Sugar could be magical for younger viewers. © Geneon/Pioneer Entertainment.

Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy. V.1, Sweet Mischief. V.2, Friends and Dreams. V.3, The Bear Pianist. V.4, Magical Sparkling Days. V.5, Home Sweet Home. V.6, Sugar Baby Love.
TV series (24 episodes), 2001-2002. Director: Shinichiro Kimura. V.1-5, four episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Geneon/Pioneer Entertainment.

Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy... or A Little Snow Fairy: Sugar (Chitcha na Yukitsukai: Sugar), for those who follow the Japanese word order of placing the subtitle before the title. The artistic logo is designed so it may be read either way.

Sugar was a 24 episode TV series animated by the J.C. Staff studio and broadcast by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) from October 3, 2001 through March 27, 2002 (at 2:20 am, which seems weird for an ultra-cute program for young girls). The age rating is 3+, but the intended audience is probably closer to the 11-year-old protagonist, Saga Bergman. Saga’s concert-pianist mother died three years ago, and she lives with her kindly Granny in a small German town. Saga is an aspiring pianist who believes in Planning Ahead, working out timetables for her study, housework and play. Her schedules are thrown into disarray when a tiny juvenile snow fairy insists upon moving in with her while learning to become a full-fledged adult snow fairy.

Soon the German town is infested with little fairies whom only Saga can see. The adults like Ginger the rain fairy and her boyfriend Turmeric the cloud fairy are not so bad because they go about their business making gentle summer showers and pleasant shade. But the young apprentices like Sugar and her best friends Salt the sun fairy and Pepper the wind fairy run wild like undisciplined 7- to 9-year-olds. At best they are well meaning, but innocently destructive, poking into everything in their curiosity to learn what makes the human world run and to “find the Twinkle” that they need to complete their apprenticeships.

Saga’s carefully ordered life is shattered as she must rush about saving her elementary school classmates and neighbors from the consequences of Sugar, Salt and Pepper trying to magically “help out.” But, as she is forced to think about the answers to all their “why?” questions, Saga begins to expand her own horizons and realize that life cannot be forced into a preplanned schedule.

Sugar, without the magic, is about an 11-year-old girl trying to act mature while being forced to mind a hyperactive younger sister and her playmates. Sugar is sometimes horribly naughty (she becomes a junkie for German sweet waffles), sometimes just an inconvenience to Saga’s social life with her own friends, and sometimes a genuine help and comfort when Saga faces her own entering-adolescence problems. With fairy magic, this anime series is a gently amusing delight for girls.

Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy was a project of Broccoli, the Japanese design studio famous for super-cute girls’ anime programs (+ merchandising accessories). Each DVD contains shoptalk notes from the writers and art directors on how they handled this assignment from TBS to create a girls’ anime series with a realistic yet fairy-tale atmosphere. Among the DVD extras are a location shot tour of Rothenburg, Germany, the well-preserved medieval “gingerbread” town used as the model for Saga’s home.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).