Sweet-Ish, Let's Say...

Welcome back, manga fans.

Now, before we begin, I'd like to apologize for the lackluster punny title of this particular post.  The title of Happy Sugar Life does lend itself to "sugar", "sweet" and cooking puns, but my opinions on the work itself are nowhere near extreme enough for me to go very far in either extolling it or slamming it, so I found myself boxed into a corner.

Anyway, on to the review itself.  Again, this is the review for Happy Sugar Life Vol. 1, which just recently released here on American shores.

Sato Matsuzaka used to fool around with boy after boy until she came upon the adorable lolicon Shio-chan.  The two seem to live alone happily, subsisting on Sato's part-time job income and their mutual love for one another.

But everything is not how it seems.

Mysteries still remain, but Sato seems to have killed someone (or perhaps more than one someone) in order to gain the apartment in which she and Shio-chan currently live.  And Shio-chan is also seen to be a missing child that Sato no doubt abducted and is also forbidden from leaving the house.

I am reminded of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, or possibly the short work of Thomas Ligotti, where it's all "Everything is fine...Until it isn't".  Not only are the sudden visuals disturbing, but possibly even moreso is Sato herself, out ostensible anti-hero.

There's a considerable age gap between her and Shio-chan, and it definitely isn't played for hotness.  Shio-chan seems to barely be into her double digits and at times seems to act more like a toddler, blindly obeying and trusting that everything Sato says is true, and seemingly unable to remember her own parents.

Let's just say this: Every night, Sato puts on a bridal veil and forces Shio-chan, an innocent child with the mind of a toddler, to recite to her wedding vows.

Yyyeah...

Sato cares for Shio-chan equally as a dear sibling, lover (?) and prized possession.  Her inner dialogue is also at times stilted and repetitive, denoting madness, and constantly refers to Shio-chan as "hers", as well as strangely calling Shio-chan's love "fragments filling up her heart".  Sato even treats her taking of Shio-chan like someone else would treat the shoplifting of, say, a keychain or something, and "Who cares?" about the real owners.

Twisted love is a major theme in this series, especially as Sato fights against other similarly-twisted people with their own warped ideas of love (but only if they threaten her and her way of life).

But I feel part of the fun of this series (however cringey it may be), long story short, is seeing just how far Sato will go and how long she can keep up her "happy sugar life" before it all comes crshing down, one way or another.

PS: See what I did there? :)