Happy Sugar Life

1) Satou: Represents Satan. Much like how it is said that the Devil appears as an angel of light, Satou finds herself in that role. She appears friendly and bubbly when out in public but in actuality, she is a psychotic sociopath. Much like modern takes on a deal with the Devil, Satou makes deals throughout the show's run. The manager? She threatens to expose her livelihood unless she paid her properly for her longer hours. Mitsuboshi? Promises him access to Shio as long as he helped her to (nonlethally) get rid of Asahi.

2) Shio: Represents humanity, or better yet, the untampered purity and potential of humanity. Shio embodies all of the good qualities of humanity (hence the whole "come like children"). However, as a result of Satou's actions, that purity is erased at the end. The Fall of Man, anyone?

3) Auntie: Tempted to consider her being God due to her "I love everyone" mindset XD.

4) Shouko: Jesus. Kind of a no-brainer. She is the only morally upright character in the series. She is kindhearted and takes it upon herself to free Satou of the darkness that was inside her. As the resident sacrificial lamb, Shouko dies, but prior to meeting her end, she performs what is ironically the only selfless act of love in the series by snapping a picture of Shio and sending it to Asahi.

5) Mitsuboshi: While Shio represents the untampered potential and purity of mankind, Mitsuboshi is the opposite. He does not completely embody the absolute depravity of humanity, but he otherwise starts off good before falling due to his traumatic experience with the aforementioned manager.

Mitsuboshi/Tripstar/Beta Ledian

OK....so, I have noticed something. Happy Sugar Life is definitely a ducked up series with nearly every character not named Shouko being the lowest of the low. I’m surprised that this town wasn’t nuked. It’ll probably take legions of priests to cleanse the town of its corruption. Or a straight up nuclear bomb. Whatever comes first. It should go without saying that Satou herself is an unrepentant murderer, child abductor, and blackmailer. And yet...when you compare her with say Mitsuboshi Taiyo, he comes off as the more hated of the two. I am by no means defending Mitsuboshi because I do agree that some hate is warranted towards him because he is lusting after a girl who may not even know how to tie her own shoes. But then it gets interesting when Satou recruits Mitsuboshi as her little henchman as a means of getting rid of Asahi strategically. It should be obvious where the differences lie. Taiyo wants Shio for himself because he believes that her innocence could purify him. Satou, however, is more of a hard case. It’s made pretty clear thus far that she doesn’t perceive Shio in that way, and at most, how she treats Shio could easily be reminiscent of a mother. Heck, even those vows they do every night are just Shio’s memories of her mother doing this to her.

However, the thing that makes me question where some of the hatred for Mitsuboshi comes from would be Satou’s overall actions. While she doesn’t view Shio in that way, she nevertheless commits deplorable actions she tries to excuse as being in the name of love. For one, she murdered around 3 or 4 people. Sure, the first few murders could be justified to a degree because those individuals genuinely did something heinous to warrant it. But nevertheless, she has blood on her hands. That’s not even getting into how she also commits blackmail in order to get what she wants. The worse case of this has to be when she coerces Mitsuboshi into working for her under the claim of giving him access to see Shio. Mitsuboshi, however, had not committed any of these actions. While he does go along with Satou’s plan, he at the very least realized how messed up he had become and tries to change only to be reeled back in by Satou. Sure, he did contemplate on “touching Shio” in return for her petting his head to make his boo boos go away, but he never got the chance to. 

Then we get into the why these characters are the way they are. Keep in mind that Mitsuboshi’s experience was immensely traumatizing. Even after that whole debacle, Mitsuboshi became an emotional wreck who reacted in abject terror whenever he would have a run in with an older woman even when said woman was not intending on doing anything sexual with him. Him becoming obsessed with Shio really could just be explained away as the resultant of his trauma where he felt that he was beyond repair. And he does realize a little too late that he had become royally screwed in the head. Satou on the other hand is slightly different. We only get snippets of her backstory, but from everything, it seemed as though Satou’s life was most likely not anything near to what Taiyo experienced. Yes, her aunt is sadomasochistic and insane, but as for physical abuse or anything of that sort, there doesn’t seem that there was much done to her. Sure, her aunt poisoned her mind with what she thought love was, but I feel that getting kidnapped and continually raped for a week and being trapped in a cabinet could easily destroy anyone’s sanity. Even Satou’s aunt gives the impression that Satou is unreliable when it comes to recounting her past.