Sand Land

A short manga series byAkira Toriyama that appeared in Shounen Jump, Sand Land is about a desert wasteland where humans and demons coexist, although not peacefully. While the demons do not kill, they enjoy making trouble for humans. They are reduced to stealing precious water from the king's supply...then a human sheriff comes and requests their help in finding the elusive Phantom Lake...


 * Badass Normal: Rao.
 * Big Bad: King of Sand Land Zeu.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: General Are shoots down Commmander Zeu.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: Thief calls Rao a "dirty old man" for having a magazine poster of a nude actress.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Beezlebub gives a human boy one of the boxes of water the demons stole.
 * Cyborg: General Zeu.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Demons in general. They may like mischief and cause trouble from time to time, but mostly keep to themselves and don't harm humans.
 * The Dragon/Dragon-in-Chief: Commander Zeu
 * Evil Is Dumb: The King; but he's just a figurehead, that's what he's supposed to be.
 * Evil Plan: Zeu. So hard.
 * Harmless Villain: The King, because he's not actually in charge.
 * Heel Face Turn: General Are, although the potential was already there. More notably the Swimmers.
 * Hidden Elf Village:
 * Information Wants to Be Free: The main characters' quest to find an oasis is opposed by the King's government, which controls the only other source of water.
 * Jerkass Facade: Belz and Thief aren't fooling anyone.
 * Man Behind the Man: Commander Zeu
 * Non-Action Guy: Thief. He'd rather stay home than go on Beezlebub's adventures. But he does help.
 * Older Than They Look: The demons, especially Beezlebub.
 * Our Demons Are Different: There are Japanese demons and demons from Christian/Catholic mythology. Note that Holy Water does not work on the former.
 * Shout-Out: Beezlebub's father looks like Dabura.
 * Also a Slime apparently fell asleep in the sun and died.
 * Rao gets Beelzebub to join him by offering him a PlayStation 6 and a copy of Dragon Quest 13.
 * Tank Goodness: A short ways into the story the group steal one of the kings tanks and spend most of the rest of the story traveling in it.
 * The Reveal: Rao is.
 * Villain with Good Publicity: The King.
 * Or maybe Zeu, as the King is more puppet than anything.
 * Xanatos Speed Chess: Zeu is forced to do this in the end. Doesn't work.
 * X Meets Y: The Road Warrior meets Dragon Ball.
 * X Meets Y: The Road Warrior meets Dragon Ball.