Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land makes a better show than game
Image: Bandai Namco
Between Dune, Fallout, and Mad Max, it’s a good year for stories with lots of sand and little water. Now, you can add Sand Land — an adaptation of the late Akira Toriyama’s manga of the same name — to that list. The difference here is that Sand Land comes in two new flavors. There’s an anime streaming on Hulu (or Disney Plus if you’re outside the US) and a video game that turns the story into an open-world RPG. Both follow a similar plot, have the same characters, and even look nearly identical. Which means that if you’re looking to jump into this postapocalyptic wasteland, you have a choice to make — and it turns out, the animated series is a much tighter, more exciting adaptation.
The first thing you should know is that, whichever...