It was weird that the anime was taking itself a bit too seriously. Satou repeating “bitter… it’s so bitter” weren’t doing anything for me and Shio’s interactions with Satou were just cloying to watch over and over again, it was like listening to an album with the same song with the same hook. Until episode 4, I was getting kind of bored with the repetitive with the sheer saw-tooth variation of moods.
It reminded me a bit of Elfen Lied – which is an anime I enjoyed but I just couldn’t take it seriously. Certainly, the concept of love was being discussed as to what it really is – but the entertainment factor of the tonal whiplash drowned it. Nevertheless, at first, I found the variation in tones so ridiculously binary that in the first three episodes or so, I was finding it pretty goofy and thoroughly entertained watching Satou mess around with her manipulative boss and horny, masochistic teacher. With the ‘bitter’ scenes, the anime staff always seemed to want to introduce new ways to get the job done, ranging from vocal distortions to chalky outlines to the perfect facial contortions and glow-in-the-dark (yandere?) eyes. During the ‘sweet’ scenes the color palette gets brighter, characters get sparkles or flowers around them and the voice acting gets extra sugary – sometimes even to a cloying degree. But in Happy Sugar Life, it’s usage is relentless and it’s the core of the anime’s “aesthetic” – with the polarity in tones being one of the widest I’ve seen in anime, yet.Īnd that’s because of the staff’s intense focus on the visuals and sound design that make the tones as black and white as they are in the show. March Comes in Like a Lion, Gintama) and if not, it’s still entertaining (ie. If handled and timed well, it’s impressive and entertaining (ie. One of the most entertaining aspects of some anime is the use of tonal whiplash. Yeah, no – I don’t think I can ‘review’ this anime as a whole thing because my impressions on the show changed sharply – as sharp as the tonal whiplash in the show – as I was watching through the series.
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