Sugar Apple Fairy Tale

To say that the ending ruined the whole show is an understatement... This is a show of suffering. It should be called Sugar Apple Fairy Hell The show sells itself as quite a laid back and feel good anime, but at the end, I feel everything but this. I'm writing the review because it was a bitter ending, not sweet in the slightest, nor warranted. To start, characters who had committed irreperable deeds had been kept relevant throughout the show. There were constant feelings throughout of revenge and vengeance, but by the very people who were the perpetrators. Even the MC, who had suffered throughout the show,never showed signs of revenge, and if they were even slightly sane, probably a few annoying characters might be dead or in jail. The main character is extremely spineless when it comes to others, she battles to save them from simple situations, yet when she is in peril herself, overcomes insane feats, (maybe because she has the support of many and can't do anything alone) Anyways, the show has some nice points throughout, but one would expect it to mainly leave people feeling bitter

This show was a colourful and vibrant fantasy that had some good ideas, but also showed us another shoujo series where the romance just isn’t all that interesting. Sure, I could go for the low-hanging fruit and criticize the slavery themes, or the age gap in the romance, but I’m not going to focus on that. Instead, I want to highlight how modern shoujo anime follow a very similar formula that just isn’t all that engaging. Granted, I’m not very familiar with shoujo anime, so if you disagree with what I say, feel free to enlighten me on the subject, but from the ones I haveseen, there’s always a somewhat ditzy female protagonist, who ends up liking a “pretty-looking” male protagonist. Now, I get the aim of shoujo anime is to get us to “squee” when there’s a bit of fan service, but sometimes, I feel that the fan service is quite over-done, to the point where it just detracts from the fantasy elements and world building that the time could have been used to do instead. Another problem that it has is incredibly shallow villains, whose very existence is just to trip the protagonist up with no real substantial reason whatsoever. For example, in this show, for anyone who has watched it, knows that Jonas is a very hated character by many. The reason why he became the antagonist was so dumb and shallow, which only made it worse. The other villains just don’t have motives other than being discriminatory or rude for no apparent reason other than sexism. The other problem I find with modern shoujo anime is the contrived misunderstandings, as many of times, the “drama” revolves around the protagonist seeing their love interest in an “out-of-context” situation, and get down in the dumps because of that, even though they have no idea what is going on. It just doesn’t feel like drama that goes anywhere, rather, it gets solved quickly, and doesn’t feel fulfilling when it inevitably gets solved. This show has these issues as well. With the problems out of the way, I also found this show to be quite rich in world-building and creative in some ways, with building sugar confections as the main theme. Ann Halford, the main protagonist, strives to be a silver sugar master, like her late mother, and seeing her improve her craft and believe in herself while facing hurdles was nice to see. The backgrounds and colour palettes really give a sense of a fantasy atmosphere, and it had some beautiful shots. Some of the animation was a bit limited, but it didn’t take away from the plot. Overall, the production was not bad at all. I do wish the soundtrack was a bit more noticeable though. There were some questionable themes around slavery that I must mention, but I won’t dwell on it. In this kingdom, for many years, humans enslaved fairies by keeping one of their wings. The other main protagonist, Shall Fen Shall, is a warrior fairy, and gets bought by Ann to be her bodyguard. As you can expect, there were some romantic developments as well. I’m glad the slavery aspect became less of a theme as we went along, and it was more of a fantasy/adventure show more than anything else. Overall, there were some highs and lows, with the animation and world building being the highs, and the characters being a bit of a weak part, especially the antagonists. It’s as sweet as its namesake, but my only wish is that future shoujo anime get a little more creative with how the drama unfolds.

Lately there aren't many fantasy romance anime that really interest me, I think romance fantasy stories these days are very predictable, mostly it's just the looks that are good, not the story, like sometimes ml/fl forget their goal and instead create a harem, mc who has been overpowered since childhood or something like that. it really bored me. But Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is different! I really like this, I'm at a loss to express it in words, I like the story and the music which is relaxing and calming. Obviously, I recommend it!!! I really hope there will be a season 2 >w

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes