DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA DramaHappy Sugar Life

REVIEWS

• 

  CodeBlazeFate

  54/100
  Happy Sugar Life is a tragedy. I mean this in both literary and quality terms.

  Happy Sugar Life is a tragedy. I mean this in both literary and quality terms. Despite how interestingly and enticingly crafted this tragic tale is, and how effectively some of its presentation is, this show has one fatal flaw: overemphasis. One wouldn’t think that this is so catastrophic, but Happy Sugar Life proves why “show, don’t tell” is a thing.

  There are two forms of this devastating lingering. The first one is the monologuing. This is what damages Satou as a character and drags this anime down and out beyond belief. Her personality is interesting, almost as if you put a mary sue and a yandere in a blender and watched them eat away at each other in the process of having an overprotective pedo lesbian try to keep her image and ideal life intact. It’s hard to care when the majority of her screen time is spent in her headspace, as she monologues about damn near everything. Regardless of what anyone thinks of this tragic hero on a moral level, it’s easy to see how this can feel grating and unnecessary. These scenes of her expositing her thoughts on any given situation can go on for minutes on end when almost every single time, her expressions alone are enough to tell us next to, if not everything she is thinking and feeling.

  Shrinking it all down to a sentence or two maximum to clarify something or truly encapsulate a scene for her, and letting the visuals do the rest would have been far more rewarding. It would have truly taken advantage of the imaginatively disturbing directing and presentation, both making Satou a far more interesting lead to follow, and making several scenes to be far more impactful and dramatic. It would have also kept a myriad of scenes from dragging out to more than double the length they needed to convey everything properly. Keep in mind that this applies to several scenes from several characters later on as well. You could cut down entire episodes worth of monologuing and probably improved the pacing dramatically, both in terms of an episode structure and scene-by-scene basis. The worst part of all is that the show understands this to an extent, with some of the most critical and stylistic scenes in the latter half of the show truly showcasing how powerful this approach can be.

  The second devastating, drawn-out form of overemphasis is a more gratuitous, self-indulgent kind. It’s what destroys practically everyone else in this show. It’s no secret that the vast majority of the characters in this show are damaged, mostly reprehensible people. You can show that off while keeping the audience engaged and disturbed in a proper way. This show takes the worst approach possible with this. Whenever a character is established doing something fucked up, we linger on them licking something, drooling, and/or panting after sniffing something for extended periods of time or interacting with their target in some way. At that point, it’s more tiresome than creepy, and more aggravating than repulsive. It’s even worse when the show constantly reminds you of this with small moments and scenes that add nothing and could be cut out entirely. It’s bad enough that the progression of certain characters’ descent into pedophilic or stalker-like madness is utterly nonsensical, but when that becomes their defining trait, and when the show just lingers on about it, it becomes a nightmare to sit through for the worst reasons imaginable.

  To really paint a picture of how bad this can get, a male police officer is sexually assaulted for minutes on end, with several characters watching, and it takes his partner so long to intervene. On top of that, all they do is leave, rather than arrest the perpetrator or do anything for committing a crime of sexual assault on an on-duty police officer. It’s beyond wild how bad the gaps in logic are, and how much this show just wants to linger on the more disturbing elements for its own self-indulgent, narrative and character-damaging purposes. I’m not sure if any of this was the fault of the material, the director/screenwriter, or both.

  It’s a pity, really. Outside of all of this, there’s an interesting, enticing tragedy at play, with some truly potent moments, both sweet and sour. The reveals are paced out well and tend to be brutal. The core narrative is theoretically engaging without too many glaring issues in terms of logic or consistency. On the audiovisual side, the visuals by newcomer studio Ezόla can be incredibly imaginative, even if their background and CGI endeavors are sometimes distracting and needless. The disconcerting feel the directing and imagery go for is a sight to behold. The music is generally good at bolstering emotional scenes with their own melancholic and beautiful tunes. The ED theme -"SWEET HURT" by ReoNa- deserves special mention in that regard. If the show just showed more restraint and used its artistic flair to more consistently tell its story properly, I genuinely believe this would have been one of the better shows I’ve seen all year. Alas, the sweet that interested me was a tad too bitter.

