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Series name: Sugar, a little snow fairy

Review date: 20041211

Genre: magical girl

Length: 24 episodes on 6 DVDs, plus a one-off special

Fan service: None

Rewatch: medium

Summary: Saga is an 11-year-old girl who lives in a picturesque German village and plans out each day of her life to the minute. One day she finds a fairy who is hungry and lost. Saga feeds her and the fairy, Sugar, somehow ends up moving in with Saga. No one else seems to be able to see Sugar, and as a result Saga's life gets a bit less predictable. But as she becomes more spontaneous, perhaps she also becomes happier.

Main Characters:

		Anne, Saga, Norma – Saga and her two best friends
		Salt, Sugar, Pepper – Sugar and her two best friends. (Pepper is my favorite supporting character in the series.)
		Phil – Mad scientist, future candidate for "Junkyard Wars".
		Greta – For some reason, Greta thinks she needs to compete with Saga in all things. But somehow, it never seems to work out the way Greta hopes it will.

Comments: This is a kid's show, and there was definitely a risk it could have turned out to be puerile. It could have been saccharine, it could have been simplistic, it could have been dumbed down. Fortunately, it isn't any of those things. It's actually very well done, and certainly worth watching even for adults.

Saga's a nice little girl who lives with her grandmother. She tends to plan out each day of her life to the minute, and is perhaps just a bit too organized. She loves to play the piano, and is very good at it.

On her way home one day, she gets caught in a rainstorm. Ducking out of the rain, she finds a little girl sitting nearly-passed out on a crate.

When I say "little", I mean "about 5 inches tall". It's a fairy named Sugar, and she's very hungry, so Saga gives her a waffle she had in her pack. (European waffles are very sweet, almost like cookies.) They say "no good deed goes unpunished" and after that Saga is stuck with her. But it takes Saga a while to come to terms with what she's gotten herself into.

You may be surprised to learn that weather is controlled by "season fairies". They each have a musical instrument, and the kind of weather we get depends on which fairy is playing their instrument. But they have to go through an apprenticeship. Sugar is an apprentice snow fairy, and her instrument is a piccolo.

The Elder, Basil, Salt, Ginger, Sugar, Pepper, Turmeric, Cinnamon

Sugar's best friends are Salt and Pepper. Pepper is a wind fairy, and her instrument is a harp. Salt is a sun fairy, and his instrument is a trumpet. Like Sugar, they are apprentices.

In order to graduate, apprentice fairies have to come to earth and plant a magic seed. From that seed they have to grow a flower, but to make the plant bloom they have to find a "twinkle" (煌めき, きらめき, kirameki). The problem is that they aren't told what a "twinkle" is. The real point of this entire process is that they have to figure that out for themselves.

It turns out to be extremely rare for humans to be able to see fairies. Saga seems to be the only one in the village who can, and she sees them more than she really wishes she did, but she gets used to it, and copes. And gradually Saga and Sugar become friends.

There's definitely a steady hand at the tiller for this series. Nothing is taken to excess, to the point of ruining things. The fairies are cute, but not too cute. Sugar is a scamp, but not too much of a scamp. Greta is annoying, but not too annoying. Phil is nuts, but not too nuts. The fairies cause Saga trouble, but not too much trouble. Sometimes feelings get hurt, but not too hurt, and everyone makes up afterwards. They didn't want to make this series too intense for young viewers, yet at the same time it's clear that they have a good story to tell, one they think everyone will enjoy.

Nonetheless, there's no question that this series is kawaii. If you have an aversion to such things, you're not going to like it. But this series is a good one for anyone who has a normal human heart, and it is appropriate for audiences of all ages..

Things to watch for: There's a nice homage to "Ghostbusters".
Saga's mother was named "Ingrid Bergman"? No wonder she was so beautiful.

Complaints: The Japanese soundtrack on my copy of DVD2 is in mono. This seems to have been a production mistake, and the mono versions of the disk were withdrawn and replaced more than a year ago. Why did I get stuck with one of the bad ones? (The English soundtrack is in stereo, but I never listen to those anymore.)

Is the ending satisfying? They pull out the stops on the sentimentality for the ending. If you cared at all for the characters, it's going to affect you strongly. I think it was good, but I wish it had been a little different. (Spoiler: I wish that Saga had not lost the ability to see season fairies. Then Sugar and her friends could have visited Saga once in a while, and "goodbye" wouldn't have been "goodbye forever".)

Recommended? Very much so.

The Special: is two parts (which is unusual) which begins 4 years after the main series. But most of it is a flashback which fits into the continuity somewhere in the middle of DVD 4. The basic story is that the class is going to do a play, and Saga ends up  with one of the starring roles. But Sugar wants to do a play, too, and the five kid fairies end up doing their own version of the same play on a park bench, for an audience consisting of Ginger, Turmeric, the Elder, and Saga. Pepper being cast as the evil witch was truly wonderful since it's so spectacularly against type. (A sweeter, more loving and gentle character than Pepper you'd have to go a very long way to find. The seiyuu's performance through that section is absolutely outstanding.)

The majority of the special concentrates on Saga's class trying to put together and perform a play, and it's all very well done. At the very end it returns to 4 years later, and we get to see how Saga has grown up.

Saga at age 15 has become a very lovely young woman, and her talent with the piano has continued to improve. Kanon seems to have become a de-facto younger sister for her and they spend a lot of time together. Saga is clearly happy and healthy. Since I came to really care about Saga, I was very glad to see that glimpse of her future.

In some series when a summer special or auxiliary movie gets done, it may be crap (e.g. Sakura Wars), or it may be interesting but not actually particularly vital to the series continuity (e.g. Mahoromatic). Sometimes it's excellent yet unessential (e.g. Cowboy Bebop).

However, I would say that theSugar summer special is an essential part of the series, something you really need to buy and watch after watching the regular series if you want a satisfactory sense of closure. The series doesn't really feel complete until after you've watched the summer special.