Art 8/10: One of HSL's best attributes.
Studio Ezόla has opted for a pretty basic art style for this Anime. The surroundings or backgrounds are simple, but never feels fake or takes away from the original style, so no points deducted from that. This is the best example of where you can see contrasts being used. In happy or cheerful scenes, the colors used are extremely bright and sparkly. The color scale also shifts more to red to give that "alive" and "warm" feeling. And on certain scenes the art turns extremely dark. The entire scene gets washed in a blue like hue to give of this "dead" and "cold" feeling. HSL also uses the "eyes are the windows to the soul" saying to its fullest. In some scenes, the eyes of the characters change drastically to reflect their inner struggles. Subtle things like the eyes giving of a burning sensation when the characters are engulfed in anger is a nice touch and is sometimes pretty hard to see unless you look carefully.
There is almost never really on-screen violence in the Anime. The Anime uses visual hints as well accompanying sound effects to make you visualize those scenes for yourself. Which is what makes this Anime a truly psychological Anime.
Sound 8/10: The Opening explores this contrasts theme a bit more. The OP begins with an innocent voice and a happy sounding tone. The Opening then switches to a more deep tone and the singer (Akari Nanawo) sings in a more intimidating tone.
The Ending has an overall calm tone to help with pressure release and the end of the episode.
The OST is subtle but effective, builds tension when it must and sets the overall tone for the scene when needed. In some stages the lack of an OST is also used to give a false sense of security to the viewer before taking you by surprise.
The special insert song used in its respective episode was used to support the visual metaphor of the arc as well as support the feelings of the character the arc focuses on.
Characters 9/10: The characters are all introduced as normal people. On the surface they all look trustworthy. All the characters are in respectable positions and are in some cases even idolized, but then their insanity meter gets turned up to 11 if they are pushed overboard. Contrasts are once again used here, down to the names of our two main characters, Satou (sugar) and Shio (salt). On the topic of names. The names of the characters all have a meaning to what they provided or represents in the Anime. If you are done watching the Anime I would recommend searching the meaning of their names. The characters feel real in the sense that they all have the inner struggles that we as humans are fighting everyday. The only part where this subtracts from realism is the fact that so many characters snap around the main character.
Story 9/10: The story is pretty dark. Themes are explored which is not really that common in some Anime. Which once again brings it back to the contrasts. All of the characters are looking for their "Happy Sugar Life." Yet they don't see that by searching for this happiness they keep on leaving despair and once they find this “ideal” life, they are confused as to why they are not happy. The story intentionally makes you empathize with the main character. Which I would say is hard to do as if you take the character out and place them in the real world, this member would be hated. The story does a great job in making you root and care for a really repulsive being. The pacing is not something to complain about. Not too fast and not too slow. The ending was a bit abrupt and for many was a bit distasteful.
Enjoyment 10/10: Why I liked it: The use of all the above discussed means to tell a pretty dark story was something I enjoyed a lot. The overall usage of contrasts was also something that I liked a lot. Studio Ezόla did a pretty fine job in their first Anime and I am looking forward to more of their work if they are to pursue more titles in the future. I have since then bought the Manga for this and the adaptation done by the Studio was pretty good. The ending was also fully original as the Manga stopped around episode 11.
Why You might not like it:
The story is not a Happy Sugar Life. It is a psychological horror that keeps you asking "Is this really OK?", "Are we the baddies?" and "Why am I rooting for this person?" Even though there is never really that much on-screen violence. The Anime keep hinting towards what happened and the means in which this violence occurred. The ending was for some a bit distasteful. The story is about a relationship between a child and a high-school student. I think those are the main reasons you would not like this Anime. I would also not recommend this as a first Anime for someone just starting out, unless they like Horror or similar shows to this.
Overall 9/10: I was really impressed by this Anime. With a totally new Studio and a director which has only directed a few Anime in the past, my expectations for HSL was pretty low. But as the story progressed I could see the effort the director and the animators put in to make this first project a huge success in my opinion.
