by Kambole Campbell

Looking inward, I'm perhaps a little resistant to the festive spirit – there's no real excitement about Christmas perhaps apart from the opportunity to see old friends when everyone converges on my hometown. Even Tokyo Godfathers (more on that in a later newsletter) is to me more of a story about systemic failure to take care of people than it is a spin on a Christmas fable. 

This is all to say that perhaps something like Sanda was made for me – an anime series which essentially treats Santa Claus like the spirit of Shazam, as a teenage boy discovers he can turn into a muscular old man resembling (a much more grizzled) Saint Nick who can summon sleigh runners from his feet like Wolverine and his claws. Based on the manga by Paru Itagaki (known for Beastars), director Tomohisa Shimoyama and animation producers Science Saru lean into the stylization of Itagaki's work with chunky, sketchy lines and slightly pushed facial features (e.g. the bags around Fuyumura's eyes).

Sanda spins Japan's birthrate crisis into its premise, set in the near future at a time where birthrates are at an all-time low. Not quite at Children of Men levels, but it's on the horizon. The country is scrambling to close ranks around and protect its youth, and Santa reappears as a counterbalance to the politicians looking to take advantage of these circumstances and empower themselves at the expense of the young. It also means a wayward youth that has gotten used to getting away with things, coming to understand that they'll be valued despite any misgivings. In one wild example, Fuyumura thinks about bombing a gymnasium because she reckons the sentence for minors would be light. But at the same time, they also live under draconian rules about social conduct and impropriety — no kissing before marriage! — leaving a repressed youth who feel like they can get away with murder. There's an even greater depth to the control which the adults of Sanda exert over the children of the show, but that's more fun to discover while watching.

Of course, Sanda isn't incredibly serious about it, even with its occasional dramatic outbursts. Itagaki has a lot of fun with the inciting premise of "what if Santa was real and also built like a brick shithouse" as is, and Shimoyama's team also embrace this as they lean into the visual absurdity. This particularly emerges around Santa's awkwardness with his own muscular, borderline Olympian frame, like in a shot of him awkwardly stomping around with the sleigh runners on, while in the nude, during a fight scene with a member of a special St Nick hit squad. This awkwardness itself is also part of an existential crisis for Sanda the boy as he begins to get confused about the line between himself and the old man.

Between the hilarious dramatic renditions of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and other Christmas songs in the score or reflections like, "I figured a past version of Santa had killed a dude," the show somehow threads the needle between the power of Christmas myth and the importance of intimacy as well as the contradictions between governmental party lines about protecting the children but also refusing to trust or support them. It might not be the traditional approach to a key figure of yuletide, but maybe that's why Sanda works for me.

/out of frame

🧟 Rollin: I can't actually talk about what I've been watching outside of work coverage quite yet, but I am excited to talk about it in the near future.

🦸 Kambole: I suspect I've seen the same thing which Rollin is talking about and yeah, it's a good ’un. In the meantime however,  My Hero Academia is winding down with its final episode this weekend. And I've gotta say, this season and the last have won back my enthusiasm rather substantially. It's remarkable how affecting superhero stories can be when they actually end, and MHA, amongst all the typical battle shonen stuff, has felt very considerate in what it wants to add to the genre rather than just homage. Case in point: Bakugo's long road to redemption, the Todoroki family's acceptance that it'll never be fully repaired. And, well, all the punching and exploding still looks very good.

🔮 Toussaint: I just got my copy of Garden of Spheres, the latest graphic novel from Swedish author Linnea Sterte, in the mail and have been poring through that lately. Sterte is a true generational talent whose deft linework and skill weaves wholly original universes of profound mythic depth and imaginative complexity unlike any I’ve seen before. If you, like me, love Scavengers Reign, you especially need to check out her work. I’m looking forward to seeing her contributions to Werner Herzog’s animated feature The Twilight World and reading her short-form collaboration with Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper, In Other Waters) in the upcoming Ex. Mag Vol. 6.