[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