Trying to find a good psychological/thriller anime is very hard these days. Happy Sugar Life is a psychological thriller anime that dropped this year but is it actually worth watching? If your a fan of the psychological/thriller or horror genre, then Happy Sugar Life is an interesting anime to watch. Psychological thrillers tend to focus on the unstable or delusional psychological states of its characters. Happy Sugar Life ends up being a thrilling ride and there are multiple characters you want to root for despite them being clearly mentally unstable.

Happy Sugar Life is a psycho love horror story centered around high school girl Satou Matsuzaka who meets a mysterious little girl named Shio. She experiences a sweet feeling when she encounters her and labels it as “love”. Satou lets her stay in her apartment and vows to protect that feeling of love, even if it means committing crimes.

Happy Sugar Life started off as a psychological thriller manga series written and illustrated by Tomiyaki Kagisora . It was adapted by Ezo’la into a 12 episode anime television series.

The Characters in Happy Sugar Life Are Twisted

Happy Sugar Life depicts human behavior in some of the worst ways possible. Many characters have some deep mental issues.

Satou Matsuzaka is the main protagonist in this story. Because of her pink hair, she resembles Yuno Gasai, the female protagonist of Mirai Nikki. Satou is also similar to Yuno in that she is also a yandere. A yandere is a term for a person who is very loving and caring to the person they like to the point their love and devotion becomes mentally destructive in nature. It leads to the person being overprotective, violent, and brutal. Satou commits gruesome acts to protect Shio and protect their “love”.

One of the appeals of Satou as a character is that she is, in fact, in control of herself in most situations. She is able to present herself as a normal nice teenage girl.  She doesn’t do more than necessary. However, when she is put in a difficult situation, her eyes become more lifeless and her tone of voice changes. For example, in one episode, she is targeted by her female manager for being pretty and easily attracting the guys at work. The manager has Satou engage in all types of strenuous activity and has her work overtime with no pay. She realizes what’s happening and continues to work and not react. However, when she is given her pay stub, she sees that she was not payed for most of the hours she worked. She confronts the manager but the manager refuses to pay her what she is owed. This is when Satou changes. Her tone of voice changes and she calmly berates for her actions and manages to get information from her that she wouldn’t want revealed publicly. What’s great about this scene was that it wasn’t too over-dramatic or over the top. Satou’s voice actor, Kana Hanazawa (voiced Mayuri Shiina in Steins;Gate, Akane Tsunemori in Psycho Pass, Rize Kamishiro in Tokyo Ghoul, and Shirase Kobuchizawa in A Place Further than the Universe), completely nails the scene.

Satou’s becomes more twisted when she perceives a threat to Shio or anything that would ruin her time with Shio. She quickly resorts to murder, using anything she can find to inflict pain or death. Her unhealthy love with Shio stems from the fact that she’s never known true love growing up. She’s even resorted to fooling around with numerous guys in her attempt to find love. When she meets Shio, she believes she experiences something she’s never felt before. This love becomes obsessive. I”ll speak about this more later.

Another twisted character is Daichi Kitaumekawa, Satou’s teacher. Daichi is presented as a handsome and friendly teacher but he becomes attracted to Satou. Satou is very composed and smart and he sees her as different from most of his other students. Daichi is revealed to be a pervert who takes advantage of young girls. He tries to take advantage of Satou and almost sexually assaults her but Satou manages to get the upper hand by threatening to tell his wife. When Satou insults and attacks him for thinking his obsession with her and his lust can be called “love”, he derives a sense of pleasure from this, revealing his sadomasochistic tendencies.

Satou’s aunt is one of the more interesting characters in the show. She appears to be very cheerful and happy but she is actually insane and unstable. She is very masochistic and accepts all types of desires (violent or sexual). She engages in sexual relations with multiple men and believes that it’s “love”. Her twisted view on love has had a huge influence on Satou.

