Happy Sugar Life

Happy Sugar life is the best romance anime/manga Ive ever seen/read. the story of a love seen as forbidden, which would never be tollerated really moved me. This manga showed a very new side of that kind of craziness you find with yandere type characters, as the main character (particularly in the manga) has a simple, but also complex and stirring character. Satou Matsuzaka (16) finds Shio Koube (8) randomly on the street, takes her to her home and begins living together with her. For the very first time Satou feels the love and happiness she has always tried to feel, tried to understand andsearched for since her aunt told her about her understanding of happiness when she was a child, which she could not understand and since then, tried to find her own explanation of love. (a little spoiler warning here) As we see in the manga later on, Satou revealed her sadness about not feeling love for anything no matter how hard she tried, which is why she is able to justify anything, also the mureder on her best friend and others by her love, she did not live at all before she meet Shio.(SPOILER END) Also, the fear of never being able to feel true love, feel truly happy and the need to guard it, no matter what needs to be sacraficed, is probably the most hitting and relatable thing Ive ever seen, no matter if fictional, or real. Although I am relating a lot to Satou, Shio has a very special charcter as well, with her being seen as a pure girl being kind and nice but also having her issues Satou helps her with like she helps Satou. with their love for the other. A lot of people, who did not like the manga/anime, I saw argue with it being unrealistic and losing its enjoyment due to not being able to experience the story as if it would be real. Besides Shio and Satou, the rest to me are just some weird people, not necessarily completly unrealistic, but made to tag along the story and create the drama we see in Satous character. But, as long as you understand for yourself that Satou and Shios love is nowhere near absurd or unrealistic theres a good chance you will enjoy/ did enjoy this manga. The strong emotions are also supported by beautiful art, complimenting the events incredibly well, as well as an still, with all those despiseable charcters decently exciting story line, although what really makes it so special to me is everything around our two main protagonists. For me romance stories, all I ever experienced all lacked this kind of complexity with other feelings then sadness happiness and maybe jealousy. it was just all the love in the world, so simple and overlooked, something that is more additional than necessary, its just wrong. Happy sugar life displays the need to feel love for someone, true love to be able to keep on living or find a life with love, its difference from the thought that love isnt eternal is just what I think makes this story more beautiful than any other romance ive seen perfectly shown on Satou and Shio. I do not think that everyone will like this story but for some people it surely is amazing.

