User blog:AustinDR/Shio's Miniature Garden (Review)

So after the shock fuel that was episode 1, episode 2 of Happy Sugar Life establishes a few ground rules. For one, any character in the anime can, and will, be revealed to be mentally unstable or messed up in some way. Case in point, Sato’s teacher is presented as a creep. You may remember in the last episode, Sato was trying to dispose of three bloodied bags but before she could toss them into the ocean, Sato got the sinking suspicion that she was being watched. The episode goes into many different directions, so let’s begin. First, Sato’s teacher mentions to her that he was trying to call her house to discuss her academics, and just when she was going to head to class, the teacher grabs her wrist and tells her that she stood out from the more “bland” girls. Figuring out who her stalker was, Sato takes an alternate route, knowing that he would follow her. She leads him to an alley where he tries to take advantage of this only for Sato to sound an alarm. The next day, it is revealed that the teacher was married and had a daughter. Shockingly, Sato made herself present at this driveway, so the two walk together and talk to pass time. The teacher admits that even with his wife, and that he was already married, he wasn’t satisfied, so he naturally was lusting after other women. Disgusted by this, Sato sternly lectures him on how it isn’t true love, and manipulates him into helping her in some way. Remember the bags? I have the sinking feeling that Sato may use him a few more times for her more…nefarious misdeeds, and that if it comes to shove, she would then pitch the blame onto him. The next plot concerns Mitsuboshi, the young man who was kidnapped and abused by his manager. After that traumatizing experience, Mitsuboshi decides to work at the cat-themed restaurant that Sato worked in the first episode. However, when the manager innocently pats him on the shoulder, this causes Mitsuboshi to have a mental breakdown. Before you could feel pretty bad for him….he also turns out to have an affixation with Shio….Though this makes me interested in which direction this will go down. We know that Sato is “in love” with Shio, so what would she do if she found out that this guy she met yesterday also has an interest in her? With Mitsuboshi, I do understand why he is like this given his traumatic experience with his former boss (which doesn’t help the fact that she is never taken to justice for what she did), so he is psychologically damaged, whatever innocence he had left had been snuffed out. I do not agree with what he had become, but in the sense of the world he lives in, it makes sense.

Lastly, we get a young boy who seems to be related to Shio as he is distributing missing person reports to people he came across. He becomes an unwitting rival with Sato when after Mitsuboshi saved him from getting beaten up by would be thieves, he says the wedding vow that Sato and Shio would do with each other ever since she kidnapped her. This also leads to more interesting context. Not once had Shio raised any questions about her situation. Sure she is established as innocent, but it doesn’t make much sense that Shio never discusses her parents, her home life, or anything of that sort. Sato and Shio are similar in a way that they are both broken. Both had come from households that were potentially abusive, with Sato’s concept of love being rendered as warped, and Shio has moments where she passes out after she envisions the world around her spiraling. This could indicate that she was badly abused at some point, which could explain why she doesn’t mention her parents. But it is made clear that she had some kind of relationship with this person. It does bring some conflict between Sato and this mystery person in that she realizes that the wedding vows could possibly mean that Shio is only reciting from memory rather than truly loving her. As such, Sato grabs a crowbar, and raises it over the beaten down man….

Overall, this episode seems more balanced because we do have a more firm idea on what the world this anime takes place in entails, and it also shows how manipulative and intelligent Sato can be without having to resort to outright murder….yet.

Final score: 8 out of 10 stars