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I’m having a very difficult time giving this show a rating at all. I came upon this show from a yuri recommendation list and my expectations were completely subverted, in both good and bad ways. There’s so much wrong with Happy Sugar Life, but if you can bare the first few episodes enough to hear the story the writers are trying to tell, you’ll come to understand that the show is written very intentionally. It dives heavily into the realistic parts of various forms of trauma, whether the show is glamorous or whether it makes you want to turn it off and drop it.
First of ... all, there’s the elephant in the room of how horrifying this show is. There are multiple scenes where characters typically integral to the progression of many other stories are murdered on screen, multiple counts of pedophilic advances from different people, and the fact that the main premise revolves around a child who probably has some degree of Stockholm Syndrome from her father. I was ready to give this show a terrible rating and move on, but I really try to give every show I watch the same perspective that the show writers had when they produced it.
With that being said, there are absolutely things in this show discussed that are worth giving it praise for. Happy Sugar Life is not a show that shies away from the content it takes on. The relationships and the character motivations are never “fanservice” (if you could even call this that *shudders*). The main problematic points in the show (in my opinion) come from the relationships everyone has with Shio. There’s Satou (the main character and her psuedo-partner/roommate), Asahi (Shio’s brother) and Taiyou.
Taiyou is a teenage boy who gets sexually manipulated and assaulted by older women, and as a result of the trauma develops a complex for younger girls. After Satou saves him from one of their nymphomaniac bosses, he finds missing posters for Shio. I think the show could’ve done a better job with how they handled Taiyou’s motives. While I’m sure they were trying to portray a side effect of sexual assault at a young age, this is the one I found least convincing.
Asahi is Shio’s twin brother who suffered years of traumatic abuse at home at the behest of their father. After helping Shio and his mother escape home, Asahi would be physically abused in horrifying ways that I will not go into detail over. He constantly dreams about living a life alone with his mother and Shio, and is doing everything he can to find her.
Satou found Shio shortly after Shio’s mother abandoned her on the street. After years of Satou living with her psychotic aunt and grappling with what love means to her, Shio brings up an analogy between love and a jar. This analogy captivates Satou and the two live together after falling in love and being mutually beneficial for each other’s current situation: Satou wanting to find a single person to give all of her love to despite her aunt, and Shio’s internal desire for a loving mother figure after being abandoned.
There are a couple of themes that come up during the show, both of which relate to sweetness. The first is the analogy of the jar representing your capacity to give and receive love. There’s a very powerful scene where Shio can see her mother’s jar about to break and cries out for her to get help. Once her jar breaks she believes that there’s no more room for her mother to love her. In contrast, she sees Satou’s jar intact but empty and wants to help her fill it. I think the show does a good job of introducing this theme, but it could’ve gone further with this and applied it directly to other characters even if the circumstances were altered. The second theme is about the sensation of bitterness. There’s powerful imagery the show uses whenever Satou encounters something she can only describe as “bitter”. Sometimes her emotions get the best of her and she ends up killing someone because it’s so unpleasant for her to experience the sensation. She will do anything to protect the “castle” around the sweet parts of her life, stopping at nothing.
Ultimately Happy Sugar Life is about love. There’s bitter love, sweet love, and completely flavorless love like Satou’s aunt has for everyone. Even though I’m not someone who enjoys gore or lots of heavy violence in anime, I think I would’ve enjoyed this show much less if it followed the trope of being general slice of life or comedy many other creepy over-sexualized pieces take on. Happy Sugar Life being a psychological horror is much more apt for the challenging topics it takes on as a viewer, and makes it well known that it’s not about to forget it has a responsibility to teach them to you, as appropriately as it can.

I am beyond shocked at how good this show turned out to be for me. Despite the silly introductory episodes, I didn’t have high hopes going into watching it. However by the end it actually became my favorite show I’ve ever watched, which completely took me by surprise judging by the mixed reviews here.
Anis (the main character) has such a magnetic personality, despite the tone shift towards the end of the show. Euphyllia’s personality also undergoes a major shift throughout the show, and at the risk of spoiling, I’ll just say that despite the confused reviews the show sets this theme from the very beginning ... through Anis’s motives.
The second half of the season is one of the best stretches of a show I’ve ever watched. Others seem to be frustrated with the amount of plot in the second half, but truthfully this show wouldn’t have been nearly as good if it was all just sapphic shenanigans like other shows. By the end of the show I didn’t feel like I was left empty handed, despite some of the disjointed writing. It felt like a complete bookend to a story that took on a lot of different forms which heavily surprised me.
Something else to mention is that this show is tagged as an isekai. There really aren’t any character traits or (major) plot points that you’d find in a typical isekai in this show. It’s only brought up a couple of times and the story could be told in the exact same way even without it.
If you’re looking for a sapphic sugar overload, you probably won’t like this show. There is definitely a presence, and you won’t be left empty handed, but it’s not the main content. If you’re looking for something that makes you cry 3 times in the last two episodes, by all means please watch this show.

If you want a show that is nothing but pure sugar content, watch this. The story is kind of confusing to follow but you’re always feeling good while watching it. At first I had a hard time sitting down to watch it because Lion’s voice drove me crazy, but by the end I was glad I watched it. It’s really just one of those shows where you want to watch something while you turn your brain off.
The characters don’t have much depth to them, but sapphic-heavy shows are my weakness and usually that makes up for a lack of a compelling plot. I love the ... art style and all of the characters are adorable :)