is a Japanese anime series developed by J.C.Staff. It premiered in Japan on TBS on October 2, 2001, and ran for 24 episodes until its conclusion March 26, 2002. A two-episode OVA was also released for the series. The series was licensed for North America by Geneon Entertainment, but after the closure of Geneon, its DVD releases went out of print and later in 2009, Sentai Filmworks had acquired the license.

A related manga series written and illustrated by Botan Hanayashiki under the name "BH Snow+Clinic" was also released. Originally serialized in the shōnen manga magazine Dragon Junior, the individual chapters were published in three volumes by Kadokawa Shoten.

Plot

The story is based around 11-year-old Saga Bergman, a young girl in a small German town called Muhlenberg (based on real town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber). Saga lives with her grandmother Regina and works in a coffee shop when not in school. Saga is extremely structured and plans her life down to the minute. One day, she notices a tiny creature in a fluffy outfit that appears to be starving. She offers it a waffle, which helps revive the tiny creature. Saga learns that this tiny creature is Sugar, an apprentice season fairy. Sugar explains that season fairies alter the weather by playing a magical musical instrument, and her specialty is snow, which she creates by playing the piccolo. Sugar is joined by two more apprentice season fairies, Salt, an outgoing male fairy who plays the trumpet to make the sun shine more brightly, and Pepper, a quiet and caring female fairy who plays the harp to make the wind blow.

All three apprentices are shocked at the realization that Saga can see them, since humans are not supposed to be able to see season fairies. Pepper speculates that exceptional humans might be able to see them, which is the best possible explanation. Sugar tells Saga that the three have been sent to Earth to train as full-fledged season fairies, and to do that, they must find 'Twinkles'.

Sugar moves into Saga's bedroom and sets up residence, much to the consternation of the super-structured Saga. Saga is a well-meaning, intelligent and highly organized girl who feels compelled to look after the childish, loud and irresponsible Sugar, who is incapable of looking after herself. The story is complicated further with the arrival of three adult season fairies—Turmeric, a cloud fairy; Ginger, a rain fairy; and the Elder, the leader of the season fairies—and two more apprentices—Cinnamon, a hail fairy, and Basil, a thunder fairy.

With the highly disruptive presence of Sugar, Saga's life goes haywire. Her friends Norma and Anne think that she is losing her mind, and her teacher, Miss Hanna, is worried that her best student is acting strangely. Not at all concerned with her strange behavior is Greta, an egotistical rich girl who considers Saga to be her rival, and Phil, a goofy inventor who keeps trying to persuade Saga to help him with his experiments, if he is not already busy building and trying out his latest device.

Characters

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: ; Rona Aguilar (Tagalog)

:: Sugar is a female snow fairy apprentice working to learn how to be a full-fledged fairy. She comes to the human world for the final part of her training which requires her to find a so-called "Twinkle". Sugar acts much like a toddler with a clumsy nature who often tries her best at things but messes up because she doesn't always think things through. She loves to kiss anyone she is fond of when happy. After Saga first feeds her a waffle, she comes to love them, though she mispronounces their name as "waffo". In the manga adaptation, she was familiar with the word before eating one.

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: ; Hazel Hernan (Tagalog)

:: Age: 11. Saga Bergman is the main protagonist of the series. Her mother died in an accident, so she lives with her grandmother. Saga is somewhat obsessed with planning, scheduling her day nearly to the minute and is frustrated when her plans go off schedule. She can be quick to lose her temper when she deals with Sugar, however, she is actually very kind and quite mature for her age. Saga works in a coffee shop and regularly stops at the local music store to play her mother's piano.

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: ; Rowena Benavidez–Lazaro (Tagalog) Kimura focused on telling a story that focuses on the relationship between Sugar and Saga, while not fully explaining some things to viewers. In particular, he notes that the series never really explains what the "Twinkles" are that they faeries are searching for because he felt viewers should draw their own conclusions and that the show's purpose to show how friendships are formed and how they result in people growing as human beings.

The character of Sugar started as with the basic idea that the main character of the series would be a snow fairy. When trying to think of a name, Yamada associated snow with white, which he said reminded him of "sugar", giving the snow fairy its name. With that name decided, he decided that all of the other fairies would also have the names of condiments. Initially, the story was going to be set in the fairy world, with no humans at all, however, as they worked on fleshing out the story, the character of Saga was introduced. Aoi originally envisioned her as a quiet and calm girl, but she was eventually changed into the more assertive and organization obsessed character seen in the final version. Yamada notes that Kimura was responsible for turning the story into a more positive and cheerful one than the original concept might have resulted in.

