Happy Sugar Life

[A/N: This review is for an ongoing series and will cover up to Chapter 37 of the manga.]

Happy Sugar Life is a cute and sweet yuri manga series revolving around the relationship of Satou and Shio.

Happy Sugar Life is also a psychological thriller, also revolving around the relationship of Satou and Shio. It does one aspect much better than the other, which we’ll go into detail later. Join me as we look through this manga which attempts to combine two disparate genres together.

Happy Sugar Life mainly focuses on the cute yuri between the two main characters Satou and Shio. Satou’s character is really interesting to follow. Her dedication to Shio is adorable and the lengths she goes to preserve their relationship tugs at the heartstrings and makes you truly feel the romance between them. The manga also delves into her mind a lot especially during these segments, making for an experience that oozes in warm and fuzzy feelings.

Satou is also a goddamned psychopath. She’s a yandere and absolutely would not stop at anything coming in between the two. Though rational and calculative at first, as the series progresses she starts gradually become more unhinged. This makes for an interesting dynamic that complements the comfy yuri rather than opposes it. I rather enjoy seeing Satou fully committing herself, insanity be damned, to Shio in her own ways. It’s surprisingly heartfelt and beautiful at times.

Shio on the other hand is more one-note. Apart from being cute, she doesn’t have anything going for her character. There is drama revolving her backstory which I’m personally not too fond of, for reasons I shall go into in further detail when discussing story and tone later on. Shio is cute and her character does grow a bit later on in the series as she becomes more confident and show a more active role in her relationship with Satou. It’s cute.

Did I mention Shio was kidnapped by Satou? And that Satou is essentially holding an oblivious Shio prisoner in her apartment?

Which brings us to tone and the story proper I suppose. Apart from 2 girls, (Shio, and Satou’s friend Shoko) Happy Sugar Life’s characters are all awful awful people, to the point of almost being comical. Everyone, and I mean everyone is either a *deep breaths* yandere, a psychopath, a rapist, a stalker, a murderer, neglectant, incompetent, insane or some combination of the above. Satou herself is all of the above. But it really speaks volumes of the tone when the manga has two minor characters who just show up to beat up one of the characters, and gloat endlessly on how good it feels to beat them up. For almost no reason at all. The series oozes with edginess and cynicism, to the point of audience-induced apathy. I simply do not care about these characters at all when the world is so unjustifiably dark. Maybe it’s a social commentary on Japanese Society’s perception on mental health? Or one on orphans and how Child Services in Japan favour blood ties more than foster families? I don’t know, that may be giving the series too much credit.

Satou is ostensibly a villain protagonist, but, as if to make the audience sympathetic to her plight (remember that she is a kidnapper yandere and a genuinely awful person), her victims can best be described as “scum of the earth, and then some”. Which feeds into making all the side characters awful awful people to begin with. It’s really not all that great.

Story-wise there isn’t much to speak of, basically it follows a formula of [Satou’s relationship with Shio almost get compromised, but doesn’t because Satou is manipulative/murderous]. Although, the story does finally pick up its pace in Chapter 23 where the status quo is finally broken and the story seems to be heading somewhere. Maybe. If it wasn’t for all these flashbacks which are essentially filler since they don’t focus on the toxic but cute relationship between Satou and Shio.

So why is this series surprisingly enduring for me? I said earlier that it’s a cute and comfy yuri series, and I’m absolutely sincere in making that statement. Happy Sugar Life really is happy and sweet. The romance between Satou and Shio is mutual and genuine, and their interactions are simply a highlight of the series. The dark stuff serves as a nice punctuation or breather in between the comfy, serving to elevate and enhance the cuteness even further, rather than diminishing it. It helps that the grim stuff is pretty shallow and poor to begin with, leaving only sweet sugar memories with the series.

I’d recommend giving this a read if you’re a fan of cute and comfy yuri, but not if you want some serious psychological drama. There are plenty of superior options for that.

7/10

‘I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you are stupid. I think you are a loser. I think you are wonderful. I want to be with you. I do not want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand.’

Each and every one of you should have their own interpretation of love, because of the feelings we associate with it. That is why the interpretation may be different. Although, we all are convinced that only our love is real, the most sincere and strong; are you sure that you are not lying to yourself? Are you sure that what drives your love is not simply a passion, lust, or selfishness? Sometimes the line between these feelings is invisible and they are inseparable from each other. What is love? What does it mean to love? One thing we know for sure, love is crazy. It makes us selflessly fight for what we hold dear.

