Beautiful high school girl Satō Matsuzaka believes she has finally found the meaning of love when she begins living with a younger girl. Previously, Satō never refused the advances of any guy around her, but that changes when she meets the girl Shio. The background and age of the mysterious girl are unclear. When Satō is with Shio, she experiences a very sweet feeling, which she understands as love. In order to protect that feeling, Satō is willing to do anything, even if it means committing murder. – ANN
Streaming: Amazon
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode 1 Summary: Satou used to sleep around with various guys, but ever since discovering true love, she’s left the revolving door of men behind her. The object of Satou’s affection is Shio, a young girl of indeterminate age who lives with her. Now that the two are on their own, Satou is the primary breadwinner, so she quits her lower-paying maid cafe job to become a waitress at an upscale restaurant. As an attractive young lady, Satou draws the attention of one of her male coworkers, but as with all other potential male suitors as of late, she rebuffs his advances. Afterwards, she sees him entering the female manager’s office. Suddenly the manager starts giving Satou significantly more work than the other employees, ostensibly in order to make up for having declined her coworker’s advances and causing discord in the restaurant. The long days keep Satou from seeing Shio, and she begins to experience some intense negative feelings towards the manager for keeping her away from her love. Payday is the final straw – Satou doesn’t receive any pay related to the overtime she’s been forced to work. But Satou knows the manager’s dark secret and threatens to blackmail her. Satou has some secrets herself, though; her “happy sugar life” as she describes it may not entirely be based in reality, and the blood-covered garbage bags in her back room may have their own tale to tell.
Impressions: CW: Discussion of inappropriate relationships between people of different ages.
Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve been left so entirely unable to describe how I feel about an opening episode. The episode itself isn’t what I’d call confusing; a lot of its components are either immediately repulsive or have such unsettling implications that I’m not willing to follow them to their logical ends, so they elicit very strong if confusing feelings. One thing that’s clear, however, is that the main character is an unreliable narrator, and that itself injects enough uncertainty that I unwillingly felt my curiosity beginning to grow as I peered at the screen through my fingers and discovered just how many ways my face could contort into a grimace.
The inappropriateness of the relationship between Satou and Shio is honestly enough of a reason for anyone to drop the episode. It’s unclear how old Shio is, but she’s small and she has a speech affectation that gives the impression that she’s very young and can’t quite speak clearly yet. She treats Satou like a parent or an older sister, demonstrating that kind of worshipful relationship that children have towards older people before they get old enough to know that most human beings have the ability to be disappointing. She behaves completely without disillusionment, with a sort of innocence and purity that attracts Satou; Satou describes this as a “sweet” feeling, one which must be love. Nothing outright sexual occurs between the two characters in this episode and it’s not entirely clear in what context Satou views Shio as a target of her love, but the fact that Satou has given up her pursuit of sexual relationships with people her own age in favor of pursuing this incredibly inappropriate marriage-adjacent relationship with a child is something that’s very difficult for me to look at in any other way than a bad one.
As if that hadn’t short-circuited my brain enough already, Satou’s lack of self-awareness when confronting the restaurant manager is truly something to behold. Satou is clearly suffering some kind of break with reality, so contextually, yes, I “get” what’s going on and why she’d identify criminality in what another person had done while failing to identify the wrongness inherent in her own situation, but Satou specifically accuses the manager of behaving inappropriately with a minor (which is true) while she herself carries on with a pre-pubescent girl in her own home without breaking a sweat. I’m not sure if this equivalency was used on purpose to emphasize how deeply troubling Satou’s situation is, or whether the creators of the story truly differentiate between the magnitude of the two relationships. I’m not really in a place to identify whether either situation is the truth. But it’s such a comically upsetting juxtaposition that it’s hard not to just laugh at its brazenness and then feel terrible about what’s being compared.
Yet despite how upsetting the content is, I’m admittedly a total sucker for atmosphere and visual trickery and this episode really pushes that button for me. While most of the episode is truly ham-handed with its quirky animation tricks and stylistic choices (it reads kind of like an off-brand Studio Shaft project, if that makes sense), it’s difficult for me personally to resist creepy jump cuts, brief insertions of violent imagery that are almost too quick to consciously register, and off-kilter framing that seems to emphasize the protagonist’s broken state of mind. It’s cheap and I know that I’m being taken for a ride, but once the switch is flipped I have a difficult time disengaging. The yandere character type doesn’t appeal to me, but I’m morbidly curious about the little snippets of Satou’s rage peeking out and just what’s stored in the garbage bags in the locked room of her(?) apartment. There are enough aspects of the story that, as repulsed as I am by central relationship, I almost feel compelled to see just what’s actually going on. Maybe I should just go read manga spoilers, as I don’t feel there can be much to gain from actually watching future episodes.
This is just the type of anime episode that I have a hard time rating. Part of me wanted to eschew a letter grade and put in a string of wingdings instead just to convey how difficult to quantify this episode is, but to do that glosses over the fact that there’s some small, guilt-ridden part of me that genuinely wants to know the full extent of the horrors this show has up its sleeve. I feel slightly ashamed about that because in saying as much I feel like I’m giving this episode some small bit of legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve. Believe me when I say that, for all about it that might be slightly attractive, ultimately its focus seems to be wholly on the ugliness of peoples’ behavior and for me that’s difficult to stomach.
Pros: The visual tricks are gimmicky but effective, depending on what you’re looking for. I’m curious to know the details of this truly screwed-up situation.
Cons: The relationship between Satou and Shio is truly upsetting and predatory.
Grade: D? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