Sanda Vol 1 Review

 

Creator: Paru Itagaki

Letterer: Bensidi Ayoub

Translation: Motoko Tamamuro & Jonathan Clements

Editor: Louis Yamani

Designer: David Colderley

Publisher: Titan Manga

Price: $12.99

Release Date: September 9, 2025

 

Kazushige Sanda is a fourteen-year-old boy. Shiori Fuyumura is a fellow student at Daikoku Welfare Academy. Sanda has a crush on Fuyumura. So, when they become class representatives, Sanda agrees to arrive in class early. While trying to fix a jammed window, Fuyumura attacks him with a knife. Does she intend to kill him? Or is Fuyumura just bad at small talk? Let’s grab a pack of Bratty Beans, leap into Sanda Vol 1, and see!

 

Story

Sanda has dreamed of Fuyumura attacking him, but not like this. His friend, Hajime Mogi, believes Fuyumura has gone psycho because she misses her friend. As they play outside, Mogi also muses on the legends surrounding the twenty-fifth day of December. Sanda has no interest in stories about Christmas. But Mogi betrays a fascination for Santa Claus, the jolly man who delivers presents to children.

 

Japan in the 2080s may resemble the 1990s, but society has gone downhill since then. With birthrates plummeting, the nation treasures its children like the crown jewels. Sanda, Fuyumura, and their fellow students attend the Daikoku Welfare Academy. The Child Protection Act ensures that no one can harm children, even if they commit murder.

 

Hifume Oshibi worships his charges in Sanda Vol 1. The principal of the boarding school believes Sanda, Fuyumura, Mogi, and the other students will rebuild Japan. But then, Hifume Oshibi is a veteran of plastic surgeries and takes dangerous treatments to appear young.  

 

Shiori Fuyumura may have psychopathic tendencies, but she’s also in pain. Unlike everyone else, she believes Ono is missing, not dead. Her friend adored Christmas and taught her all about Santa Claus. When Fuyumura senses that Sanda is a descendant of Santa Claus, she'll go to any length to prove that her schoolmate is Santa in disguise. But how do you awaken a mythological adult when he's a high school boy who hates wearing red?

 

Art

Paru Itagaki introduces Fuyumura standing beside a chalk drawing of her missing friend. Unlike Ono, Fuyumura doesn't smile. Her dark hair clings to her face in a lover's embrace. Yet a strand rises above her head in an arc, emulating the top of a question mark. While Fuyumura evokes the Grinch, a question mark resides on smiling Ono’s chest in the chalk drawing.

 

Like Fuyumura, Sanda wears a school uniform and work boots. Paru Itagaki poses him beside his alter ego, a bearded bodybuilder who doesn't share his smile. When students like Sanda are happy, smiles spread across their faces, evoking the Muppets. Children wear helpful name tags on their chests in the first chapter of Sanda Vol 1, suggesting the state wishes to ensure easy identification. Yet a framed photo of smiling Ono rests on a disused table beside a vase of flowers. And no one searches for the missing girl.

 

As the children work at two-person wooden worktables, Bensidi Ayoub places dialogue in balloons of varying sizes and shapes. Dialogue enlarges and emboldens as situations grow fraught, such as when Fuyumura completes a ritual gleaned from arcane Santa Claus mythology. Then, the wooden plank flooring rises like storm-tossed waves, hurling the chairs and tables across the classroom as Sanda's alter ego appears in Sanda Vol 1. Thanks to Titan Manga for providing a review copy.

 

Final Thoughts

When Fuyumura stabs Sanda, the ceremony propels the high school students on a journey of discovery. Mysteries in their boarding school abound. Most mysterious of all is that Sanda is a man trapped in a boy’s body. The more he transforms, Sanda regards his fellow teens as children. Stranger still, his real name is Santa Claus, and he protects children from harm. Yet despite his ability to transform, Sanda is also a boy who loves a girl he can’t figure out in Sanda Vol 1.

 

Rating 9.4/10