Do not be fooled by the name of the manga; there is no romance and no shoujo-ai here! Happy Sugar Life is a very violent, psychological drama. Its main appeal is that it touches upon topics that are considered to be a huge taboo. Love in its darkest manifestation: nymphomania, same-sex relationship, masochism, pedophilia, sexual violence and serial murder. It is an open secret that it might seem that touching upon such topics is only used for the shock factor. However, this is not quite true. In Happy Sugar Life, the victim is a male, instead of a female. And the manga focuses on the love between the two girls, which makes it more of a platonic love than anything else.

In addition to this, the manga offers the reader several dark stories that are connected with the eight-year-old girl Shio Koube, who is the victim of domestic violence. Shio's mother, along with her children, fled from the constant abuse of her husband. Later on, Shio got lost and was found by the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Sato Matsuzaka, who, trying to save the girl, eventually falls in love with her and becomes obsessed with this feeling. It seems that Sato is ready for anything to stay with Shio. At the same time, the girl’s elder brother is also ready for everything to return his missing sister. As the plot develops, the reader meets more and more people, who are anything but normal.

By the way, the manga is also notable for the fact that you will not see any "normal" characters. Yet, they do not look like typical, cliché movie maniacs and psychopaths. And this makes this manga that interesting to follow. You see a story about absolutely normal people and there is nothing strange about them. However, on a second look, you discover more about the characters and find out that everything is not as simple as it might seem at first. Another fact worth mentioning is that the manga does not try to make the reader sympathize with the characters. Instead of it, it makes you dislike them, which is also somewhat of an unusual way to approach the reader.

Of course, the events taking place in the plot, the characters and their actions do look extremely unrealistic, but the manga did not even try to make the plot so. The main thing here is not the events themselves, or the actions of the characters, but the feelings of the characters that serve as a catalyst for the story. By focusing not on the events, but on this catalyst, the feelings, the author demonstrates the reader that love is crazy and it, depending on the person, is different. However different it may be, it is still the drug and we cannot simply give up on it. If neglected, it slowly destroys us and, at some point, we cannot contain it anymore.

All in all, it is a very weird read and I cannot say I hated it. If you cannot call yourself a sensitive person, do give this manga a try.

Well it's finally over, Happy Sugar Life was quite a ride. A story of a love the world would never accept, and doing anything to protect that love.

The story was very well done, particularly the unique writing style for character's feelings and actions which leads to the absolute best part of the manga in my personal opinion (though it would still be nothing without the story). I'll get to that next.

The art is nothing short of spectacular, memorable, aesthetic, the greatest manga art I personally have ever seen. The character's emotions and feelings are put on display so perfectly that you can feel a tiny bit of what they feel as the story progresses, it is a powerful thing to do in a story and I attribute it mostly to this unbelievable art. I cannot praise it enough and the art will stick with me for years to come.

The characters were all "interesting." The main couple was the most interesting as one might expect. There isn't much I can say without giving away plot details but the characters were fun all around.

Overall Happy Sugar Life is a ride, that's the best way to describe it, if you're in the mood for a love story filled with drama, I'd highly recommend it. I can say without a doubt it was worth it.

Happy Sugar Life is very unique. It's a story that romanticises the development of the relationship between 2 broken girls. Normally, coming of age stories talk about how characters grow out of their own flaws of youth. Well this one's a bit tricky because the flaws are that one girl is a murderous psychopath and the other has had a terrible childhood. If you can accept this outrageous context, you'll find HSL very rich in story and character depth and quite similar in tone to other coming of age tales. Chapter by chapter, the heroines learn something more about themselves, or come to the conclusion that they must do something to grow as a person or grow for their lover or what not; they forge new ideas about what love, sin and happiness are. It seems like everyone has a process of growing up, even psychopaths.

The story is terrible when you look at the context. The situation on the ground is almost unbelievable and there are quite a few plot holes surrounding side characters. However, HSL's identity as a manga revolves not around its settings but around how the story develops. The big question this manga asks is "what is love?" and it does a very good job of pacing this development so that simpler emotions are played out first before the whole dynamic between these two girls change as their concept of love changes.

Characterization? Very strong. Somehow even with a ridiculous setting, HSL's story is able to be spun off realistic conflicts. Do you protect your lover from knowing about the sins you've committed or do you confess and pray for forgiveness? What is the value of family? Is family still more valuable than friends if it were a broken family? How do you decide which form of interpretation of love is right? Through the manga we watch our girls attempt to answer these question and delve into main girl's psych which might almost make you say "damn I actually get where she's coming from" but then you remember she killed a couple of people so she's still not okay. I was actually surprised to read that even the damn loli had character development and then turning out her change will be a big part of the story. Kind of happy she wasn't just a token loli to pull in viewership.

