English Dub Season Review: Sugar Apple Fairy Tale Season One

Based on the Japanese fantasy light novel series written by Miri Mikawa and illustrated by Aki. The story follows Anne Halford. A candy crafter determined to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a Silver Sugar Master which is a title bestowed only by royalty. However, the road to her destination is filled with a world of danger. In order to travel to the capital and pursue her dream further, Anne reluctantly buys Challe, a bitter sarcastic, and jaded fairy forced into a life of servitude. Anne wishes to befriend her new companion, but in this kingdom where fairies are treated as property upon possession of one of their wings, Challe wants nothing to do with humans. Torn between Challe’s freedom and her needs, Anne must confront what the sweet life is worth.

On the technical side, the Anime series was produced by J.C.Staff and directed by Yōhei Suzuki, with scripts written by Seishi Minakami, character designs handled by Haruko Iizuka, and music composed by Hinako Tsubakiyama. The opening theme song “Musical” was performed by Minori Suzuki, while the ending theme song (from episode #02 and onwards) is “To Grant” by Sumire Morohoshi.

The story of Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is very dramatic but at the same time also very slice of life. At its core, it’s quite simple. Especially for this 1st season, the story is mostly about Anne’s journey to getting the title of Silver Sugar Master. While the setting shows you it’s on the nose issues from the slavery of the fairy race and sexism in the workplace. Anne, as a character, is against fairy slavery and was raised to value fairy life as equals but the society that the story is in doesn’t feel the same way.

As a character, Anne starts off naive at first, but after episode 4 her character starts developing in compelling ways. She’s strong-willed and sticks to her words, she tries her best, these qualities make her rather endearing. And the concept of fairy slavery makes Anne and the viewer ask themselves ethical questions throughout the proceedings and the relationship dynamics with the other fairies are the closest thing to actual character growth, especially Anne’s budding relationship with Shall/Challe. Throughout the series, as that increases so does the plot to want to try and fix all the problems aligned with human/fairy conflict.

However, this show is far from perfect. For starters, the anime neglects to show a lot of parts where certain fairies insult humans for simple things such as loving or being romantic with a fairy. Another problem I find with this anime is the contrived misunderstandings and its forced drama. many times, this unneeded “drama” revolved around the protagonist seeing their love interest in out-of-context situations, and getting 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 or earned when it inevitably gets solved.

But the biggest flaw this show has would also have to be the incredibly shallow villains who feel forced outside of the slavery aspect. Their very existence is to simply fuck with Anne and shit on her efforts for no real 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, and don’t get me started on the character Bridget and the shit she pulls in the final episode which left a bad taste in my mouth…

Overall, this show had some substantial highs and lows, with the animation and world-building being the highs, while the contrived situations and certain characters being the massive lows, especially the antagonists. It’s a pretty clear-cut story, it’s simple at first glance but progressively complex if you look more into its other plots, while The visuals in the anime look almost like canvas art Whenever there is action it does it at a very good level of detail. With the recent announcement of season 2, we can only hope Season 2 redeems itself and sticks the landing more and Season One’s ending did when it plummeted with the grace of a wooden parachute…