The sand still flows.

Sand Chronicles asks an interesting, if somewhat whimsical, question: “Can the sands of time bury the pain of the past?” One expects such a question, posed on the back cover of a manga volume, to be rhetorical. Having finished Volume #8 of Hinako Ashihara’s shōjo drama, which brings the main story of protagonist Ann Minase to a close, I’m not so sure. Ann is carrying a lot of emotional and psychological baggage when the eighth volume begins, not the least of which are a failed engagement and the suicide of her mother fourteen years earlier. Haunted by the feeling that she is doomed to the same fate as her mother, Ann returns to Okayama and the Nima Sand Museum where she and her mother had visited shortly before her mother’s suicide. In fact, as the book opens, we see Ann shrouded in darkness aboard a train, clutching the ubiquitous hourglass, asking her mother if she can give in and succumb to the sadness that claimed her. It is a striking image loaded with subtext and symbolism that sets a captivating tone for the story and Ashihara-san expertly sustains it to the very end of the book.

Now, I’m not one who sits in a booth at Denny’s until the wee hours after a late night screening of Eraserhead debating Lynchian symbolism — well, not anymore — so rest assured I’m not inclined to see metaphors everywhere I look. But I am here to tell you that Sand Chronicles is heavily dosed with subtext and allegorical imagery. Simply put, symbolism is everywhere in this story. The title itself is a good example; Sand Chronicles is a reference to the ever-present hourglass, a motif that is a major player in this story. Remember the question posed in the opening? Strangely though, time’s role is not so much as styptic for the soul as a gravitational force, pulling Ann inexorably forward into a confrontation with her ghosts. Just as the sand flows dispassionately through the hourglass, there is a tragic sense of inevitability that pervades the story. Like riding on the train that delivers her to Okayama or riding with Toru, the young man who drives her around Okayama, every story beat places Ann on a path that converges mercilessly with her past. Ultimately, it all translates into a despondent feeling within Ann that her life and its outcome is beyond her control, that she is powerless to stop her slide into oblivion. Therefore, when she cuts her foot on the beach at Kotogahama, she simply lays down in the sand and surrenders to her perceived fate.

It’s easy to write Sand Chronicles off as an over-wrought, mopey melodrama. On it’s face, Volume 8 simply relates how Ann returns to the place she and her mother last visited before her mother offed herself, scopes out the place where her ex-boyfriend works, decides he’s better off without her, and heads to the beach prepared to say the long goodbye. What helps the work transcend the triteness of the narrative is how effectively Ashihara-san weaves her recurring themes and visual metaphors throughout the story. What I find so appealing about the "flowing sand" motif is how potently it serves the overall theme of the story. As I said earlier, on the one hand it represents an immutable force that sweeps Ann ahead of it, but the author suggests an additional perspective on the metaphor with the closing words of the epilogue on the book’s final pages: “The sand still flows.” This suggests the flowing sand also represents the constancy of the universe and the strange comfort and profound sadness that comes from recognizing that despite everything that happens in life, the mechanisms of time and space endure, unchanging despite the most monumental events of human history. Sand Chronicles has many shortcomings, but it is worthy of attention because its rich subtext leaves you thinking about it long after you turn the final page.

Stylistically, Sand Chronicles is unremarkable shōjo in every way. The character designs are simple – though possessed of a certain warmth – and best of all are effectively distinctive from one another, making character identification easy at a glance. The chibi style is somewhat abused and would likely give the impression that the book was a comedy to anyone thumbing through it in the manga section of the bookstore. The panel arrangements are likewise unremarkable but get the job done.

Subject focus and framing stick to basics so at the very least they don’t compromise panel flow. The illustrations themselves feel surprisingly solid given what is typical for the genre. The screen-and-tone work supplies one artistic highlight, being used to reasonable effect to provide a pleasing if narrow tonal range to the images. The best that can be said of Ashihara-san’s art is that it doesn’t get in the way of the reader’s ability to appreciate the considerable emotional and intellectual depth of the story.

Sand Chronicles is one of those infrequent works of art that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is best experienced by looking past the fol-de-rol and pedestrian artwork and feeling for the pulse just below the surface, because it's there. You have to work at it a bit, but if you listen closely you’ll realize Hinako Ashihara is trying to say something. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. It wasn’t time that healed Ann’s pain but her cathartic realization in her darkest moment that her life mattered in a hundred little ways. It’s just possible that when the blood poured from her wound and into the sand, the poison that had infected her mother leeched into the sand along with it. Perhaps Ashihara-san was being literal. Perhaps the sands of time did bury the pain of the past after all.

ComicsOnline ranks Sand Chronicles #8 3 1/2 hourglasses out of 5.

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