the the the anime adaptation the the the manga I really liked it a lot I I am so sad that this became popular at this point in time and not when Toriyama originally did the work because I could absolutely watch hundreds of episodes of this show I love this show it it the way the
the themes that he covers the characters themselves are just ridiculous but wholesome and and competently written at the same time the art is gorgeous even with the anime I me personally I was I've not been a huge fan of the the the CGI uh animation for anime this one I think did a pretty decent job I think the only thing that I noticed that was an issue was for those really long shots I don't know what went wrong but for some reason the the the 3D models for
the characters and like the vehicles and stuff get really I like pixelated at a long distance up close they look great but as they get progressively further away and those longer shots they just look more and more terrible that was really the only issue that I had with with the visuals yeah I thought it looked really good I thought we talked about when we saw the superhero movie that like the first I don't know five minutes or whatever all these like gorgeous 2D things and then it took us a
minute to get into the 3D aspect of that this I acclimated very quickly I think part of that is because I have no other point of comparison yeah right I've never seen sand land look any other way so very easy to get into but I also just think it was a little bit more fluid it looked a little bit better and and yeah I thought it I thought visually I thought it was actually really quite impressive generally I think I I don't I can't think of anything uh music-wise
that like stands out but I think it was pretty competently the music was pretty competently done sound was great yeah like I'm I'm just having the hardest time to think of things that I didn't like about this show there's a lot of conveniences in the plot and the writing one of the big ones and one of the big ones that's hard to like like even kind of head Cannon my way around is how these human characters in this world all have lived their entire lives thinking that demons are at
best a nuisance and at worst like terrifying and evil mhm a demon then just tells a character a major plot reveal just tells him with no evidence whatsoever yeah and he's just like yeah oh okay and then this character tells another character who he has physically fired upon yeah and that character just goes oh yeah okay and I feel like Toriyama also kind of saw that plot hole because of what AR does immediately after that where he goes to find confirmation of what he's been told that is
true he does let them go before getting that confirmation though which yes is a huge plot on it's like you got these three people they stole a tank and they're telling you all kinds of crazy stories and you just go yep okay on your way I'll confirm this later but and and really the only I think the only reason he does it is because he finds out who Ral really is and then Ral is connected to his father and I think he's I think his decision- making at that point is based
on what his father told him of General Shiva in some ways it it's almost a very easy plot hole to fix right you have Shifu is the or Thief is the one who tells ra and then you have him tell AR and AR be like hang on that sounds crazy and then have him call the king like he does MHM and the King be like what no I didn't do that Z did it yeah and and then everyone hears and everyone goes oh it is true cuz the king just admitted it uh I almost because there's there's a scene I I
I think it's shortly after that or is it before where Ral calls into the news station to to reveal the conspiracy is it was that before or after he meets AR I think slightly after yeah that's what I'm thinking too I almost wonder if it would have been worth it for him to have done that prior to meeting ra the the whole all that stuff too with the the media is like it's a little it's it's a little bit like okay so they're like they're like oh we could like that's another one of the plot
holes like zuu and the King both mentioned specifically explicitly that they control the media but then like two minutes later the guys that the media has just been told are evil are calling in to be like like hey here's a whole bunch of things from here's our side of the story yeah let me give the Let me Give the the terrorists an open platform here yeah it's a little there's there's definitely it gets a little rough there in the Middle with the writing for sure
yeah so there's like a couple plot holes and a couple conveniences and contrivances and stuff like that but it is it's funny that it like this is Toriyama’s attempt to do like more Bleak and dark and serious and stuff because even in this you can tell that it's and I'm not even saying this is a bad thing but like it's that's not his Forte right yeah because he still has to mix in like humor yeah and it'll be it'll be like that same sort of Dragon Ball humor where it's something crass
and he's and he's not interested in like hopelessness he really isn't yeah no this is very much even though the themes are dark to start out with it's very much I think more about Redemption and taking responsibility for your decisions yeah yeah it's not there's a there's much more of a of a hopefulness to it which part did you like better the first part or the second part the new stuff I like the first part better and I think that's mostly because it was originally put together as like a closed
storyline I I feel like the arcs are better in it I feel like the arcs for the minor characters are better in it not that the second story is bad I do I do want to put that out there I don't think think it was bad it's just not as good as the original Toriyama stuff like they they punched up like the the climaxes of both storylines I think oh for sure the the climax well I mean you can't PCH definitely from the manga but like say you can't punch it up Beyond
nothing but cuz the second part is just there was wasn't based on anything but like yes this the the climax of The a has Beelzebub fighting against a singular insect man that is like supposed to be a bioweapon created to I don't know be bad or something I guess in the anime they made it what like six of them yeah it was like a whole gaggle of them yeah and then there was the the the Airship as as well in that portion right that was that just wasn't even in the