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• 

  Fountainstand

  75/100
  Spooky cute yandere in love with a loli. Sound fun? It is.

  Spoiler-free review

  When I first saw the trailer for Happy Sugar Life, I was insanely hyped. Yandere is such a fun character type that is unfortunately rare to come across. So, when I saw a show about a super cute, pink-haired, double-bunned yandere who is obsessed with an equally cute loli, you already know that went to the top of my plan-to-watch. I'm not really sure what I expected out of the story, but what I got was a battle royale between psychopaths (mirai nikki, anyone?) all trying to win over Shio, a loli cute enough to kill for.

  The show hits the ground running, starting off with a quick pace that might concern some at first, but it stays consistent for the duration of the show. Right off the bat you are shown that Satou, the pink-haired MC, is crazy. In-fact, she's not the only one. Throughout the show, almost every character that is introduced turns out to be a complete psychopath, in one way or another. After the first few episodes, It sort of felt like the yandere charm was diminished because there were so many deranged characters already that it almost made Satou the yandere seem normal somehow. This concern quickly went away however when the show started picking up and Satou starts really doubling down on her yandere side.

  The story starts off with a lot of mystery behind it and creates a lot of questions right away. This is a good thing though, as you're constantly looking forward to more backstory on the characters and how they all got twisted into this mess they're in. I felt this was a pretty strong point in the show, as it slowly gives you more detail without just throwing it all in the open at once. I personally grew more and more attached to the relationship between the two main characters, and with every increasingly difficult situation they got into, I started getting that uneasy feeling as I wondered how they will get themselves out of it.

  

  On the technical side of things, the show left me quite impressed. The art style is done well while portraying both super cute, and super creepy scenes and faces. The animation didn't have any major drops in quality that I noticed, though there weren't very many scenes that demanded much, animation-wise. The music was definitely strong. It took me a few episodes to warm up to the opening, but once I did I really started to enjoy it. The OP has a really cool vibe to it that captures both the super cute and creepy tones of the show. The ending song is also enjoyable and serves as somewhat of a cooldown after watching some crazy shit go down in each episode (a few episodes have after-credit scenes, by the way).

  Simply put, Happy Sugar Life is a FUN show to watch, with some cute, crazy girls and enjoyable character traits. It definitely doesn't have the best writing, and some scenes were so ridiculous that they kind of killed the vibe that was always building up, but there were a lot of twists and reveals that caught me off guard, and the show was good at building up suspense up until the end. If you want to watch a spooky cute yandere defend her loli, no matter the cost, you should enjoy Happy Sugar Life.

  
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• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  45/100
  Personally enjoyed the bitter stuff, not so much the sweet…

  THIS IS A FULL SPOILERS REVIEW! But...the first episode of the anime basically spoils what this entire series is at the very start so... and also kind of the ending.

  ...Also considering what this series is about, you may or may not consider it... upsetting. Two in one warning!

  ---

  Introduction

  

  Happy Sugar Life is a manga by Tomiyaki Kagisora. I very rarely if ever read a manga after its adaptation is announced. I often prefer experiencing the anime and then going to the manga/original source. But in Happy Sugar Life's case, I was curious.

  

  I read a single chapter and I just... hated it. Or putting it about as kindly as I can, I just didn't want to read any more of it. I wasn't curious about where it was gonna go and/or already figured I knew where it was heading.

  ...Maybe it's mostly because of it now being in color, but I actually watched the whole way through Happy Sugar Life's anime. And... I did not hate it.

  

  Like let's just take a moment and consider the various other recent seasonal horror series. Or rather maybe just the season prior to this one, aka, Spring 2018. In that season, for horror, you had either edgy but boring magical girl battles or outright vampire/human smut. No atmosphere. Nothing unsettling. Nothing creepy. Nothing scary. Sure, there was gore in both, but who fucking cares! Anybody can have gore!

  

  With Happy Sugar Life, you have various psychologically unstable characters. You have sexual deviancy, you have murder, you have a guy so completely fucking out of his gourd that he's worshiping missing children posters. And also gore! Not a huge amount, though!

  This show, actually fucking requires a warning, that it may be disturbing.

  

  A SERIES TAGGED AS HORROR THAT MAY ACTUALLY BE DISTURBING? SOUNDS TOO FUCKING GOOD TO BE TRUE, HONESTLY.

