English Dub Review: Sugar Apple Fairy Tale “The Scarecrow and the Fairy”

Overview

Based on the Japanese fantasy light novel series written by Miri Mikawa and illustrated by Aki. The story follows Ann Halford who after the loss of her mother, Silver Sugar Master Emma, due to illness, Ann embraces her dream of earning the same title herself and after reaching the age of 15, she heads to the royal capital. Along the way, she buys a beautiful, sharp-tongued warrior fairy to be her bodyguard on her journey…


Our Take

And so we begin the life of 15-year-old Ann Halford, being wed (but pitied) to Jonas Anders as the heir of a candy shop, but instead, she decides to carve her own path to be a silver sugar master in Lewiston. The relationship between humans and fairies is notorious for being in a master/servant sort of relationship with a fairy’s wing akin to their heart as a brutal form of obedience, but to Ann, that’s not how she was brought up by her now deceased mother. Looking for a warrior fairy for her endeavors (which are majorly difficult to handle), she finds one: Shalle Fen Shalle, who’s a bit of a cynic and a smartass that proceeds to call Ann a “scarecrow” and tells her to purchase him.

On the way to Lewiston, and having Shalle be her escort, Ann idealistically believes that that both humans and fairies can peacefully get along, but Shalle thinks that Ann is foolish, though he’s not wrong at initial thought. For the “Scarecrow”, reality swears at her face thinking that she’s a fool, and yet, Ann swears and commits that she will return Shalle to his wing once the escort duty is done. To make matters worse, encountering a group of bandits doesn’t help, and attempts to use his seduction skills that Ann won’t concede to, but when Shalle displays his power, she realizes that she may have possibly gotten her money’s worth and beyond…

Overall, while I’m not familiar with the source material, this worked in terms of first impressions. From the title, I’d expected it to be heavy on the cute magical girls doing cute things with talking animals or something, but looking beyond the colorful artstyle, the established conflicts between races and slavery aspect showed that this world is anything but perfect, and made the proceedings compelling enough to keep my attention throughout this first episode. Let’s just hope they keep the momentum going in later episodes.