manga at all right but I could see why they did that especially when you when you take into account the first six episodes were actually originally a movie oh for sure but then like with the the second half the stakes get cranked up even higher and it and it becomes more of the standard shown in we have to beat the bad guy type thing yeah and I feel like it it loses a little bit in the writing for that however I did think that the major villain for the second half was pretty
good I liked him so yeah it's it's a bit of a trade-off but I think yeah I think the first half is a little better villain in the second half remind you a smidge of uh like Goku blackish yeah definitely or or at least maybe more zamasu yeah I could see that where he thinks himself above everything going on around him yeah that like righteously indignant thing yeah definitely yeah know would recommend watching it it it breezes by pretty fast the the 13 episodes and my only complaint is watch
is that it's on Hulu where like it there's a lot of commercials yeah fortunately we can't get around that I did I did spot check the dub I don't know if you did it all cuz like Hulu has the dubbed and the subbed version yeah I at least spot checked the dub I didn't dig it that much I stayed with Subs actually when I turned on the sub the the dub I wanted I thought specifically R just didn't sound I don't know Grizzly enough to me I guess I'll have to go back and and check the the dub
then I probably should have wanted more Grizzly but it didn't I don't know I just it didn't wasn't working for me so I went back to the subs and the manga is a super fast read yeah it's on only was it is it 12 or 14 chapters 14 chapters yeah I I think I crushed that in like an hour or two yeah I read it all in one sitting and it's good it's a good read L of fun it is and like I said I I do think actually if I if I was going to pick one I would say that the the anime
slightly improves on the manga like I said it it just made a couple of the characters like it fleshes things out a little bit more yeah like I said the the big one for me that like was a big difference that I felt just worked so much better was having ra be like hey if anyone's listening to this uh you know you can you can leave for the day from headquarters you know the headquarters that's at the South End you know that one that like little bit of like character work and plausible deniability
makes him just seem like such a smarter character yeah I I feel like Tori strength is his characters and I think this series does a really good job especially the the the main Trio you get a lot of really good character moments as they're traveling across the desert and they're just interacting with themselves and nobody else yes they they play off each other perfectly that's another piece of the second part of it that why the second part is maybe not quite as good as the first is
they are split up a little bit more yeah but I I also think that the new characters that they bring in are also pretty good especially when they interact with the the original Trio yeah and then last thing in terms of anything that we have any notes on or anything is in addition to all of this sandlan also has a video game now that's right yes there's also a video game adaptation the game was developed by ILCA which is a studio that started as support on games
like Dragon Quest 11 Naruto shapin ninj Storm 4 and Pokemon home uh they have a close relationship with Bandy Namco and have worked on Pokemon brilliant diamond and Shining Pearl as well as one piece Odyssey the sand land game is an action role playing game that runs on Unreal Engine five and Toriyama even got to play the beta a bit before he passed away I'm not sure play this game at all I I have not I've heard I heard I heard about it before I was aware that
sand land was like a Toriyama thing and hadn't paid much attention to it then I found out that it was a Toriyama thing and I was like well I should probably look into this a little bit yeah I didn't I didn't look into the game too too much I saw some reviews that basically say it's okay okay it's like a lot of customizing your tank and stuff to drive around I don't know I I didn't I didn't get too deep into the the game I felt like I between I read the whole manga and I read the
the or I watched the whole show and I did a whole lot of looking into Hindu deities I uh did not also look at the game from what I've seen about it so far it's it's kind of just like an open world action RPG you're you've got the tank you do tank customization stuff you've got your crew and you just run around exploring stuff and you know there's storyline and all that stuff too but I think the main gameplay elements are more just about like exploring the land itself and I think the story is
very similar to I think the story is just the story of the manga anime that seems pretty likely in all honesty that was kind of another piece is I was like okay I did like it but I don't really need to or want to go through it a third time here no but I this would be a good one for uh one of our video game episodes though I think maybe at please check it out and talk about it yeah so yeah I I enjoyed it overall I uh I I had some issues with some of the plot holes and
contrivances and things but you know what I thought was awesome visually both in the manga and a especially in the anime was any time they went to a place where where there was like when they find the springs or the water mhm Oh I thought like the reveals of those like the reveal of the spring and then the reveal of the um the dam were like super impressive yeah just the amount of of like detail and and that he just layered into it and and the which also again makes that choice of
picking a desert setting really powerful because then when he does put that much work into the scenery it just pops that much harder yeah yeah he could say he's doing it because of laziness but we all know that that's not the only reason as he's going why why did I write this scene in here with all of this background I got to draw this damn tank again I could see how that would be like a like a oh no what have I done yeah because like it's it's this incredibly