  ...Unfortunately, it is. The premise is done completely wrong, the writing is absolute fucking garbage, the mood shifts are just completely fucking insane, the characters are almost exclusively deviants or all have problems in the head...

  

  But you know what? I'm counting it as a win. If that isn't illustrative of how low the goddamned bar for horror anime is, then I don't know what is. Like Ezo'la took this piece of shit awful manga and adapted it... probably about as well as they possibly could have. True to the piece of garbage that spawned it, yet somehow a hell of a lot more tolerable.

  Happy Sugar Life is a win!

  ...Now, with that out of the way... let's get this show on the road.

  

  ---

  The First Episode Spoiler

  

  I understand the purpose of the scene at the very start of this series with Satou and Shio on the roof. But the whole thing in the manga was that like you didn't immediately know what this series was yet. Sure, you probably assumed that the title Happy Sugar Life was probably a bit too... cheery of a title.

  Especially if you saw the cover image of the manga.
  Or read the description.
  ...Or looked at the genres.

  

  The point is, putting that scene there before even the reveal scene with Satou and the bags of the guy she originally murdered just completely fucking ruins any possible surprise there could have been. And was probably doubly confusing to anime only viewers. And as a person who read a tiny bit of the manga, it was a fucking gigantic spoiler, because yes, that's basically what the ending ends up being...

  

  It immediately spoils that Shio ends up siding with Satou. Which in the context of this show was what I viewed as the absolute and utter worst possibility. This series is about Satou who is a psychotic, violent, and obsessive girl who is actively keeping this missing girl away from her family. Or at least, the one blood relative who is still actively searching for her.

  Satou should be the antagonist. But yet the first episode immediately hits you up with the fact that they're eventually going to apparently perform a double suicide in the future. Before literally ANYTHING is introduced.

  

  I want to say the fact that it's not just a completely pointless scene, aka, the fact that the anime eventually rolls back to it in the end makes it a bit better but... I definitely feel like they should have just not included that scene. At all.

  ---

  Worthless Characters

  

  Remember her??? ...No? To be fair, I guess her sole contribution was raping Mitsuboshi...

  There are a lot of deviants and weirdos in this series. And there are two in particular who are just completely unneeded. Or rather, the show treated them as like actual supporting characters that I was supposed to be interested in seeing how they ended up following the conclusion of the show.

  

  The weird teacher who pursues his female students. He's creepy, he's a deviant, but what does he add to the show, exactly? Like his entire purpose was just to be the way that Satou disposes of the remains of the guy she murdered to get the apartment she lives in with Shio.

  

  But then he begins to try and investigate what the fuck Satou is into but this is simultaneously happening when Satou's friend and Mitsuboshi are sniffing around, and eventually Satou finds out that the teacher is still lurking around and punishes him accordingly, and he is basically not relevant again until the very end of the show.

  

  Which I will of course return to later on my section on the ending, because I laughed very, very hard.

  Then you have one of Satou's other fellow female employees who is just... for absolutely no reason, obsessed with Satou. The teacher's purpose in the show while nebulous, I could kind of still understand.

  

  The girl obsessed with Satou is just I guess in there to include a yuri thing, I guess. Because after Satou kisses her, she just drops out of the show entirely until like the fun happy montage later in the show where she is shown getting Satou... passports? Oh.

  

  Satou's aunt couldn't ALSO get them passports...? We... we needed this other character for that for some reason...? And then just like the teacher, at the very end of the show, she's shown watching the news of what happens in the end as if she's a character that matters or EVER mattered.

  

  ---

  Deviancy and Psychological Damage

  

  Genuinely, outside of watching a trash fire, there were actually sections of this show I enjoyed. I really don't feel as if the characters or the story being told really warranted them, but I did enjoy the more psychological sections of the show. Whether it's what's happening with Shio, Mitsuboshi who following getting raped by an older woman just completely fucking snaps and immediately becomes obsessed with a little girl's missing posters, or Satou's aunt who is a complete fucking freak.

  

  No joke, Satou's aunt is absolutely my favorite character/deviant of this entire series. With all of these other broken or deviant characters who are pretending to still be kind of normal, she's completely wide eyed and completely fucking crazy 100% of the time she's shown. And we're never shown a reason for it. That's just the way she is.

