This Prime Video exclusive Christmas anime is a heartwrenching coming of age story featuring a distractingly buff Santa Claus

This Prime Video exclusive Christmas anime is a heartwrenching coming of age story featuring a distractingly buff Santa Claus Features (Image credit: Science SARU / Amazon Prime Video) (Image credit: Science SARU / Amazon Prime Video) (Image credit: Saru Science / Amazon Prime Video) Josephine Watson published I love unhinged Christmas anime Sanda, but it's not for the faint of heart Ah, Christmas-time. The season of gift-giving, time spent with family and sitting on the lap of a six-foot-six behemoth of a man with rippling pectorals and a gravelly voice. At least, that's what my current favorite Prime Video anime would have you believe. Sanda is the sleeper hit of the season (as long as you have Prime Video, of course), and tells the tale of a dystopian society in which childhood is revered, aging is abhorred, and Santa is actually a 14-year-old child who can transform into a superpowered buff old man. It's the kind of show that only happens when he right people sit in the same room. Authored in manga form by Paru Itagaki of Beastars fame and animated by Science Saru (credits include ), Dandadan Sanda has all the right components to build something really unique. In as much, it's a triumph, deftly blending horror themes with coming of age, melancholy with the spirit of Christmas and graphic violence with moments of serenity. It's ridiculous in places - by which I mean for most of the 12-episode first season - but, much like Beastars, this opinion-dividing series will be a breath of fresh air to some and a heaving huff of toxic waste for others. I think it's fantastic. Santa Claus is coming to town Sanda sets the scene in a world where declining birth rates have ravaged society and children are now practically worshipped as the last bastion of humanity... until, of course, time takes its toll and puberty hits. In this world, children are protected at all costs, to the extent of being exempt from prosecution of crimes and even prevented from sleeping, all in the hopes that it will delay the inevitable shift towards adult thinking and physiology. Their only hope, of course, is Santa Claus, but his existence has been inexplicably wiped from memory. Unfortunately, the man in red has been cursed, tethered to the family line of the Sanda family, only to appear when a descendant dons the color red (or, more commonly throughout the series, when protagonist Kazushige Sanda bleeds from taking a hit). Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Fuelled by the power of children's faith and his ability to grant their wishes, Itagaki's Santa Claus is ripped, gruff, and absurdly superpowered, but with a heart of gold all the same. Oh, and also feet that can turn into skis to be used as weapons. All I want for Christmas is you... Of course, what really makes Sanda special isn't the slightly absurd concept. Nor is it the beautifully sketchy art style; it's...

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