At the beginning of the show, we found Satou being the lighter shade of black only to find her to be the darkest of them all by the end of the show.

 

This is a shivering pure love psycho horror story of a girl named Satou Matsuzaka, who has someone she likes. She experiences a sweet feeling when she sleeps with her, and thought it must be love. Everything will be forgiven as long as she protects this feeling, even if she tricks, commits crimes, steals, or even kills, she thought.

Let’s get down to the main review.

Story

After the death of Shouko we have Satou stewing. At this point, Satou hasn’t killed or hurt anyone innocent. Remember she’s the lighter shade of black and everyone has been darker than her so she felt justified in a way. Shouko was not one of those darker blacks. And killing her took its toll.

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While Satou is out of it, we see Shio trying to do her best to be there for Satou. And all the while we see what happened between her and her mother. Once again I have to say I feel sorry for Yuuna, Shio and Asahi’s mother. Abused by her husband and in a moment of frustration and fear hits her child. You can feel the emotional breakdown in her where you see she sees herself as no different than her husband. And that leads Satou to finding Shio on the streets.

As Satou comes around, Shio wants to be more involved in Satou’s life. No more secrets, if she’s just being kept in the dark and told to just smile and be happy she’s no more than a doll. And with that Satou lets Shio into the darkness of her secrets and the two accept that they must run away together to avoid the backlash of Shouko’s murder.

And the only person that can help is…Satou’s aunt. Oh goodie.

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Now at this point we have a conversation between the two where Satou’s aunt realizes that Satou killed Shouko and accepts her niece regardless. After she’s laid down with murderers and assaulters before what’s the difference if one is her own niece?

And with that Satou more or less snaps at her aunt when she said there will be a day when she’ll be just like her. And as a kid who heard that a lot, nothing is more frightening or more anger inducing than hearing that from a person that raised you all of the wrong ways.

Satou swears she’ll never be like her aunt and demands since her aunt made her like this she should help get away. So that’s what happens.

Now the final can be broken down into two things. Satou’s critical error in taking off her ring to dress Shouko in her clothes and the after effects of that and Shio’s finale.

As they leave their castle for the last time, Satou tries to make it appear that she died in the fire that her aunt sets in the building but she’s never apparently seen CSI or anything because it’s immediately determined to be Shouko at the end of episode 12.

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But moving on, because she took off her ring and realized it later, she returns to the building while her aunt is burning it down. And Asahi is there as well. I suppose you can concern this the final battle type of ending. It ends with Satou and Shio on the roof where they jump off expecting to die together only for Satou to be the only one to die, leaving Shio alive thanks to Satou’s sacrifice.

Now to speak on Shio. After Satou’s death she’s in the hospital to recover from her injuries. Her brother comes to speak with her only to find her eerily similar to Satou in mannerisms and speech. And with that the series ends.

Characters
Satou Matsuzaka

Satou has always been complex at least in my book. It’d be so much easier if you could just file her away as evil and that be that. But it’s not so simple. It never is.

She’s a product of her environment, never knowing real love led her to look for it in all of the wrong places. And she finally found it with Shio, which I firmly believe it was more of a protective maternal love rather than romantic. However Satou could only see love as romantic or physical because of her upbringing and how she saw love being shown.

Regardless I stick with the lighter shade of black for Satou. She’s done evil things, known better to not do them, and done them anyway but in the end she’s just as much of a victim as the people she’s hurt. It’s just harder to see.

Shio Koube


In the end, Shio’s the last thing left in the anime. And what she’ll be in the end is interesting point to talk about. You can argue she had a life similar to Satou at the beginning. Disfunctional family, abuse, looking for love and acceptance. The difference is that Satou never found love and acceptance until Shio while Shio found it early in life.

It begs the question whether Shio will turn out like Satou or be better. I’ve always said we all have the ability to rise above our surroundings, good or bad, but it’s so hard. Shio’s learned of being loved and an relatively non abusive relationship. It can set the standard for the way she wants to be treated. She can be better than everything’s she’s lived through.

She can be? Or she can be similar to Satou, lost and confused. There’s so many maybes with Shio. That’s the thing with kids. They’re blank slates and they take in so much stuff and make their own choices on what to do with it.

In the end the only person that can say what Shio will be is herself.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the anime, I find myself liking the it a lot. It’s never been a simple ride. Satou wasn’t easy to hate and certainly wasn’t likable. She just had reason she believed were the right ones for doing what she did. I can’t fault her for her feelings but her actions. At the end, Satou while crazy out of her mind was probably the best place Shio could have been and certainly gave her more options emotionally than she would have had with her family.

I’d personally give Happy Sugar Life a 9 out of 10. I wanted to watch every episode every week and it had me hooked from the first episode.

So next season, I’ll be reviewing Fairy Tail the Final Season.

So until the next review,
Later Days

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