In the distant future, with the concept of recorded time itself having become irrelevant, the world as we know it has changed. The land is a vast desert, society has been pushed to the brink of existence, and mankind is no longer the dominant species. As the result of a great war, the world has been taken over by beastmen, a race of humanoid creatures that range from beings who look like normal humans with random animal features, to full-bodied anthropomorphic bipedal animals of varying heights. As wacky as that idea may sound, the oppression of the human race is anything but, as humanity has been designated a race of second class citizens, with some settlements killing us on sight, others enslaving us or simply refusing to acknowledging us, and the areas where we can exist as equals being few and far between. On top of all this, the world’s oceans have somehow vanished with time, replaced with a literal sea of sand, where aquatic creatures have adapted to swimming through the earth itself, and terrestrial life forms having to ride boats across the vast sandscape.

The wars between mankind and the beastmen have left countless casualties in their wake, but none have had as much impact as the death of the idealistic Revi, a young man with a vision to create a world of harmony and prosperity. Upon his death, however, his older sister Morte manages to come into possession of a legendary device called The Destruct Code, a device with the power to end the world. Mourning her loss and wishing to end the unfair world that took Revi’s life, this one girl will set out on a quest to find out how to use the Destruct Code to make her own desire a reality. On the way, she’ll team up with a nomadic human cook named Kyrie and a strong willed Dwarf Bear beastman named Taupy, with the three of them unwittingly adopting the moniker of The World Destruction Committee, officially labeling them as enemies of the people, highly wanted criminals among beastmen and humanity alike. With their epic quest unfolding, and the mysteries of The Destruct Code unraveling, who the fuck are we supposed to be rooting for here?

Visually speaking, this show isn’t anything special to write home about. It’s not terrible looking, but it’s also not great looking. The only thing noteworthy about it’s animation is that it was produced by Production IG, whom I used to have a really high pinion of before I started taking a closer look at their resume. They’ve put out a ton of great looking titles throughout the years making up a cozy majority of their output, but there are a few clunky looking titles peppered throughout the list. From what I can tell, it looks like they don’t allocate high budgets to any project that they don’t think people are going to pursue for their visuals... Titles like Cromartie high school, which is mostly renowned for it’s comedy, and Chevalier D’eon, which would mostly be popular for it’s writing and sophisticated Elizabethan tone. They must have thought the same about Sands of Destruction, with their assumption being that since it’s based on a video game, it’s market would only extend to fans of said game.

I’ll give them this, from what I’ve seen, none of their anime titles have looked bad over-all, even if there have been some bad looking moments in them. Sands of Destruction definitely looks cheap, though, and it doesn’t take a lot of viewing to pick up on this. At worst, there are a couple of moments in the first few episodes where they ran into frameless action or just had really long scenes involving still character images talking to each other, but thankfully moments like this aren’t the norm. I’d honestly say the worst thing about the visuals is the setting, as in accordance to the premise, a huge chunk of the series run time is spent with the cast riding their boats out on the sand sea(which I never got used to), which granted the animators an opportunity to feature long, static talking and interaction segments against an easy to manage background, which was no doubt a huge budget saver, but for the audience, the novelty of seeing that sand sea in the first place was the only thing visually interesting about these scenes.

Different areas that our cast visit and their interiors have a much more interesting look to them, which is kind of a give-away when you consider that they’re traveling from area to area, like the cast of One Piece. The different settlements across their home land are highly diverse and offer a lot of diverse set pieces, so that even if the characters are just talking to each other without doing much moving, you can still enjoy the surprisingly detailed artwork that serves as their backdrop. There’s a massive library in one episode, and while the plethora of books don’t look incredibly diverse, the shadows and cobwebs still give the area a sense of identity as an old, worn down family business. Right in the first episode, we’re introduced to Taupy as he drinks in a bar, and what a bar! The background in that scene is beautifully lit, offering a surreal glow around those standing in front of it. Also, I mentioned that the sandy backgrounds didn’t offer much to be desired, but the creatures inhabiting the sands, when you get to see them, are pretty cool.