The most damaged character in the show is arguably Taiyo Mitsuboshi. Taiyo is Satou’s coworker who works at a restaurant. Taiyo was raped and held captive by his former boss. He develops a fear of older woman after this trauma. When he sees Shio, he finds comfort in Shio’s innocence and wishes to be around her so he can be purified.

The characters in Happy Sugar Life have mental issues that manifests in unhealthy behavior. They are unhinged but you can relate to some of them on some level. There are also normal healthy characters in Happy Sugar Life that you can also root for as well.

Happy Sugar Life shows the unhealthy aspects of love

Many of the characters in Happy Sugar Life want love or happiness. However, their upbringing or trauma leads to them having a twisted view of love or happiness. That results in extreme methods to try to achieve or maintain their desires.

Taiyo Mitsuboshi is an example of this. After being held hostage and raped multiple times, he gains a pathological fear of older women to the point he has a panic attack when they touch him. He forces himself to overcome this fear but everything changes when he sees Shio. Shio represents the innocence he lost after his trauma. He feels as if he can be pure through Shio due to his extreme phobia of older woman, and like Satou, will do anything to see Shio. This might be off-putting to viewers seeing teenagers attracted to this little girl, specifically seeing Taiyo’s pedophilia like tendencies towards Shio. However, he is what he is for a reason. The show set him as a character to show how certain trauma can lead to us being scarred, which causes us to engage in  unhealthy and strange behavior.

Despite being a cute little girl, Shio is another character that has a twisted view of love or happiness. As the show progresses,  it is revealed that Shio had a very abusive childhood. She was eventually abandoned by her mother. This would have a negative impact on any child. Shio developed a fear of abandonment and this resulted in her showing love to anyone who is able to takes care of her and show her affection. Over the course of the series, she becomes so dependent on Satou that she shows unconditional love for her, forgiving her of any crimes she commits. Shio feels love for Satou because of her abandonment issues and believes she can be happy by being with her.

Satou is the extreme example of a character that has a twisted view of love. She grew up without experiencing love. Her parents died when she was young and she had to be raised by her crazy aunt. Satou’s aunt sleeps with countless men and she believes this is also love. Satou is influenced by this and this is one of the reasons why she fooled around with so many guys before meeting Shio. However, Satou doesn’t agree with her aunt’s view on love and believes that love should be shared with one person. When she meets Shio, she finally finds someone she can truly love and someone who can fill the void.

How Satou met Shio is very interesting. Happy Sugar Life did a good job of presenting the backstory. The backstory of Satou’s and Shio’s apartment was explored through the eyes of its former resident. All of it is in first-person view with no music, and the resident never speaks. Instead, their moments of “dialogue” are replaced with a glitchy audio clip over a fluctuating black line. The pauses before these clips make noise and their varying intensity fill in the blanks of Satou’s conversations perfectly. The entire scene was well done.

Satou is very smart and aware of the evil nature of the people around her. She describes this sensation she feels as “bitter”. When she’s around Shio, she describes it as “sweet”.  Having never known love, Satou will do anything to protect that love and so she continue to feel as if she’s living in a fantasy world with Shio. Every action she takes is for the purposes of protecting her status quo situation with Shio. When other people threaten to interfere with Satou’s lifestyle, whether intentionally or not, she deals with them decisively. She uses various immoral tactics including deception, blackmail, and even murder. Her twisted view on love leads to her obsession of protecting Shio from the outside world. Everything that she does is so she can continue living her “happy sugar life” with Shio.

Conclusion

Happy Sugar Life  is not for everyone. It looks like something you’d avoid from it’s premise, especially with Satou and Shio’s relationship. However, when you dive deeper into Satou’s mindset as well as what it’s other mentally unstable characters bring to the table, Happy Sugar Life reveals what it takes to gain your happiness and find love and what the lengths people will do to keep that “happiness” from disappearing. The show has a very unexpected ending and overall was a thrilling ride. If your a fan of psychological/thrillers, it’s worth watching.

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