English Dub Review: Sanda “Candies, Canes, Kisses, and Blades”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Sanda is captured by a classmate who knows his secret, but then tries to save him when the classmate is threatened to be punished by the school’s headmaster.

OUR TAKE

On the second week of Sanda, my true love gave to me, more supporting cast, and a buff Santa in his undies! I wonder if I should keep that going for the rest of the season…it does help fill out the word count, so I’m considering it! Anyway, this second episode brings with it a bit more lore and worldbuilding in this alternate future Japan. It was already clear that this story would be making use of Japan’s real life declining birth rates, though how that would show itself wasn’t apparent then. This week, we learn to what extent things have changed for Japan, with the amount of kids amongst the population having dipped to a tenth of a percent, and so now gaining special status among the population, apparently even to the point of being able to legally murder. One would wonder if that applied to children killing other children, since that could potentially lead to exacerbating the existing problem, but…I dunno, maybe we’ll see the end result of that line of thought later on. For now, we are introduced to Sanda’s guy friend group, and specifically giving focus to Hitoshi, who apparently clocked right away that the sudden appearance of the burly old man was actually Sanda becoming Santa Claus. I mean, it was really obvious when you think of it from that perspective.

He captures both Sanda and Fuyumara with the hopes of blackmailing them, though to what end is not made clear before the Headmaster, Hifumi Oshibu (who is NINETY TWO but has plastic surgery to have a young face), shows up and plans to punish Hitoshi for just being weird, even though he doesn’t see Sanda or Fuyumara. But because Sanda is slowly becoming more like Santa Claus, which in this case means being a protector of children, he saves Hitoshi from this instead. How this will pan out in the long run when Hitoshi inevitably runs into that Headmaster again is…unclear, but for now we’ll count this as a win, especially since Sanda now has two friends who are willing to keep his secret and help him out whenever he needs it. There’s still a lot of questions I have about this world or the objectives of our respective leads, but here’s hoping all of that becomes clearer in time. And if not…I guess I’ll tell you all about it when and if we get there.