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59. Happy Sugar Life
https://myanimelist.net/anime/37517/Happy_Sugar_Life
Summer 2018 (12 episodes)
My Score: 8/10, MAL Score: 6.80/10
Best Character: Matsuzaka Satou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QvZYI00voE

Premise: Matsuzaka Satou is a beautiful high-schooler with a reputation for sleeping around, but she abruptly stops one day after finally finding someone she loves. However, that person is Koube Shio, a missing little girl who Satou keeps locked up in an apartment so that nothing can threaten their life together.

The Good: Happy Sugar Life is a psychological drama/horror about some seriously messed up characters. I imagine the premise alone will turn off a lot of people, and usually I'd be the first one to decry the blatant, twisted edginess this anime focuses on. However, I found it fascinating to examine the mindsets of all these broken people. Satou, due to childhood trauma, went through life feeling empty. Then she found someone who filled her with sweet feelings for the first time. That someone just so happens to be an equally traumatized little girl, Shio. While she's more than happy to stay with Satou, the situation is never portayed in a positive light. Missing person posters for Shio litter the town, put up by a brother desperately searching for his sister, and he has his own traumas too. Every single character does, really, and I enjoyed getting into their heads to see how they became who they are.

The Bad: As much as I liked examining the twisted minds of these traumatized characters, I felt like HSL went too far with the edginess at times. There's one character who is mostly a well-balanced individual. Everyone else is broken in some way. I think Satou, Shio, and a few important others would've stood out more and been more compelling if there were a few more regular people around. The amount of craziness that gathers in this one story felt a little absurd at times.

Overall: Happy Sugar Life has an intentionally off-putting premise of a high-schooler falling in love with a little girl and doing anything to keep her. It explores that idea unflinchingly, and I found it fascinating to examine Satou's mindset and the things that made her who she was. The other broken characters were good too, though the amount of them became a little absurd. Still, for anyone who can accept the premise, this is a great anime to study some messed up characters.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/1/AAcDcBAAD06P.jpg

CHARACTER: Matsuzaka Satou (Happy Sugar Life)
https://myanimelist.net/character/134256/Satou_Matsuzaka
Voiced by: Hanazawa Kana
TOP 100 RANK: 53rd

SPOILERS FOR HAPPY SUGAR LIFE

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNDSTdlk1A8
(This is the last six minutes of the final episode. I wouldve linked to just the first three and a half minutes of it if I could find a video like that)

Satou and her relationship with Shio is the central pillar of Happy Sugar Life. As I mentioned several times in the anime write-up, I found Satou a fascinating character to examine. She was seriously messed up as a child by her aunt (who was another excellent character). Her aunt accepted all the feelings people gave her, either positive or abusively negative, and called it love. The result was Satou growing up with no idea what love really is. She knew her aunt's definition was wrong, but Satou couldn't find any correct one of her own. She was friendly with people, had a part-time job, and slept with countless guys, but Satou never felt anything. Then she met Shio, a little girl abandoned on the street, and for the first time Satou felt something sweet, something she could only interpret as love.

I really like how the story remains somewhat ambiguous about what Satou is really feeling. She doesn't display any explicit sexual interest in Shio, but their relationship is full of romantic overtones regardless. Maybe she only felt a protective instinct towards the lost little girl, or maybe she liked the idea of having someone she could hide away and fully control. It isn't clear. Satou interpets the feeling as love, whatever it is, but she isn't exactly an expert on emotions. In any case, Satou brings Shio to an apartment, and right away she's willing to do anything to keep them together, including murdering the guy who lives there. One part of the story I really liked was when Satou met Shio's brother for the first time and was overtaken by a bitter feeling she didn't fully understand. Once she realized it was jealousy, though, that bitter taste turned sweet. Satou had never felt jealousy before, so the fact that she is now is proof of her love. I just find that really fascinating, that Satou is so desperate to feel something, anything, that she'll even embrace negative emotions just as long as they originate from Shio.

I also really like the various layers of tragedy. Not just obvious ones like how Satou murders her closest friend, who was arguably the only well-balanced person in the story. I'm talking about the tragedy of Satou herself. In the video I linked, there was a part that really got to me. When Satou and Shio are falling off the burning building, there's a montage in the background of the life they almost had. Going to the airport, traveling, doing fun things together, and just being happy. I'm not saying I wanted Satou to get away and live happily ever after with a kidnapped little girl, but that montage made me sad. If not for her childhood trauma, Satou could've grown up and been happy in a less criminally twisted way. At my old age, Satou is basically a child herself. She deserved to live a happy, regular life, one that was a lot like the montage she imagined (just with someone older). That life was stolen from her at a young age. I don't know if I'm explaining this right, but I found it tragic. I also liked how Satou finally realized what love really is at the end. She spins to take the full brunt of the fall so that at least Shio can survive. The whole situation surrounding it is obviously still really messed up, but that was still a selfless act done wholly for the sake of someone else. At the very least, it was closer to my own definition of love than anything else Satou had done in the whole story.