Review of Sugar Apple Fairy Tale Part 2

Sugar Daddy Fairy. Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is a pretty solid fantasy series with an interesting world and beautiful art and animation. If you didn’t watch the first half back in winter, the story follows a wannabe sugar artisan Ann as she tries to navigate a heavily male-dominated profession in a surprisingly dark and dangerous world where fairies have become enslaved by mankind. Part one finishes on a cliffhanger with Ann achieving her lifelong dream thanks to Challe sacrificing his freedom to the weirdly unhinged and obsessive Bridgette to foil the plans of misogynists, Ann now has to track him down so she canfree him again. Luckily, Elliot just happens to be Bridgette's husband and recruits Ann to help him return the Paige Workshop to its former glory with the hopes of reuniting and getting Challe back.

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale’s pacing feels smoother in its second Coeur than in its first. Ann’s new job as the head of an artisan workshop has her expanding her scope and awareness of other artisans and their skills whilst she juggles between leading them capitalising on their strengths and fighting back against the bedridden workshop founder who's stuck in his old way of doing things. Without the biggest piece of shit, Jonas around to serve as an antagonist the show lacks a form of agency for the first couple of episodes. That changes when the workshop moves to an old abandoned castle and the show slowly and methodically builds up the actual threat of the arc whose presence and actions extend outside of sugar confectioneries and expand on the lore of the world, fairies and their culture, and why silver sugar and the confectioneries made by humans are so important to them.

One of the biggest appeals of the anime adaption is the art and animation. J C Staff have been on a roll lately with the quality of their recent anime outputs. Not only are the character designs and the background art gorgeous, but the amount of attention to detail the show puts into making the sugar confectioneries look not only delicious but beautiful is impressive. There isn’t much in the way of combat, but the brief moments where the show goes full-blown anime are an impactful and destructive sakuga experience.

Whilst Challe, Ann and Mythrill are the core trio of the show and I’ve come to appreciate more during the second half, I feel like the supporting cast is a bit let down. This might be different in Light Novel form where detailed writing and context aren't left out because the writers are trying to squeeze a story down so it can fit into twelve twenty-minute episodes, but I felt most of the cast's motivations and personalities were a bit simplistic and needed expanding on, bar a few.

Overall I like Sugar Apple Fairy Tale. It's a refreshing take on the anime fantasy genre where the main protagonist's goals and the world she lives in feel a lot richer and more personal with problems other than the 666th Demon Lord that needs slaying. It might not be everyone's thing. It does suffer slightly from the Yu-Gi-Oh problem where nearly every problem can be solved with card games… I mean sugar confectioneries, but I think it’s worth giving a try if you’re looking for a more interesting fantasy story.

7/10 Good.