This is some weird shizzle, man.
I would say this about Itagaki Paru. She’s the sort of writer who can’t not be interesting. She loses me sometimes, but that’s a matter of the narrative choices she makes. Paru is always trying to be about something, and that counts for a lot. I often feel in watching Beastars as if she’s writing as a means of trying to figure difficult stuff out herself, and that in itself is interesting. More interesting in some ways than a writer who has a surety of purpose and total confidence in their ideas. Not all questions have easy answers, and the ones Paru chooses to ask are usually tough ones to begin with.
Sanda, to me, feels even more unformed and messy than Beastars. It takes courage for a writer to plow ahead when they’re unsure about the message (at the risk of being presumptuous in making that assumption) and that’s something I respect. But the flipside is that I’m still not sure I like this series. The only characters I find at all appealing are Sand(t)a himself and – oddly – Yagyuuda, the one trying to kill him. Paru recently tweeted that she’s “madly in love” (her words) with Yagyuuda, and that he’s her favorite character in Sanda (with Beastars it’s Gohin – notice a trend?). And I think that very much comes across in the way he’s portrayed.
I mean, all this stuff with Santa and Yagyuuda was deeply twisted but in a way, kind of profound. It shed some real light on what this show is really about, I think. It was also pretty funny, like when Sanda admitted that the first thing he did when he transformed was check out his junk and exult over having an adult cock. Which, TBH, is probably what most undersized 14 year-old boys would do in that situation. Sanda’s nature bleeding into Santa and vice-versa is a fascinating thing to watch. He’s desperately worried that Santa is a bad guy, a threat. So when Yagyuuda tells him he’s trying to kill him for the sin of giving hope to kids, he cares more about that than actually being shot (which is easier given that he seems unkillable).
This is what Sanda is really all about, I think – the fragile balance between childhood and adulthood that being 14 is all about. The key line of the episode was when he remarked about Fuyumura “how many times has she switched between being a child and an adult today?”. Paru loves her metaphors, even if they can often be hard to pin down. Sanda switches back and forth literally and this confuses and troubles him, but all 14 year-olds do so in a way. They struggle with their bodies and their hormones, and the expectations society places on them at that age make it worse. Which are they supposed to be, exactly? It seems like the answer changes for the sake of adults’ convenience.
This is essentially the way the society depicted here is most fucked up. They’re trying to create a generation of snow globe children rather than letting than struggle through the reality of adolescence in the real world. Bathrooms are divided not by gender but age. Depictions of adult nudity (like “David”) and banned. Kissing is forbidden because it causes cavities. But kids can’t be suppressed – puberty is an irresistible force and they’re good at knowing when they’re being lied to. I’m thinking this is why Oono bugged out – she wanted to taste the forbidden fruit of curiosity and pleasure of the body. Maybe she tried to drag Fuyumura along and despaired of her willingness to come with her.
In practical plot terms, I think the main issue here is Sanda struggling to maintain himself in the face of being unnaturally forced to be something he’s not. Santa isn’t a bad guy but Sanda – penis envy aside – doesn’t want to be a grown-up. He wants to be a kid, and he is – a good one. A sweet soul who wants the best for others. This is Santa’s ultimate job – to protect the ability of children to be children. To let them have hopes and dreams because they’ll be crushed soon enough in the natural course of events. By trying to coddle and isolate children from reality this screwed-up society is robbing them of their natural right to be who they are. And again, there’s something profound about that. very few mangaka can ever achieve profundity, and Paru-sensei can’t even help it.
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