Review by C.J. Bunce
The first volume of the manga story Sanda (reviewed here) was as strange as it sounds–a Christmas story of the future where Christmas isn’t really celebrated, but where a kid inherits the mantle of Santa Claus as a sort of superpower. Today’s Japan finds Christmas Eve as a secular excuse for couples to go out on dates similar to Valentine’s Day, but kids in Japan still get gifts from the jolly man clad in red, known as Santa-san. Writer-artist Paru Itagaki ignores all that and uses the jolly old elf as merely the starting point for his story of teens struggling with the coming of age choices, and that continued to veer away from the century-old St. Nick constructs in Volume 2 (reviewed here). What’s left when you strip down the Santa Claus story into its most basic elements? Paru Itagaki gives manga readers his take in Volume 3, now available for pre-order in an English translated edition from Titan Manga at bookstores, comic shops, and here at Amazon.
In the first volume readers met Sanda Kazushige, a short 14-year old kid at Daikoku Welfare Academy, a boarding school in future Japan where he goes through his day like any teen at any school in either an Eastern or Western tradition. He has a crush on the awkward, tall, socially challenged Shiori Fuyumura–even if she pulls a knife on him. The second volume caught up with the two friends search for missing girl Ichie Obo while uncovering a conspiracy that threatens their world and the magic of Christmas in the year 2080.
Let’s home in that year 2080 for a minute. One of the failings of science fiction writers over the past two centuries (back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) is to pinpoint how much time between the here and now and the future must transpire before the sci-fi tech of the writer’s imagination will actually come to pass. Think flying cars by the year 2000 or the future noir of Blade Runner being our future by the 1990s. So 2080 seems like a stretch to change the entire way Japanese kids go to schools and how people age or don’t age. But I can’t see the future either, so you never know what may happen.
Paru Itagaki makes his Sanda story even more science fiction by completely pulling everything out of Santa Claus’s story and finding what may exist of him in the distant future. Ask any kid today what gives Sanat his power and they’ll likely come up with something like Jon Favreau and Will Ferrell gave us in the movie Elf: The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear. Ed Asner’s Santa says his sleigh is powered by Christmas spirit. So here the writer sees something different from Santa’s power. It’s kids’ willingness to sleep.
It’s interesting, and it’s also very strange. But that’s exactly the brand of bizarre in this story. By only 2080 you could have a principal who looks like Michael Jackson due to his cosmetic surgeries. The principal in this case has tried every technology of the future to look young, but it’s stretched to horror movie lengths–to the point of his fake eyeballs falling out of his head–he’d be a cyborg but his “human” parts seem to be primarily revised organics. That’s him on the book cover. He’s 90.
The future school and relationship between students at teachers is also unrecognizable. It’s almost as different from real life as Harry Potter’s Hogwarts is to normal school systems.
Sanda is a dark story, a mystery targeted at teens that carries some heavy themes. Those themes have bounced around, from a mystery about a dead girl, a socially challenged girl who can’t move on without her, and a little boy trying to find himself. This volume seems more about body dysmorphia than anything else.
As with the last volume, any thought of the story having holiday themes is long gone as the story slides into becoming more about teens, teen humor, and balancing the concepts of puberty and adulthood. The jokes reach to even younger age humor. The St. Nick Pursuit Unit was introduced in the last volume but hasn’t really kicked into gear yet. The best part comes in the form of a little elderly woman who ranks even higher than the principal at Sanda’s school.
A strange fantasy for older teens that will challenge your view of what makes a Christmas story, look for Sanda at Elite Comics, your local comic shop, or pre-order it now here at Amazon. It’s release date is May 19, 2026. The first volume is available here, and the second volume is available here. Volume 4 is available for pre-order now here, coming in October 2026.
