Warning: Violence, mild nudity, suggestive content and spoilers!
Ono has safely returned; now she could not be more in danger. A new ally with an old face emerges and agrees to help our hero. Amaya has doubts about keeping his friend safe, so his friend reminds him there’s safety in numbers. A new classroom is discovered, only for our hero to quickly realize he wishes he hadn’t found it. And a defeated principal reveals his origin story and takes his frustrations out on an incompetent pursuit unit agent. Will Santa be able to become stronger with the right tutelage from an old lady, or will he lose something precious to him from a young lass forgotten in the bowels of the school?
Small Body, Big Heart
Sanda reveals himself to be Santa Claus to Principal Oshibu in an attempt to save Ono from being punished for transforming into an adult, but the real plot twist was that, after having so many prosthetic surgeries to his body, including his face, of course Oshibu replaced his eyes. At the precise moment of the revelation, he turns to face whoever it was that yelled out to him, only to have his eyes pop out, so Oshibu never saw who claimed to be the jolly old saint. Leave it to the true art of anime, saved by random story plot.
“It Comes Down to Your Attitude”
It takes the power of belief for Santa Claus to appear and manifest his powers, the more children believe in him, the stronger, hypothetically, he gets. The reason why Sanda couldn’t transform into Santa at such a critical moment was that he, being a child himself, only saw himself as a weak child that everyone around him wanted to protect. He had to will himself into the transformation, not to be stuck as some frail little kid, he had to want to become a strong adult. To believe in Santa, Sanda had to believe in himself, but also having a huge pile of red gym clothes dumped on him by Amaya helped in a pinch.
However, even though he had overcome his anxiety, it wasn’t enough to overcome the sheer brutality of Oshibu’s attacks. Somehow the power of belief wasn’t enough. It gave Santa strength, but it didn’t give him a fighting style or a special technique. Brute force wasn’t cutting when it came to using it towards a strong will of denying one’s frailties. Oshibu flat out wasn’t allowing his age to get in the way of upholding school rules.
Age Before Beauty
Chief Director of the Daikoku Welfare Academy Toyo Tetsudome, age 95. Everything Oshibu stood against in terms of age, fragility, and the futility of denying nature, Tetsudome was his sworn opposite. He had forgone every part of his original body with the exception of his hands in order to stay young forever. He figured he couldn’t get old if there was nothing left of him to get old. Aging is natural, and his philosophy was to turn his back on nature, denying the pain from all the surgeries or even the pain from the fight between him and Santa.
It’s vanity, pure and simple, but can there be some ulterior motive, some reason behind his body mutilation that motivates him to stay young? Tetsudome, on the other hand, doesn’t have that problem. Even though she’s new to the scene, she wasted no time in purveying an air of superiority over her subordinate by shattering Oshibu’s swordcane. A mere three-year gap in age and in one move, wisdom had conquered ignorance.
Safety in Numbers
Amaya has a change of heart in terms of continuing to be Sanda’s friend. He believes it’s best to keep their distance from him, both he and Fuyu have been spotted repeatedly with a reputed “old man” saving their lives, so it would’ve been only a matter of time before Principal Oshibu or St. Nick Pursuit Unit Agent Saburo figures out Santa Claus’ secret identity. Sanda, however, wasn’t giving up his friends without a fight.
He believed he needed them just as much as they needed him, if not for protecting them from an overbearing fixation on controlling every single aspect of a child’s life, then it was to keep them nearby as a source of energy to keep becoming Santa. With them, he became a target, without them, he became a liability. The way things are structured around their situation, Amaya’s point was valid, but was no match to their unbreakable bond.
Redeem the Unredeemable
Tetsudome reluctantly became Santa’s Shifu, but first he needed to be tested before she accepted to train him: Face the students of the underground. Fumi Namatame is one of several students, possibly most if not all are girls, of Class 2-10, a class created specifically for students who have killed an adult. They subsequently have no teacher because even they stay away from them for fear of getting murdered. When speaking to Sanda about the reasons why she’s down there, it’s as if her killing an adult was like an oopsie to her. It was no big deal, but in the eyes of a child knowing full well the law that gives complete amnesty to the youth for the sake of the future of Japan, she treats it as a privilege given her position, and that makes her and the rest of the class extra scary.
The rumors about the existence of Santa have even reached the ears of these entitled youths. Already they’d been preparing for his arrival, but the real purpose behind it would only accentuate their allowed cruelty. She had but one wish: the thumb of Santa Claus. It’s quite the conundrum for Santa, he can’t refuse the wishes of an innocent child, nor could he even ask for the reason behind the wanting of such a “toy”. Nevertheless, his opposition was clear; save the children from themselves, or lose them entirely from a blackened soul.
Final Thoughts on Sanda Volume 3
The whole premise behind SANDA was the search for Ichie Ono, but once they found her, the story quickly pivoted away from her and onto Santa Claus and the need for him to train in order to become a better hero for the children. It paves the way for more challenges in the future, both with freeing the children from an otherwise manufactured society due to Japan’s low birth rates, and with the accumulating villains that will stop at nothing to preserve what they built in order to maintain its singular course of action. Children need their freedom in order to decide how they should live their own lives, and a life governed by the state. We can only wait for the next volume to see what fate will bring to those who will fight an arranged world.
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