SANDA VOL. 1
TITAN COMICS/Titan Manga
WRITER-ARTIST: Paru Itagaki
TRANSLATION: Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements
LETTERS: Bensidi Ayoub
DESIGN: David Colderley
EDITOR: Louis Yamani
ISBN: 978-1787747241; paperback (September 9, 2025)
208pp, B&W, $12.99 U.S., $16.99 CAN, £9.99 UK
Rating: Age 12+
Sanda is a Japanese manga written and drawn by mangaka Paru Itagaki. The manga was originally serialized in the Japanese shonen manga magazine, Weekly Shonen Champion, from 2021 to 2024. It was later collected in sixteen tankobon (graphic novel) volumes. Titan Manga began publishing an English-language graphic novel edition of the series in September 2025.
Sanda Vol. 1 (Chapters 1 to 6) opens in a near-future Japan where Christmas has faded into myth, and it and other traditional holidays are mere legends of the past. Japan's birth rate has dropped so dramatically that children are now the most precious commodity. Society has artificially extended adolescence to preserve their youth, and young people's social status is higher than that of adults.
Volume 1 introduces 14-year-old Sanda Kazushige, a middle-school student at Daikoku Welfare Academy who unexpectedly becomes entangled in a strange and dangerous mystery. His classmate, Fuyumura Shiori, is looking for her missing friend, Ono Ichie. Fuyumura accuses Sanda of carrying a curse that can help her find Ono. The curse is that Sanda is a descendant of Santa Claus and also that Santa is sealed inside Sanda.
When Fuyumura breaks the seal, Sanda turns into a tall, muscular, elderly man and thus, begins an adventure of mystery and danger. Can Sanda and his friends help society remember the true meaning of friendship, trust, and the possibility of magic in a world that has all but forgotten it.
THE LOWDOWN: Since October 2023, Titan Manga has provided me with print and PDF copies of their manga publications for review. One of the latest is Sanda Volume 1.
Sanda Graphic Novel Volume 1 is not my first experience with the manga of Paru Itagaki, as I read and reviewed several volumes her 2016-20 series, Beastars (published in an English-language edition by VIZ Media). I would say that this first volume of Sanda is as refreshingly surprising and surprisingly refreshing as Beastars Volume 1.
Itagaki's art and graphical style are a lot more formal in Sanda than they are for the loose, psychological, and surreal Beastars. Sanda eschews surrealism for mystery and secrets, and the art and graphical storytelling delves into enigmas and perplexities. Nothing is as it seems, and it offers a shocking reveal every chapter.
Sanda's setting may be that of a dystopian near-future, but it feels like the teen leads, Sanda and Fuyumura, are coming-of-age as they try to unravel the secrets and lies of their lives and how it ties into the society in which they live. That this involves Santa Claus just makes things more delightfully weird and different.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of mystery manga and of unusual takes on Christmas will want to try Sanda.
A
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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