  

  Like I don't think I've ever seen a series where there is like almost no likable characters. It's just deviancy all the way down. Like later in the show, Mitsuboshi has finally realized he's kind of fucking crazy and wants to just try and be normal again, but Satou who needs someone to mislead the guy that is still actively searching for Shio, actively tries to inflame Mitsuboshi's desire for this LITTLE GIRL.

  I almost actually liked Mitsuboshi when he finally tried to get himself out of this show. He didn't want to be obsessed with Shio anymore, and he definitely didn't want to be involved in Satou's business.

  

  It's too bad Satou just happened to have one of Shio's socks in case she needed to entice a rape victim gone pedophile.

  

  Okay so even if I actually liked this show, and/or was somehow possibly cheering for Satou... at this point not only is she manipulating a guy who she is completely aware has been raped and was just clearly obsessed with Shio as like an outlet for that trauma, but she's also using Shio who she supposedly loves to do so? Granted, it's quite obvious that Satou has absolutely no intention of ever allowing Mitsuboshi to see Shio because she is actively pushing him forward in his obsession of her which means he's probably going to become even more unhinged but...

  I just can't contemplate viewing this series with any mindset other than "Satou is the antagonist" yet she's the protagonist.

  

  ---

  Inconsistent Tone

  And now, now I'm going to rail on probably one of the biggest things that bothers me about this series and it is also the central idea that the entire series is built around.

  Happy Sugar Life.
  Bitter versus sweet.

  

  For the record, all of the times they forced the Happy Sugar Life line in there felt incredibly forced and lame.

  I think I'm probably in the minority on this one, but I enjoyed all of the darker stuff with the murders and the deviant characters a whole hell of a lot more than all the sections where Satou and Shio are together and things are just suddenly a lot brighter and happier. It's the entire idea of the series so it's not like you could change it without changing the entire series.

  

  Like I view it as one of those ideas that sound neat, but just doesn't work. Maybe it could, but I don't think it does with this execution. Granted, if it weren't for the completely inconsistent tone, my utmost favorite scene of the entire series (and arguably the best overall one) wouldn't work.

  

  Satou's friend had just discovered Satou's dark secret and after having an argument with her with an emotional song playing over what the former friends were saying to each other, Satou's friend is about to leave Satou's apartment with a new determination that she's going to try and save her friend from this dark path. She'll never give up again!

  

  ...

  TGG: "...This feels very unlike this sho--wait."

  

  TGG: "There it is! Murder! Alright, now end."

  ...

  TGG: "...wait. Oh god. It's still going? IT'S STILL GOING? SHE'S STRUGGLING WITH THE KNIFE IN HER NECK AND SHE'S CLAWING AT SATOU'S HANDS. WHAT. AN EFFECTIVELY HORRIFIC MURDER SCENE? FROM THIS SERIES? WHAT!"

  

  ---

  Complete Schlock Ending

  

  Could argue that the entire show was schlock, but the ending really goes that extra mile. Like even if you're willing to give EVERYTHING ELSE a pass, there's just no forgiving this one.

  Satou who is obsessed with Shio forgets her ring that matches with Shio's after taking it off to prepare her friend's corpse so people think it's Satou herself that died in the fire they're gonna have started.

  

  She then proceeds to completely forget her ring. Her "wedding ring." Okay first of all, that completely goes against Satou's character. All she's ever cared about this entire goddamned series is Shio yet she's gonna forget her "wedding ring"?

  

  You could potentially make the argument that she forgot it as a result of having to face her friend's corpse because she clearly is at least partially still dealing with it.

  But really, it's just completely transparent that this is just an excuse to have them return so they'd be found by Shio's brother. They could have made a completely clean getaway if Satou had either just not forgotten the ring at all, or just left anyways with Shio.

  

  Instead, they go back and it just happens to be when Shio's brother is going to the apartments, Mitsuboshi is there after having been raped a second time but this time by Satou's aunt, and Satou's aunt is preparing to set the apartment on fire.

  Actually, I know she's completely fucking crazy, but why exactly is Satou's aunt so willing to do all this shit for Satou?

