As soon as the episode starts, we see the director giving Santa tough love by breaking one of his fingers, and telling him how he’ll die if he continues to hesitate against foes like Class 10’s Namatame. Basically, if he wants to grow up and become an adult, he’s going to have to be able to make tough decisions like… uh, punching and kicking women and children. Wait, I feel like we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Look, the point is that he can’t hesitate in the midst of battle! Yeah, that’s right! Well, her advice makes perfect sense in a shounen battle anime, but what are we? Are we in a battle anime? Is it Santa’s destiny to save the world through direct combat? I sure hope not. Luckily, the next story beat allays my fears a little.
Afterwards, Sanda bumps into Namatame, the devilish child in question. Like before, she’s carrying pots of dead plants in her arms. When our boy protagonist digs a little deeper, he ends up getting more than he initially bargained for: a whole ass backstory about murdering her mother. Like Oshibu and apparently a lot of other adults, Namatame’s mother was obsessed with beauty and youth. This mental disease eventually led to the woman chopping off her own hands, because they couldn’t be “fixed” by plastic surgery. Namatame couldn’t bear to see her mother like this anymore, so she put the poor woman out of misery. And right now, she spends her days in a sort of purgatory, torn between seeking her mother’s lost touch (those dead plants) and desiring to put more and more hopeless adults out of their misery. Naturally, this includes Santa.
What’s important here is that Namatame’s backstory ultimately seals the deal for Sanda. After letting the girl pour her dark, twisted heart out to him, he ultimately resolves not to become Black (shounen) Santa. Sure, he could throw hands with a child, but he won’t. His solution instead is to bear it. Namatame is going to come for him with all she’s got, and he will take it all. After all, isn’t this what an adult should do? Over and over again, the adults in this dystopian world has put their burdens onto the kids. Oh no, society is dying! We need to coddle and spoil the children, because they’re our only hope! We adults are just so powerless even though we literally force the kids to halt their own growth for our benefit!
Seeing Namatame’s hand groping for her mother’s touch within the pile of leaves beneath them, Sanda suddenly grabs it. Maybe he is trying to offer her some comfort, but in the process, he also inadvertently transforms into Santa. She doesn’t even look at him while he’s Santa. It’s not like she needs to confirm anything, but I also think it’s because she’s conflicted. Only when he turns back into a kid does she finally turn around to face him. Namatame then expresses her wish to see him at the upcoming Peak of Youth Ceremony, and Sanda takes this as a declaration of war. Again, I think she’s conflicted about Santa. Sure, she felt an adult’s old, wrinkly hand grasping hers just now, so she must have had an urge to kill and fulfill her mission. But like she’s said in the past, Santa is the first adult to ever show her any form of kindness. She may initially try to kill him, but I think she’ll eventually relent. Santa just has to endure her attacks long enough for that to happen.
As a result, we see Sanda come up with a new form of training by ironically burdening Amaya, another child. He has his best friend shoot his Santa alter-ego over and over with a handgun, which has to be pretty traumatic for any normal kid. Luckily, Amaya is an anime character, so they never have to worry about that sort of thing! As an aside, I kinda half-expect Namatame to come after him with a cleaver for some reason, but I’ve been thinking about reading through the Higurashi visual novel. Maybe that has been tainting my mind.
Elsewhere, Fuyumura and Ono are having a private moment, but once again, Ono comes on too strong. I wish she would understand that her friend simply isn’t ready for all this love talk. The jury’s still out on Fuyumura. We don’t know who she is, because she herself doesn’t know who she is. Maybe she’s homosexual, maybe she’s asexual, maybe she’s hetero, so on and so forth. But right now, she doesn’t know and that’s okay. Some of us are well into adulthood and still don’t know! That’s okay, too. Identity is not always so simple and straightforward. But surprise, surprise, Ono isn’t mature enough to understand this so she keeps pushing, she keeps yearning for an answer that isn’t there. I know she’s dying to know how Fuyumura feels about her — if she feels anything at all. This clarity will help her decide what to do next, and I totally get that. But at the same time, a true friend would be able to put their own feelings aside and wait. Unfortunately, Ono can’t help herself, so she ends up pushing Fuyumura away, driving the poor child into Sanda’s arm with a new request: bring back the child Ono. Can Santa even do that? Sounds like a whole lot of people in this world would make the same wish…
As I’ve said over and over before, I don’t consider Ono an adult. But if she really does consider herself an adult, then why is she still pursuing Fuyumura? At the very least, she’s somewhat self-aware. Seriously, they’re about the same age biologically, but mentally, I hardly think she’s more mature at all. She just has a crush and Fuyumura doesn’t. That says nothing about whether they’re grown up or not.
At the end of the episode, Oshibu approaches Ono one-on-one and will perhaps lead her astray. It makes me wonder why she came out of hiding in the first place. Okay, fine, she wanted to reconnect with her bestie Fuyumura, who has been frantically searching for her. Maybe she saw Fuyumura make new friends, so she got insecure. But when she’s done interacting with Fuyumura on any given day, why doesn’t she go back into hiding in order to protect herself from the likes of Oshibu? It’s not like she’s attending class. It’s not like she has anything else to do like homework, chores, etc. In fact, what does Ono literally do for the vast majority of any given day? Sanda as an anime has certainly been intriguing and unique compared to most of the stuff we typically get every season. Having said that, the show’s world-building leaves me wanting.
I don’t expect any piece of fiction to give me all the answers. After all, some of my favorite video games are the Soulsborne games and the Hollow Knight series. These titles are more than happy to give its players far more questions than answers. But what’s key — what makes these games’ narratives so appealing — their ability to provide us with just enough information to fuel speculation. In a way, we become writers as we fill in the gaps with our own thoughts and analysis. This practice is nothing new either; fanfiction is arguably another form of the same beast. To be bring this back to Sanda, there’s a lot about the anime that’s certainly a mystery, but there’s also a lot about the anime that just plain doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Sure, we can still fill in the gaps, but we don’t just want to make stuff up willy-nilly, do we?
Stray thoughts & observations:
- According to Sanda, his mother once mentioned a “Black Santa.” I don’t care about the Santa part all that much, but seriously, where is his mother right about now? In fact, where are all these kids’ parents? Remember how Amaya wanted Santa to help save his family business? Boy, that subplot sure has all but disappeared from the story. But a family business necessitates a family. My point is, I would like it if this anime would try to paint a more cohesive picture of its alternate universe.
- When Toyo removes her jacket and tells Santa to stop obsessing over age, he suddenly starts seeing her as a baddie. Yo, I want whatever drug he’s on.
- Yeah, I certainly wasn’t expecting Black Santa to be a half-assassin, half salaryman Santa. Plus, wouldn’t it make more sense to fight in his red outfit ’cause then the blood wouldn’t stand out? I dunno, whatever, I thought Santa was supposed to save kids, not punch them.
- Honestly, I would be so disappointed if this Santa saves the world by punching people over and over. Sure, some fighting is to be expected. I don’t expect evil ass losers like Oshibu to peacefully surrender. But I definitely do not want to see Santa engage a child in a duel, because that’s just stupid. We’ve set up all these rules and regulations about what it means to be Santa, but at the end of the day, he’s going to have to ignore what’s in his DNA in order to throw hands with a child? No way, man. That would be a terrible narrative direction.
- And on a meta level, I can watch a battle anime any day of the week, every day of the week. In fact, I’ve deliberately chosen to ignore some of the more popular ones at the expense of views for this blog. I could be watching the final season of My Hero Academia or One Punch Man right about now. So the last thing I want is for Sanda to transform into yet another generic battle anime, except this one comes with a Santa-colored coat of paint.
