Accompanied by gentle, tinkling piano music, the sort of which makes you look for your scotch on the rocks and worry that you’re not wearing evening dress, Sugar is just what it suggests. Mulitple stabbings, incest and mecha are not on the menu, and probably don’t even exist in the Sugar universe.

Saga, the heroine of this tale, meets up with a little fairy named Sugar, who is training to be a fully fledged snow fairy. Saga is a goody goody, but she’s likable enough, and has her flaws – which of course, no self-respecting protagonist would be without these days. Her dogged determination to do as many chores as possible in the shortest amount of time doesn’t make life easy. She makes me tired just looking at her. Although she’s pushy at times in her pursuit of perfection, strangely, I don’t dislike her. Usually she’d be the sort of heroine who’d have me reaching for the remote control to zap her into nothingness (ah, the power) but the creators of this anime have sprinkled just enough humility and charm into her character to prevent her from being nauseating. However, why she has two buttons on her head is anyone’s guess.

Greta, the self-obsessed egoist of the show, is also well realised and provides interesting comic relief.

The plot of ‘Sugar’ unfolds nicely with no demand upon your higher brain functions. The fairies use musical instruments to work their weather magic and conjure up snow and sun, etc, so there’s plenty of scope for classical music, so whilst you are vegetating your way through the plot, presumably your brain is also expanding. Marvellous. However, as this is obviously made for littler people than me, I sometimes find the continuous repetition of major plot points slightly irritating. Why don’t they do this in animes where the plot IS important, like Boogiepop Phantom? Anyway, Sugar and her two fairy friends have to look for something called a ‘Twinkle’ so they can make their ‘Magic Flowers’ bloom, and therefore become fully fledged Season Fairies. The scriptwriters must have had a bet to see how often they could slip that into everyday conversation throughout the few episodes I watched. Being constantly reminded of something that is fairly easy to understand can grate a little on your nerves.

Just to further emphasise "Sugar's" preoccupation with cute over brains, one of the episodes on disc one is entitled ‘Twinkle-Twinkle, Comfy-Warm, Puffy-Fluffy.’ However, don’t be tempted to think this is a necessarily bland anime. Ground breaking, it ain’t. Deep, it also ain’t. Entertaining and gently humorous it is. Just like with a puppy, Sugar is sweet, not too intellectual and it’s probably girly to admit you like it. It’s also handy for entertaining young relatives, providing of course, that they are not heavily into guts.


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