The character designs were taken straight from the game, as I understand it, and they seem competent enough. Most of the main cast is designed to type, with certain elements of their aesthetic informing their personality, like how Kyrie’s ruffled hair is just wild enough to maybe be a main character, but at the same time just subdued enough to be written as a sidekick, with his blonde hair and friendly, innocent eyes painting his good nature that the very act of altering them slightly could set up a more sinister change. Morte, the heroine, is red-haired and busty, with an outfit that carefully straddles the line between conservative and fetishy, and of course, one of their enemies has long white hair. More interesting are their friend Taupy, a dwarf bear, who looks like he was created by a pirate enthusiast at Build a Bear Workshop, and then you have Lia, whose design fits her as the most interesting and entertaining person in the show, as she’s just overdesigned enough to suit how funny she is. What I actually found disappointing was the race of beastmen, who you’d think would be the epicenter of imagination and possibilities, but they’re just anthropomorphic animals and people with animal parts. Princess Tutu did more with animal/human hybrids than this show does.

The music in Sands of Destruction is way cooler than it has any business being, and far more fun to listen to on it’s own than as a part of the series. Yoshihiro Ike is a seasoned veteran in the field of anime music, and I honestly don’t think this series deserves his talent, but since they were able to land him, I’m glad they put him to such good use. honestly, it kind of depresses me that with the show being as obscure as it is, nobody’s likely to hear it a solid decade later. Even outside of instrumentation and tune, the sound quality alone is beyond impressive. Most of you reading this probably won’t ever watch Sands of Destruction, but at the very least, look up the track Yoru no Houmonsha, for a taste of just how rich and complex this music is. Having said that, the opening leaves something to be desired, as it’s visuals are a bit clunky and jarringly inconsistent, and the tune... Particularly the sting at the beginning... Create a promise of edginess and grit that the series fails laughably to follow up on.

The English dub is a Funimation effort, and since it came out around the turn of the decade, it makes sense that they went with two of their safest options for the lead roles. Everybody loves Luci Christian and Todd Haberkorn, especially when they’re doing their normal shtick, right? They’re recognizable voices, usually strong performers, and they’re both really popular, so it made sense to put them here. And yeah, they do solid jobs, so I can’t really take anything away from them there, even if their casting doesn’t feel inspired at all. Luci has a lock on playing strong female characters, especially ones who have red hair... Has anyone else noticed that? She’s able to dial up the necessary drama and tragedy, and even the occasional comedy, whenever she needs to. I’ve never really understood what people see(Or hear, I guess) in Todd Haberkorn’s nasally voice, but when he raises his pitch, he can play likeable little-brother type characters really well. And like I said before, he’s a solid actor in general.

Leaving the human characters for a moment, there are two actors who had to play tough, hardened warriors in the form of small Teddy bears, and the fact that they were able to do this without cracking up or breaking character is a testament to their professionalism and dedication to their craft. Christopher Sabat may have only appeared in one episode, but lending his growling, deathly serious tough-guy routine to the tiny Yappy instantly elevates him to the top of the pack, at least for this show. Robert McCullom, who I don’t think I’ve ever talked about before, takes a slightly lighter approach to the main character Taupy, also a tiny bear, but where his old friend has turned from the path of justice, Taupy still carries a touch of innocence inside of him, which his actor is great at bringing out. My favorite performer in this dub is probably Trina Nishimura, who plays Lia, a descendant of Dragon beastmen, and since her character is an overzealous and easily angered loose canon, she has way too much fun with her. Beyond these names, the cast is saturated with well known Funimation names, and it’s an okay dub in general.

It’s not overtly obvious throughout the series that it’s based on a video game, but once you do hear that piece of it’s background, it does explain a lot. I’ve never played Sands of Destruction for the Nintendo DS, but from what I’ve heard, it’s the kind of final Fantasy inspired game that starts off promising, but eventually loses it’s focus and crumbles under it’s own weight. to be fair, that does seem like something the anime went through, but only at the very end, and to it’s credit, it only happens very briefly. More to the point, it’s video game origin does explain a lot about it’s story structure and pace, as it’s a show about a small party of misfits from different walks of life who travel all over the map to accomplish a vaguely stated goal relating to the end of the world. There are times when it does feel like a video game speedrun, except with all the grinding, random encounters and puzzle-solving cut out to tell just the story on it’s own merits, and while it’s not impossible to tell a good story like that, there’s a good reason why not many franchises ever try it.