In designing the setting for the series, art director Shichiro Kobayashi was sent to Germany to search for locations. Though initially reluctant to go, as he felt reference materials would be enough, Kobayashi notes that it ended up being a valuable experience as he was able to better capture the Europeans' aesthetic sense and the "tastefulness" that permeates the towns and houses. Returning to Japan, he attempted to capture the "atmosphere" of the region, using pastel colors and aiming to make the art feel "comfortable."

The series music began with Pioneer requesting that it be romantic feeling, using piano and strings, which pleased music director Nobuyoshi Mitsumune, who had been working with the medium in his previous project. Wanting to also do something different, Mitsumune initially considered using elements from the rock and dance genres, but after seeing the conceptual art and reading the series scripts, he revisited his vision and decided to go with something more orthodox that better matched the inspiration he felt from the series. For the vocal tracks, sound director Yota Tsuruoka notes that the most difficult issue was dealing with the scenes where the faeries and humans would be having separate, unrelated conversations at the same time. He decided not to just have the tracks recorded separately for combining in the editing stage, but instead had the voice actors actually perform the scenes as written, with each group doing their conversations at the same time just as it occurs on screen.

Media

Anime

Created by "Project Sugar"—a collaboration between TBS, J.C.Staff, and Kadokawa Shoten—the A Little Snow Fairy Sugar series premiered in Japan on TBS on October 2, 2001. Directed by Shinichiro Kimura and written by Yasunori Yamada, the series ran for 24 episodes until its conclusion on March 26, 2002.

It was licensed and released in North America by Geneon Entertainment. After the company folded in the United States, its DVD releases of the series went out of print. In July 2009, Sentai Filmworks announced that they had relicensed the anime, which was rereleased by Section23 Films in October 2009.

The anime series uses three pieces of theme music. Yoko Ishida's Japanese cover of The Rubettes' 1974 hit single "Sugar Baby Love" by Kotoko is used for the opening theme for all of the episodes except the first and the last, which use no opening. It is also used for the ending theme for the last episode. Maria Yamamoto's performance of the song "Snow Flower" is used for the ending theme for the first 23 episodes.

OVA

A two-episode original video animation was released for the series. Set four years after the conclusion of the series, Saga remembers a school play in which she played the princess and struggled with stage fright, while Sugar and other fairies decide to make a play of their own.

The ending theme for the OVA is "Kokoro no Piano" ("Heart's Piano") by Masumi Asano.

Manga

Written and illustrated by Botan Hanayashiki, the A Little Snow Fairy Sugar manga series based on the anime series was originally serialized in Dragon Junior. The individual chapters were published in three volumes by Kadokawa Shoten.

The manga series was licensed for an English language release in North America by ADV Manga; the company folded in 2009.

Reception

The anime adaptation was positively received. In a review of the first DVD collection, in 2003, by Mike Crandol, for the same site, he was more positive. He called the series a "well-written show for children that adults can enjoy just as much" and said it is a "heartwarming childhood tale" which is engaging and smart, calling it a rare children's program that "doesn't insult kids' intelligence," but criticized Sugar for being "too sweet" which would delight those who like kawaii culture while hard for others to stomach. He also said that the series' animation is "more accomplished than in any episode of Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh!," especially the title sequence, and ended by saying that the series is perfect "for grown-up anime fans to watch with their kids" and added "if you're a fan of the cute stuff, prepare to be blown away.

Carlo Santos of Anime News Network reviewed the DVD collection, released in 2009, describing as a "relic" from the early 2000s without any gimmicks, describing it is a "heartwarming children's series with an infusion of magic" but criticizing it as starting off "incredibly weak" with pacing that is lackluster, while Saga's dealings with the fairies "never quite reach[es] full comedy potential." He further argued that the series found its pushing in the sixth episode when Saga kicks Sugar out of her house, the soul and heart of the series from episodes nine to twelve which "turns out to be the most in-depth exploration of the characters yet," but criticized the show's visuals for not translating well into an animated form, with "cheap animation shortcuts" which didn't impact the music, including good themes song, and ended by saying that the series has "a quality that seems to have gone missing from the industry as of late" by being one of the "last few honest anime shows."

The anime has ranked high on the lists published by the Japanese website Anihabara, reaching number two on the November 2001 list, and number one on both the February and March 2002 lists.

References

Further reading

  • Official TBS A Little Snow Fairy Sugar anime website
  • Official JC Staff A Little Snow Fairy Sugar anime website