  

  I know Satou herself blames how crazy she is on being raised by her crazy aunt but like... Satou acknowledging that she's fucked up kind of defeats the purpose, I feel. So she's fucked up, but she's also AWARE that her relationship with Shio is absolutely not normal and acceptable...??? What even happened to Satou's actual parents anyways? What?

  It just feels so lazily coincidental. Like oh, Shio's brother gets into Satou and Shio's apartment so he can discover Shouko's corpse.

  

  How... convenient. All of the things happen all at once! Or in very quick sequential order!

  The ending results are... so baffling. Like okay, Shouko and Satou's corpses are found and they as well as the burned apartment building is conveniently blamed on the crazy aunt character. But then it shows police dragging off the deviant teacher character and he's crying and his family's there and... that implies they found the remains of the original guy Satou murdered and somehow found out that the teacher disposed of them...?

  

  I was laughing so goddamned hard at this part I actually needed to pause.

  But the guy Satou originally murdered is the one who owned the apartment that Satou and Shio lived in and that's the apartment where Shouko's corpse was in. Like it's not as if they moved Shouko's corpse to the apartment Satou's aunt and where Satou originally lived in. What the fuck was Shouko even doing there from the perspective of the authorities? What happened to the original guy living there? Okay, so they found out that the teacher took care of the remains but why? Satou's aunt told him to do it? The same aunt the teacher thought Satou had murdered? And why would Satou's aunt force him to do that? I'm pretty sure since the teacher knew about it, the other people at that school knew stuff about the situation with Satou's aunt. What?

  There's so much that just doesn't add up but the authorities are just like "this case is solved! The aunt did it! Fuck it!"

  

  I actually completely forgot she outright confessed.

  What the fuck. Also, the actual ending for the characters is complete trash and it was the absolute worst possible ending I pictured in my head from as early as reading the first chapter of the manga.

  Haha, double suicide ending. Haha, Satou decided at the last second to save Shio by shielding her from the fall.

  This maybe is borderline a "no fun allowed" thing, but I'm pretty sure Shio would probably still die even if Satou tried to shield her. Like they jumped from the ROOF.

  But oh no, while Shio survived the ordeal and finally got to be back with her brother, now she's fucked up and acting like Satou. Great!

  

  ---

  How This Could Have Been Good Horror

  This show actually kind of gave me the show I wanted. But infuriatingly, only in small doses, whereas it should have been the whole thing.

  I feel like this entire show would have worked way better if:

  1. Satou was actually treated as a full on antagonist.
  2. Shio does not side with Satou as she's a murdering and obsessed psychopath.

  Like the blueprints are in the actual series we received. Shio initially does not know what Satou is up to outside of the apartment. When Shio originally gets out of the apartment, Satou freaks out, and later puts in place outside locks to further prevent Shio from escaping.

  

  There's the whole process where Shio is going around when Satou is incapacitated from the trauma of killing her friend, and Shio finds Shouko's bloody clothes in the washing machine when she tries to do the laundry.

  

  Shio even full on rejects Satou at one point because Satou solely wants Shio just for her "Happy Sugar Life" and feels she's better off not knowing the truth.

  

  The ideal version of this series in my eyes would have been Shio finding out the truth about Satou, Shio tries to escape Satou to make it to her brother whom she has forgotten as a result of all of the trauma she's faced as a result of the circumstances of her life.

  

  It could be an actual horror series as Satou could be pushed even further down the path of a psychopath because Shio would be running away from her.

  Instead...

  

  "Murder is perfectly okay, Satou! I love you! Let's go with your crazy aunt on a fun montage to buy the supplies we need to burn this apartment down with your friend's corpse inside!"

  

  GARBAGE.

  ---

  Conclusion

  ...I counted this series as a win at the start of this review, and... all of my negativity and all of the problems I've pointed out may in fact imply I was being sarcastic when I typed that. I wasn't. Speaking in the term of recent seasonal horror shows, I was probably bored throughout Happy Sugar Life the least. There are tons of problems and it's super stupid but...

  

  At least I felt like it was worth going into the problems. The other two 2018 ones I've reviewed can almost just entirely be waved off altogether at like first glance.

  A 4.5 out of 10 or 45 out of 100.

  
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