A healthy sense of perspective comes from constantly reevaluating and examining the things that you like, picking apart and seeing what exactly makes them tick. Happy Sugar Life is a property I frequently try to do this with, because its one that feels like it should not be one of my favorite stories. And so, with a surprise 11th volume coming out, there's not better time for another reread. My point of view is a little bit different than most though, I feel, as not only did I watch the anime before, but I maintain that the anime is actually the superior way to experiencethe story, although that is not to take from the quality of HSL at its core. Nonetheless, I should start into the meat of the content itself. Happy Sugar Life is both controversial and niche, an intriguing and dangerous concept that by all means kind of should not work. Its certainly a bold story if nothing else, hitting the reader off the top with an uncomfortable ambiguity that isn't resolved really the whole way through, to the story's benefit. At its heart, Happy Sugar Life is a love story, between the clueless, idyllic Shio Koube and our hot and cold yandere protagonist, Satou Matsuzaka. The gist is simple and enticing: Satou kidnapped this kid and holds some unspecified romantic attachment to her, and people are looking for her. Now a dumber story would take that to its natural extremes, having Satou kill and kill until she can't stack the bodies high enough to hide them, or tries to directly assassinate the people looking for her love and get caught. But Satou is much more interesting yandere, I would argue the most interesting I've ever seen. She has an uncanny ability to understand what makes people tick, which she consistently uses to manipulate people, instead of trying to get her hands dirty, as she knows that can only bring her more visibility and danger. She actively enacts restraint and self control as much as she can, demonstrated at the very beginning and reinforced throughout, where one would imagine the typical yandere would get to work and start spilling blood. By making Satou a much more exacting character, not only is she allowed room to develop, but the reader can more clearly see inside her head. This is where the natural comparison to the anime would have to be made, and I will openly admit, I think the anime does it better on every level. But this is where every concept the anime uses is derived from, and from that I give Kagisora much praise. Another strength of both adaptations of Happy Sugar Life is a refreshing understanding of what it is. Which is not to say it doesn't take itself seriously, to the contrary, there's not much that isn't taken seriously. But it knows what it has to show seriously to make itself work, even if it seems too ridiculous to be played straight. That is why, ultimately, this is a Yuri. Not to speak on Yuri as a genre, I know exceptionally little about it and its typical progressions, but we as the reader don't hold some perspective far above the action, presented with a moral standpoint for or against the action. We ARE Satou, we have to see Shio in the same way to get into her mental headspace, we have to understand how she can brush off murder and manipulation as not only acceptable, but necessary. There are some chapters in particular, for example, when Satou admits her "sin" to Shio, where the concept is so downright ridiculous that if it was played for laughs, it genuinely could be hilarious. But it knows that this can't be played for laughs, because Satou's conviction is not a joke. These things mean things to the characters, a kiss is more horrifying than the most horrific of crimes, a sock can be more precious than the most enticing temptation. That's what makes HSL such a breath of fresh air, its a story about characters with principles, maybe misguided, maybe downright dangerous, but ones that you understand and that they have to justify. Their desperation and desire is painted across each panel, putting you in the situation to heighten the emotional experience. Granted, it also must be noted, that all of these characters are basically crazy. Which makes it all the more ridiculous, or all the more impressive. There is a buy in inherent to Happy Sugar Life as a concept, how much are you willing to suspend to believe that so many people are going crazy over a single child. But that's a personal problem to work out in your own context as a reader. Again back to concept, Kagisora implements a ton of interesting ideas in how she draws Happy Sugar Life. First and foremost on this front, the art is exceptional. I think the character designs are great, there's a lot of creative framing, and a lot of liberties taken with reality to show character's head spaces. Many times you will not get a presentation of reality, but an impression of an emotion or situation that carries across much more than just that hard truth. Sometimes we're shown something that the character doesn't even understand, placing us in the emotional turmoil of not understanding one's own feelings or history. This is particularly nice in characters like Shio, through whom we slowly gain access to the truth behind what's really going on, the larger emotional context of the story, which does a lot to grant the story a greater message and point. Speaking of the point, lets get a bit into interpretation. One thing that I pretty consistently look at when I come back to the manga is its meaning in comparison to the show. One thing that I really respect about Kagisora is her decision to step away for a minute after the show jumped the core material and ended, re evaluating how the ending had to happen and what the characters gain from it. Ultimately the manga ending ends up much stronger and well developed for it, adding a significant and interesting internal conflict in Shio that was really only hinted at in the show. Taiyou too, receives much more interesting treatment. He is an odd case, as he is surprisingly, the best part of the show by some margin. His writing and development ends up better in the manga, and I really like where he ends in the source over the show. Its a shame that it seems most of what was cut or extrapolated on post show was either with Shio or Taiyou, but that ends up being the case when your manga is just a bit too long for 12 episodes. In any case, Happy Sugar Life has something of a perfect ending in my eyes, endlessly interpretable and melancholic, a redemption at the end as much as a decision with harrowing and confusing personal implications. I'm not in the business of spoiling perfect endings, even with as foreseeable and necessary HSL's is, but at the end of the day it is proof that HSL is not just a show trying to laud or defend a pedophilic relationship. Satou develops as a character in a way I don't think many yanderes are frankly capable of, and comes to see the error of her own ways through her own means, without outside morals pressed upon her. Which makes her journey not only much more of her own, but far more interesting to experience, as a come to light story through her own borderline context. At the end of the day, HSL is as enjoyable as you let it be. It will try to sweep you away, carry you with its energy and commitment to its characters to a fault, and you can enjoy it as much as you can be bought by the context. I go back and forth on how scary Happy Sugar Life really is, as it is ostensibly a psychological horror. If that is what you're looking for, I don't know if this is what you want to find, with minimal kills and just as much sweetness to go with the sour. That being said, be it anime or manga, Satou's Aunt is just about the most terrifying character ever. She takes a horror angle to the classic "can't deal with a masochist because hurting them turns them on" trope and runs with it, becoming almost a metaphysical force of evil that should not exist, that its almost more appropriate to leave unnamed. A lot of the horror elements of Happy Sugar Life exist moreso to unsettle the reader, which frankly is more appropriate in a psychological story, but nonetheless not really much of a direct fear. Ultimately I still think the manga is not quite as good as the show, as really it has no answer to the voice cast. Its very much a worthwhile read though for a fan of the show that wants more, or just someone who wants to experience a very interesting and well crafted emotional story. Happy Sugar Life is a concept that is so bad its good tier elevated to a different height by how its handled. Granted, if you cannot get past the perception that Satou is a pedophile, you should not read Happy Sugar Life, it will bring you no joy.

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, shemay 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.