technical piece of drawing but then at the same time like he's also got to make sure that he's keeping its design consistent and like the location of all the different parts of it located in the same like throughout the story I like that the tank feels like a character almost too yes I was going to say it it once they acquire it it does feel like it's part of the group yeah it's like its own character kind of um especially with all the wacky stuff that they do
with it so yeah I had fun visiting it it's uh I don't know it' be I wonder could it could could it support many many more seasons I don't see why it couldn't but I'm a little worried that they might have jump the shark as far as Stakes are concerned if they go back to something that's that's more sand land Centric as opposed to starting to involve like neighboring countries and things like that I feel like you could get a lot of longevity out of it just three dudes in
in some kind of vehicle riding around solving problems yeah I'd watch that show [Laughter] definitely yeah I might I had f I I had a good time with this uh I would I would say the manga is like an easy easy recommendation because it'll take you a couple hours at most yeah absolutely um and then and then the anime is a a like I don't know at the very least hm I'm trying to think how I would phrase this would I say at the very least check it out to see the piece that you've already
that you already know the story of or would I say huh if you're on the fence check out just the new part I I feel like if if you've read the Manga I feel like it's worth watching the first half just for the differences in the story yeah and then the second half I feel like is is a way to take the temperature on if this is something you might be interested in long term I I feel like if you're a fan of Toriyama at all especially if you enjoy the Dragon Ball portion this this
is this is a must-watch in my opinion this is uh and I mean we've mentioned it more than once this is like Toriyama’s Mad Max yeah it's it's Mad Max for kids and and I dig that like Mad Max is my jam and this has a lot of that in it people in crazy vehicles and crazy outfits with crazy names in a desert like and water is the biggest commodity I mean oh yeah it's it's Al it's Mad Max Mad Max is that's everything we have on sand land I think that's at least everything I have it's everything I got
okay and uh that's that's one episode of our what we call what we call Dragon Ball aen because we couldn't think of any better name for it where also because we just wanted to put ball and wean in the same name H now I can't this is I can't ever unsee that now you're welcome um damn it but so what you know if you're if you're new to the show what we do in in October is we look at stuff that either you know Toriyama worked on otherwise or that people working in Dragon Ball worked on
otherwise just to try and sort of expand our Horizon Beyond Dragon Ball a little bit which we never ever do during our regular show we don't take sidetracked discussions into talking about Kaiju or you Universal monsters or why no why would we do this is a Dragon Ball podcast why would we ever but so yeah that's what we during October we we do these like try and pick up just other things that are sort of related that means that later this month we'll be doing a commentary I think I we
haven't decided on what yet but it's going to be good though we promise but but we'll do that look forward to that and look forward to our we do our mini sods in October also where each of us records a little short individual episode talking about a top 10 and uh and that that's cuz that's I love I love Halloween I love October and it's hard you can only do like scary dragon ball like what once twice maybe yeah that's that's about it and then you run out of
stuff real quick so so our idea was like let's do just other stuff why not unless you got anything else not much just uh oh we should give our we should give our scores yes I was gonna say I give this uh I give this seven Dragon Balls this was great yeah I'm at a six six out of seven Dragon Balls not quite perfect to me I but I'll allow it uh I did really like it I love I I personally really love watching Toriyama go back to the well so to speak like like seeing him pick up elements
from earlier works and doing them again you know he did he did his his rain world again and he kind of revisits the whole like be elub gets kind of his Super Saiyan 2 moment is Gohan's rage moment if you will I I don't know I like seeing him him do that and kind of just play on that again it's it's fun to me to see that and and yeah I would give I'd give sand a pretty strong recommendation I enjoyed it I and I'd almost say uh that if you've never watch Dragon Ball or you're not familiar with
Toriyama stuff I feel like this would be a great way to introduce yourself to the kinds of things that he likes to do because it's it's it's short it's easily digestible and from there if you like it maybe you'll like some of his other stuff if you don't then maybe he's not for you and you can go find something else to do but I feel like it's a I feel like it's a strong entry point for folks that that uh have not been supposed you don't like it then um listen to all the
other episodes of this podcast to find out why you're wrong perfect and uh I'll throw in a mention here make sure you know give us give us a a like a rating or review whatever all those things it just helps us out and makes me feel good when I get one of those will we play the sand land video game eventually and what will we choose for our movie commentary later this month find out next time and help us achieve our final forum [Music] final form is written and produced by
Tom Gueli it is performed by Dan Kenny and Tom Gueli our Web Master is Dan Kenny our theme music is provided by YouTube content creator gvgkid want to learn more about the Dragon Ball Universe including concept art behind the scenes interviews and recommendations from jelly and bikini connect with us on social media like us on Facebook follow us on Twitter @ final forum pod make sure to subscribe rate and review wherever you receive your podcasts and of course make sure to share with your
friends and family and help us spread the word of the glory of Lord Frieza the Frieza Force thanks you for your listenership [Music] a