Sandstorm

Template:Book Sandstorm (砂嵐, Sunaarashi) is an unreleased Japanese shonen manga one-shot written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. Araki mentioned it in his book, Hirohiko Araki's Manga Technique, when discussing his past failures as an author.

Summary

Sandstorm was an abandoned story written by Araki about a year before his professional debut with Poker Under Arms. It's a lost work, as it was never published, and the original art is now gone. Araki recalls the story was about a boy going to save his sister from a strange sandstorm in the desert.

Making-of

Araki states that the storm-as-antagonist lacked punch, as no matter how unusual the phenomenon may be, a sandstorm didn't have enough going on to fill the role of the antagonist. This resulted in a story with more mood than story, and he couldn't make it fit the battle manga structure.

He explains Sandstorm failed because he focused too heavily on mood, but had he been a better artist at the time, his work might have found more acceptance. This is a defining characteristic of mood-based manga for him. As he points out, the manga won't come together if you're not a skilled artist on the level of Akira Toriyama or Katsuhiro Otomo.