Lots of Empty Calories – Happy Sugar Life Review

Last week I wrote up my review of this interesting show thus far, and just got done watching the last episode in the series. While Happy Sugar Life has been an interesting bout of fun to watch, it just kind of fell flat by the end. All the while it kept pace, and I wouldn’t say that the ending was terrible (just disappointing), but somehow, the show was less than the sum of it’s parts.

Over the course of the last episode, we have the final phase of Satou’s plans begin to take place. She stages the body of Shoko and receiving a plastic shopping bag full of money from her aunt. Poor Taiyo is abused once again by an older woman and Asahi races off to find Satou and Shio, leaving Taiyo to his fate thinking he’s trying to trick him again. As Satou’s Aunt sets fire to the building, Asahi corners them and a crazed chase begins with them bumping into Taiyo and all the players beginning to encounter one another. Some interaction later, we find out that Shio’s father was poisoned by her mother and Asahi and Satou vie for Shio, much to Asahi’s dismay as she picks Satou. When the two star crossed lovers rush out to the roof, we find ourselves in the situation shown in the beginning of the series, with them overlooking the city with a blazing inferno below. In a touching scene the two of them leap off the building and we have a sweet moment as Shio and Satou fall literally, and metaphorically deeper in love. In the end, we have Shio still alive, carrying the memories and love of Satou, who kept her alive somehow from a 12 story fall.

Again my thoughts on the symbolism of Satou’s insight into other human beings as their “taste” and Shio’s insight being their cracks in their jar are that the whole thing is really well done. That being said I expected more given how clever and unique these visualizations of the human psyche were. The deeper psychological ties seemed like they were building to something more, something grand and clever. In the end, that was not the case and maybe I’m just too stupid or not well enough versed in abnormal or child psychology to get it, but the show just seemed empty. The only thing I was able to figure with certainty is that Shio is the new example of capture-bonding.

One thing I stayed away from discussing in my last article was the art and the interesting style adopted by the show. Very bright and vibrant pastel colors adorn the show, juxtaposed against things such as dead bodies, violent crime scenes, and the blotted out and distorted faces of abusive individuals. Even in the end, I found the show to be almost disgustingly cutesy and adorable. Art aside, the ending itself I found to be disappointing with Shio still surviving, even though she and Satou could clearly have survived (as evidenced by the fact that she somehow did, as did her brother), opposed to the Romeo and Juliet style way out. More so on the “piss Nick off more” track, even though it was Shio’s idea, she wasn’t the one to die and that rankled me even more than it probably should have. I supposed this just made me think of the hollow and confusing ending of Dexter, which had similar enough themes (charismatic AF killers) and an equally strange ending. Overall I would rank this at a 6 Happy Sugar Lives out of 10, since it had a good amount of flash and I wish it had the substance to back it up. On that note, we’re going to try something new with the upcoming season, with us both progressively reviewing and ranking shows on an episodic basis. This should let us maintain a more regular output of content, the operative word in that statement being “should.” Keep an eye out for this new format and let us know what you guys think!