Art wise, I like the contrast of Shio's kotatsu-like warmth and softness to the cold brittleness of Satou's unstable mental health but I can't compare it the likes of Umino Chika's 3 Gatsu's art (it has a similar warm vs cold setting). It's mediocre. Average at best. Nothing really screams horror except some unsettling scenes and the black squiggles here and there.

If you're here from the anime site I suggest you give this a go. The anime is honestly too low production that it omits the nuances of the story that's in the manga. And once you've gotten over the idea that a psychopath, an immoral teacher, a pedophile, a hermit, a masochist, a stalker and an abducted loli can coexist in a single story then it's actually a rewarding read.

The fuck did i just read ? I literally just came from a Yuri manga that's all nice sweet and innocent and i see in the suggested feed Happy Sugar Life. I read the description and thought that it sounded nice and adorable. Then within the first chapter i'm just repeat " What the fuck ?" Over and over.

While it isn't really bad, It's not great either. I feel that this suffers from the fact that the MC isn't likable as soon as you find out she kidnapped a missing child ( Family is searching for ) Then she also goes and straight up murders someone and chops their body up. Any of the reasoning as to why she murdered that someone doesn't make sense and just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Even getting rid of the murdering of someone you still have the fact she kidnapped a little child and is now for the most part raising her as her child/lover. She even finds a family member searching for her.

I honestly would love to see a story with the same idea. Except get rid of the Killing and Kidnapping of people. I feel this would be a nice adorable story of some teenager that doesn't really care about her image but is still loved by the people around her suddenly find some random girl on the streets and her raising the little kid as either a big sister or a parental figure. Hell, Throw some magic crap that said's the child just appeared out of nowhere because the MC was lonely cause she doesn't know what actual love is or something.

I just couldn't get into this. It was legit funny and cute with the child and the MC being at school with her friends. But the story seems so focused on trying to pull the rug from us, It just ruins the rest of the story.

Something i do like to be completely honest is how when the MC is confronted by someone. She goes total ape shit and absolutely destroys the other person by words alone. Her eyes get all dark and get's this kind of menacing look. I found that to be fun to watch.

But in the end i ended up dropping this, Sadly.

The reason I began reading into the Ane-loli manga line was because I had read Yuzomori-san and craved for more stories involving an older girl and a much younger one, as psychological manga is my favorite. Throughout reading Happy Sugar Life, I have encountered all of these things: murder, manipulation, cruelty, sociopaths, pedophilia???, obsession, abduction, domestic abuse, nudity, beautiful art, and almost a sort of sympathy for our main character Satou.

The reason I love this manga so much is because it is incredibly unique to it's kind. The story development and characters are not lazy in the slightest. You will find yourself rooting for the main character even though she is technically the antagonist! She truly loves the child, but Satou is a very bad person and she does not realize this. As for the supporting characters who are also being well-developed, I gotta say that our author really makes us hate and be disgusted by certain characters. The yandere theme was excecuted in a great way and adds a lot of philosophy on the theory of love and obession. You look into the mind of Satou and cannot help but almost hope she just keeps Shio safe. Despite how thanks to her Shio is in danger in the first place.

Happy Sugar Life, was overall a thrilling ride that leaves you with many confused feelings. I hope you can all find what I have found in this unique and fairly disturbing but also lovely manga.

If you read the manga, it is a weird experience. I finished reading 10 volumes in just two days. What does that mean? The story is engaging but it is super LIGHTWEIGHT reading for something that is "heavy": kidnapping, psychopathy, pedophilia, murder.

The drawing is like a shoujo manga drawing, lots of inner dialogues, lots of big panels, and all those make reading super fast. Each volumes are not dense with information, mostly just about how the characters are feeling and talking to themselves in their head, trying to make readers understand about what's going on with the characters.

The female MC is a badass, she may look prone to being a victim but she fights back in a way that readers would find satisfying. The topics are dark, but the author does not draw it to be super dark. Since the manga is already all about the heavy topics, I would love to feel more darkness out of it, but this manga didnt seem to offer that. But overall, it was still a super enjoyable read.

It's just as bad as the anime it comes with. This time I was actually ok with it because my hatred for people who praised the series has finally passed. I read the manga, and my opinion had not really changed.

