Who’d have thought an episode about hugs, kisses, and Santa Claus would be so twisted?
The themes in Sanda are complicated. It’s an Itagaki Paru manga, and that’s what she does. They may be a little more focused and clearly-stated here than in Beastars, but that doesn’t make them easy to pin down. Certainly the way modern Japanese fetishize childhood and adolescence is something she’s railing against. But to an extent she’s doing that herself, and I suspect she wouldn’t deny the charge. It’s just awfully hard for adults not to do it – the loss of our own childhood is one of our greatest regrets, after all. And it’s a subject for adult envy of children, which often leads to resentment.
This whole “Peak of Youth” ceremony is just so laughably precious. Twilight, that fleeting moment of the day that’s most beautiful, ever-poised between the brightness of day and the dark of night. Reminding us both of what’s passing and what’s to come. The point is, you can’t stop nightfall – it comes whether you want it to or not. It would be folly to try and stop it. So what does that say about a culture trying to stop children from growing up? They’re going to do it whether you want them to or not, whether they want to or not. It all puts me in mind of George Harrison’s impossibly simple yet profound (his specialty) “All Things Must Pass”.
15 (or 14) year-olds will be 15 (or 14) year-olds. They’ll do what comes naturally to them. That’s what Yagyuuda-san – who you always figured would emerge as a good guy – is trying to get Sanda and Amaya to do. That’s what Sanda and Nico are doing on that parapet – it’s the most natural thing in the world. She steals his first kiss, he responds with more fervor than she was ready for. His Santa-ness plays on his mind, but it doesn’t stop him. He’s a boy, she’s a girl. And what do you know, kissing her (fiercely) doesn’t kill him after all. But someone else would certainly like to.
Yagyuuda tries to be the good adult here – despite his conviction that Sanda should never aspire to be a man like him. He seeks our Namatame and tries to fight her in Sanda’s place, but that goes predictably badly. The gunshots bring attention, not just from the main trio of kids but a crowd of zaku as well. Sanda leaves Nico to recover (after appending a hilarious nickname on Amaya – I had to look that one up) and Fuyumura leaves Oono to mourn what she knows she never had. This is what Namatame wanted of course – a chance to fight Santa, and to give and receive pain. She may have been ill-served by the adults in this demented society, but she’s broken to the core. She’s have been a psychopath in any place and any age.
Sanda chooses Black Santa mode to take on Namatame. But that doesn’t mean he can go in razor runners blazing – he’s still Santa and these (Namatame has brought her “classmates”) are still children. But he has a plan – a hug attack. He is a bear of a man after all, even if he is a young boy at heart. And after a hug from Black Santa you stay good and hugged. He squeezes the Namatamettes into unconsciousness, leaving only the head wacko and her arsenal to worry about. She proceeds to start unloading it on him, and he reasons that all he has to to is wait her out. But this is all a drug to Namatame – there’s no evidence that she’d ever get tired of it.
Yes, children can be incredibly cruel. In can be thoughtless cruelty, like chibi-Yagyuuda inflicted on the girl who confessed to him. It can be sociopathy, like Namatame with a machine gun. I suppose Sanda could wait for her to run out of ammo, but that doesn’t seem like a practical option, really. I don’t think this battle will be climactic – Namatame isn’t the big bad here (with her body going on tilt and her hopes crushed, I could easily see that being Oono). But I don’t see Sanda ending this with a hug, either. Sometimes even children need to be judged harshly and dealt with, and if any situation ever called for the Krampus, it’s this one.
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