Happy Sugar Life

"Some people are broken. You and I both know it, and that is about all there is to it..." sings the Czech rock band Kabát, and I have reached the conclusion that there are a lot of broken people in this anime series. The human psyche is a rather fragile thing and it is not that difficult to damage it, just like the glass depicted here so many times (which is a rather perfect metaphor). I have met some broken people in my life, people who have been affected by their environment or even just one important experience, and a lot of them still carry that inside them and constantly struggle through life. However, what are we really fighting for? For ourselves? For those we love? Each one of us is trying to find something that will fulfill them, looking to fill their empty glasses (I find this metaphor is also perfect), and can find comfort and fulfillment in different things, people, and narratives... People are different, they have different personalities, different experiences, different desires - so it is very difficult to generalize and evaluate them without full insight into their minds, souls, and backgrounds. Certainly, we can say that the collection of characters in this narrative are quite repulsive, twisted, and disgusting, although I should also perhaps add that I thought that the exposition regarding the way the characters ended up the way they are is realistic, warts and all. We have the chance to get to know the characters, their motivations, their origins, and their experiences. These are all inevitably horrifying, of course, and logically nothing much good could come of it. At least it is horrifying for a person like myself, who has had a stable background, a decent upbringing, fairly normal values, and who is currently filling his own empty void living vicariously through watching other people's narratives. I think the world out there is dull and grey even though at the same time it is also full of interesting and strange people and their narratives... This was interesting too, a narrative with a sophisticated psychological aspect, and so I could get my head around most of it, and sometimes had to try and figure out how it all worked... The anime’s creators gave me food for thought and I appreciate that they offered me situations, problems, and solutions that I thought were both shocking and repulsive, even though they still made sense to me. In addition, there is the ending, which is the logical conclusion of all those rather extreme ideas about love and a happy sugar life. At the same time, there is also another subject for further reflection - what is going to actually come of Shio after all this... So even though I did not really enjoy it, still, it gave me the chills, and sometimes I felt disgusted, but there was a point to this because I was not thinking about it in terms of being a bad anime series, just that "some people are broken..." and especially why... 5/10. (29/09/2018)