Story: It had many plot holes, and was a general crash fire. So this yandere girl, Satou finds/kidnaps a young girl, Shio. If you dive deeper into the story, you find out that Satou is completely deranged, killing people and harming them just to have her "lover" to herself. Shio is under 10 I presume, so so far it seemed like yuri trash. To explain Satous actions, the story proclaims she was abused and mistreated by her guardian, but it never justifies why she is passed off by judge, who ever she gives the death sentence to, they probably deserved it. Even though she is a mindbroken teenager who doesn't know what she's doing, and is most likely in a weak mental state. Shio can't really have much character, as she just serves as another clarification for murder. She has no character, besides how pure and sweet she is. The story convinces you to fall in love with the character Satou, even though she's a murderer who is completely out of her mind. It's because of this that the story does not understand that placing a young individual child in the care of a psychopath usually doesn't end up well. As you can see clearly, the story acts like the child is completely well and nurtured because Satou cares about her. Satou has to face many other characters and defeat them just to remain with Shio. It doesn't particularly strike me any emotion, rather than disappointment and boredom. The story doesn't really tie together many of their plot points and it just ends up having one character going on a murder spree and never really seems to take advantage of the idea that a high schooler is allowed to kidnap children and murder other characters even though they basically had nothing wrong with them besides one or two creepy factors. The story is pure shock value there's no way and you don't get what's going on most of the time. The police don't play much of a part, and there are many cliche moments of justice, even though that's not the case. It's ok to have an insane character in your story, you can put them in a situation of any kind, and the basic lines of using love as an excuse can be a very chilling story, but you have to have realistic characters that also have a sense of quirk to them, or else they'll be so comically stupid that you realize the story was just for the wow parts. It shows buildup that has a weak foundation because of the way the story is loosely jangled together, when it shows powerful scenes, it often overestimates its own intelligence and punctures holes in its wobbly base. The whole mess afterwards is sugar coated and presented on an edgy storyline.
Characters: Let's start off with our main protagonist. Satou is a young teenager who is presented as an attractive and easygoing girl who sleeps with many boys which is later explained by the fact that she may have been sexually abused by her aunt. She then acquires a young little girl and is convinced that they belong together. Although this may be fiction. If you don't like like title girls being groomed, which I think everyone can agree on unless they are out of their minds, then this relationship has its flaws, Satou being in complete control over their romantic situation. Daichi, is a character who's only purpose is to get in Satous way, he is a pedophile masochist who wants to do dirty and dangerous things with Satou. He loves and maybe has a weird fetish(masochism) towards almost being caught by the police, etc. This is mainly for Satou to show her independence and badass side, although Satou is super two-faced. He doesn't pose to much of a threat, and is just a weak character for us to hate. Mitsuboshi is a young boy who works at the same job as Satou. In the beginning he is just a sweet attractive person like Satou herself, but Satou already loving another person(a small child, mind you) rejects his confession. He is left heartbroken and goes to his boss, but gets raped/sexually abused by her, he ends up being insane afterwards. His character showed promise but then was turned into an edgy, crazy boy who's main purpose was to target Shio, because of her "pure and heavenly" side. He is much like Daichi, from an analytical standpoint. Next, we have Shoko and Asahi. They are good and well meaning characters, even though Asahi may seem a little mind broken because the abuse he suffered, but more on that later. The only reason that these characters didn't really have an affect on my opinion is because they didn't play too much of a meaningful part. Shoko was a nice and simple character, she was the voice of reason and a girl who really cared for Satou. Asahi was Shio's older brother. He wanted to find her after he escaped his abusive fathers grasp. He was separated from her when he decided that Shio and her mother should run away while he dealt with his father. He was broken a bit, and convinced that his mother was a nice person, even though she abandoned Shio. Asahi and Shoko would make a great couple, and me saying that is pretty surprising in this type of trash manga. Too bad I know Shoko gets killed.
Art: It was effective and simple, there wasn't much to note on it. It makes use of its decency to show characters state of being, but it didn't do anything clever.
Enjoyment: I don't mean to be rude, like what you like, but my standards can't deny that this manga was so painfully dreadful, instead of being invested, and was laughing my ass off at how stupid it was. Everything came out in the wrong emotion, disappointment, anger, laughing, and face palming. If you're like me who watches simple shows, comedy, slice of life, some horror, and romance, then you already knew this wasn't your show, but you could still dissect every scene into its basic form, and find out that it tries to make it's already weak points, into a masterpiece. It's like they didn't think of anything before they just sat down and started drawing on a piece paper after watching Mirai Nikki.
Overall: ...It's trash. Go look for another anime, don't waste your time on this one! It's a crash fire. If I could describe this in only one word it would be, A Painful Boring Disaster Waiting to Fall Apart. Did I say one word? Well it's disappointment brought me much more to the table. Go watch Higurashi, both seasons. It has shock value with some meaning to it. Wonderful story. Basically, WATCH HIGURASHI INSTEAD, IT'LL SAVE YOU A FEW DAYS. I read it so you don't have to.