English Dub Review: Sand Land “Fiend Power”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Beelzebub, Thief, Rao, and Anne face off against Muniel and Bred’s forces, but Anne accidently reveals herself to be half demon, much to everyone’s surprise. They’re able to escape the army and are rescued by the Swimmers, who happen to be nearby, but the Aquanium they thought they stole turns out to be fake. Regardless, they are at least aware that Muniel and Bred need one more bit of Aquanium to complete their plan.

OUR TAKE

We’re cutting pretty quick to the meat of this arc, though it’s easy to spot at least a few key similarities between this and the last one. Once again, the three amigos are on the run from a nation’s army that’s being controlled by a cyborg former general turned Supreme Commander who secretly wrestled power away from their respective kings and has a plan that involves use Aquanium (the substance the Picchi used that I have avoided mentioning by name because I was unsure how to spell it). The differences, however, are also apparent, especially since Zeu and Bred are very different in terms of their utilize their cybernetic parts and have very different methods in how they’ve obtained rule, on top of being distinct characters in their own right. Not to mention Zeu never had the help of an Angel like Muniel, who has otherworldly knowledge that will almost certainly play into bigger parts of the plan down the road. Plus, it’s nice that both Beelzebub and Rao get counterparts to fight, but it’s unfortunate that there’s no side human or angel for Thief to tussle with. Oh yeah, and the Swimmers are there too because this story is kinda short on supporting characters to pull from. And to be perfectly honest, they’re barely characters of their own when it comes down to it, existing primarily to show that Toriyama never lost his touch drawing muscles and mustaches.

What also makes this arc stand out is the focus on demons and angels that, for whatever reason, wasn’t really touched upon in the previous arc. It was actually kinda ballsy to establish that demons exist and then just say “nah, we’re just gonna focus on something else”, but since Toriyama got another shot at adding to the world, it’s good that he decided it was worth exploring. We’ve seen an angel, but now we also have a character like Anne who’s at least got demon abilities, which suddenly makes her chemistry with Beelzebub make a bit more sense. Speaking of, we’ve seen Beelz make use of some demon powers fighting those bug men a few episodes back, but apparently now he can also use Armament Haki to defend himself and others, though part of me wonders if that was just added to throw in a good gag and there’s not a lot of reasons that are better than that. But now we can move onto a bit more of the serious part of the plot as things ramp up in the next episode, along with the return of a familiar looking character.