For one thing, the most important element of any game is the actual gameplay, which is where the majority of the focus during production should go. Gameplay isn’t just a string of endless fights and challenges, it endears you to characters. It gets you invested in them. It drives the story, as the character’s struggles become more personal to you. Free exploration is a fantastic way of developing lore and dumping exposition, things that are difficult to do in scripted media. With the element of gameplay removed, media based on games has been almost universally bad to a laughable degree, even in regard to some anime adaptations, and when a game has as little actual depth as Sands of Destruction, that lack of gameplay is a compensation to make. Thus, this series is puddle deep even at the best of times, being incredibly shallow in both it’s story and it’s characters, with no real themes or ideas to play around with, nothing really engaging going on at any given time, and it’s few flashes of emotional resonance being exactly that... Nothing but the briefest of flashes.

All of this could have been a huge issue, making it a dull, boring slog the likes of Ragnarok the Animation, if it was to make the mistake of taking itself seriously, but thank God, Sands of Destruction was able to dodge that bullet. I’m not going to say this series doesn’t try, or doesn’t put in any effort, but it’s extremely light-hearted, which is a life-saver in terms of watchability. It embraces it’s weirdness, explores the ramifications and implications of it’s universe in ways that are straight forward while at the same time delightfully tongue-in-cheek, and it plays the ‘sea of sand, how bizarre is that’ card at every opportunity. Very early on, I thought about how darkly funny it would be to see one of these sand ships get stuck under...sand, with the crew having to face the threat of drowning in sand, and while I was just being a dick at the time, you better believe they actually go that route in one episode. No character is ever allowed to point out how ridiculous these kind of occurrences are, but the audience is highly encouraged to try and wrap their heads around it, and I respect that kind of approach to weirdness.

But the biggest asset that Sands of Destruction has is it’s cast of characters, and the dynamic between them. To be clear, none of them are any deeper than your common golfing divot, but our heroes, our stock characters and even a few of the villains are still all fun and interesting to some degree. As I alluded in my plot synopsis, the main cast is on a quest to destroy the world, which almost instantly makes their enemies likeable, as they’re on our side, trying to save the world. Even our heroes, in spite of this, are still effective because of their motives. Morte has a reason to want to end the world, and while it doesn’t make much logical sense, it makes perfect sense from an emotional perspective, and of course she grows to be conflicted as she nears her goal. Her friends stick with her because... Well, they’re her friends. They’ve been lumped in with her as criminals through circumstance, and they really have nowhere else to go, so they support her, they stick with her, and they just kinda hope she’ll change her mind.

And I think it’s this sense of camaraderie that keeps me coming back to the series. Despite the apocalyptic premise, I like seeing this collection of friends on their journey, all of them genuinely caring about and supporting each other, even though one of them wants to inadvertently kill all three of them. And while the tone of the series may be entirely laid back, there are still several touching scenes and moments, from the conclusion of the cherry blossoms episode to Morte’s temporary connection to the beastmen working in his family’s bookstore, it has the ability to pull heartstrings, at least on a small scale. It does sort of foul this up towards the end, with a series of huge reveals taking the story in kind of an unnecessarily dark direction, but like I said before, it’s brief, and it ultimately builds towards a fairly decent conclusion that only flirts with pretentious misanthropy, instead of going all the way with it like Morte’s character kind of suggested it might. It’s a lighter, looser kind of adventure, and I suggest checking it out at least once.

Sands of Destruction is available from Funimation as part of it’s SAVE collection, which makes it really easy to find and really cheap. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for the game it’s based on, as even a used cartridge, on it’s own, can run you around thirty dollars. The manga, by ASCII Media works, is not available stateside.

I wish I could say that this anime’s obscurity is unjustified, or that it’s some forgotten gem that must be seen and appreciated for it’s brilliance, but I can’t. It doesn’t honestly have that much to offer outside of some weird spectacle and an all-around pleasant and inoffensive experience. I definitely like it, but I could also definitely live the rest of my life without ever seeing it again, sad though that may sound. At the very least, it’s surprisingly good by the standards of video game adaptations... I mean, it’s a much more enjoyable experience than something like Xenosaga the animation... So it’s kind of a miracle in how it stacks up to other titles of it’s ilk, but as an island, it’s a pretty forgettable show. If you’re looking for a cheap, light-hearted and easily digestable action show, you could do a lot worse. I give Sands of Destruction a 6/10.