User blog:AustinDR/Happy Sugar Life: EP 8 (Review)

So, I’ll just start by saying that seeing Satou act completely normal is really unnerving. So this episode answers one of the biggest questions the show had at the time: who was in the body bags? After Satou’s aunt was revealed to still be kicking, who then was the likely candidate? In this episode, we see Satou continually dropping by one of her neighbor’s rooms to model for him. This would culminate in Satou bringing Shio in one rainy day. The neighbor had initially drawn himself to Satou because of that sense of incompleteness within her. Now with this little girl in the equation, it’s ruining his vision. So, he tries to strangle her to death only to get bludgeoned to death by Satou who concludes that this must be what it felt like to really love someone.

After this portion of the episode, it then shifts to Mitsuboshi racing after Shouko, not so much because he’s worried about what Satou would do to her, but because he’s afraid that Shouko might fall in love with her and take her for himself (smh). This episode did actually make me feel some sympathy for Mitsuboshi; him reacting in fear when two older women were asking if he was alright only speaks volumes of how traumatized he was when his manager violated him. But of course, any sympathy I had for him quickly dissipated when he was saying he’ d keep a picture of Shio in his pocket and hold onto it until he graduated from high school and got a job.

Then we get a jumpscare courtesy of Satou who gives him an ultimatum. We then get to see more of Satou’s manipulative nature. She is such a bitch, but I just love that about her. In return for helping her (nonviolently) get rid of Asahi, Satou would give Taiyo access to see Shio. However, given how manipulative and possessive she is of Shio, anyone could see her obviously not keeping that part of the deal. Taiyo initially refuses to take part because he wanted to be normal, only to relent when Satou throws one of Shio’s socks on his face. Yeah, this show….

Lastly, we have Shouko who’s still torn up from the events of last week’s episode. While I do feel bad for her being upset about “hurting” Satou, I’d frankly state that she dodged a bullet there. She sees Asahi again and gets her confidence back thanks to Asahi and he cutely pats her on the head like Shio did for Mitsuboshi. It’s all nice and good but Shouko wishing that she would just disappear left me cringing along with Asahi’s quote about nice people never getting rewarded or something to that effect namely because having read the manga up to this point, I know what’s going to go down and it’s not going to be pretty.

As unnerving as it was to see Satou act completely calm when she first met her neighbor, it was nice seeing the regression of her becoming the way she is now because of his actions. Rather than talking, we get what he’s thinking from static sound beats. The music was also fitting in this episode as well. While I don’t typically talk about the sounds, the scene where Satou talks to Mitsuboshi about how Shio was an angel is unnerving because of how it plays as a broken recording. Almost feel like we’d be listening to the Devil’s mixed CD collection every time we tune in to watch. Things are definitely heating up.

Score: 10/10