English Dub Review: Sand Land “The Battle Comes to an End”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Beelzebub battles a powered up Muniel, Ann tries to land the crashing fortress and evacuate the remaining soldiers. This inspires the defeated Bred to help, while Rao and Thief use the tank to blow open a hole to let the moon in, allowing Beelzebub to use the power of darkness to regain enough strength and finish Muniel off. Even with him out of the way, no escape pods remain, forcing them to steer the ship to crash in an isolated part of the desert and use some floating tech to survive the fall, only barely escaping the explosion which is contained by the now released Lucifer and Lilith. And thanks for Anne’s reconfiguration, the explosion of Aquanium creates an aurora that also rains over the desert. With that, Muniel is taken back to the angels, Bred returns to Forest Land with his crimes forgiven, and Ann decides to join Beelzebub, Thief, and Rao on their travels.

OUR TAKE

And with that, Sand Land returns to the sands of time, along with the one of the last works directly worked on by the late great Akira Toriyama. Now, he wasn’t as direct in this latter half, as we are now aware, but even throughout this extra arc, you can still feel his influence, or at least people who knew how to imitate it well enough. As for how well this arc concludes and acts as a wrap up of the series as a whole, I’d say it did a pretty damn good job. The action is balanced pretty well between giving Beelzebub a satisfying way to properly defeat Muniel, along with an eleventh hour power up, while the collapse of Flying Fortress Garam gives all the other named characters something to do, including Bred who gets to…kinda be forgiven for committing treason? I mean I guess it’s not like he killed anyone, but he did overthrow his government and get his king’s wife imprisoned for awhile, so it’s kinda convenient that the only consequence he faces is being put right back in the same job that he used to betray them, so…I dunno. It’s kind of a weird message but I guess it’s fine. Muniel also isn’t punished a whole lot aside from being given more work, but we at least get the sense that he’ll be more closely monitored.

Ultimately though, Sand Land has never seemed like a very harsh show, even to its cruelest characters, so I guess this lines up with what’s been established. The evil has been defeated, good has won, and peace has been restored for the moment, so everyone gets to go back to their everyday lives, aside from Ann who decides to join the main three in traveling around (and I only just now noticed she’s been added to the very end of the ED, which she’s apparently been at the end of since Ep 7, only now, in this last one, her bikes tires float). Where they’re all headed is up to us I suppose. While I’d love to see their adventures continue to a Beach Land or Snow Land or Lava Land or whatever, I sadly don’t see them going back to more of Sand Land now that Toriyama’s not here to guide things. Still, what we got, from the manga adaptation to this possible video game adaptation, was pretty fun and I’m glad I got to both watch it and talk about it. All that’s left is to wait for Dragon Ball Daima in the Fall. Now let’s turn the hourglass over again and look back on the whole show in the Season Review.