My thoughts on A Little Snow Fairy Sugar:

I ended up enjoying this show much more than I expected, I came in expecting some generic moe by a middle of the line studio, which I don’t mind, and ended up getting a really nice and cute bittersweet story with a reduced scope that worked great.

Most of the overarching story and miniarcs are very predictable but they were very enjoyable nonetheless, the show kept a status quo but the small changes in Saga’s and Sugar’s relationship was really noticeable and well done throughout the entirety of the show, the small rural european (totally not german) setting worked perfectly at setting the comfy atmosphere the show went for, without devolving into any wacky plot devices such as technology or any other similar things most shows of the kind tend to go for. Honestly considering this was an anime original, they did a really great job at telling everything they wanted in 26 chapters which a lot of anime originals tend to fail at nowadays, it would have been great to have more wacky non-arc episodes in between since those tended to be the best out of the bunch, and there’s some side characters that don’t get much attention either which is sad, especially the other two fairies, whose arcs are either non-existant or just very offscreen.

Character design was lovely with the usual 2000s moe designs which I don’t mind at all although some frames had the usual uguu shots every now and then. All the fairies were really lovely and so are most of the girls, even the background gals.Particularly Norma, her face was always way too big for her head and most of the shots that look odd are from her.

Animation wise it is very simple, no sakuga, you can tell the budget was low and see all kind of budget saving strategies being used; plenty of stillshots, a LOT of reused animation loops (I swear I saw the animation loop of pigeons eating at the park being used at least 5 times, not to the point of Higurashi Gou’s ritual dance but still, it was funny to see), some resizes and dragging but whatever. They went for simplicity for the sake of keeping character designs detailed and consistent which I liked, and the backgrounds were absolutely gorgeous, they really scored with the setting of rural Europe all over the show’s running.
Writing was really good, all characters acted their according age and personality, some repetitive stuff every now and then but mainly about traumas, everyone involved in this are young so it's not like it's unforgivable. But you could tell they were limited by the animation and budget, lots of scenes that could have been improved a lot with better directing, composing and animation, despite having music being one of the main themes of the show, there’s not as many tracks in the OST, with the reusing being so heavy that it would lose impact; scenes in which they play instruments not being very detailed, to the point a string instrument would get played… with a bgm that doesn’t even have a string instrument, you get the idea. I'm sure someone that actually knows music would throw a fit looking at some of the piano scenes.
They hit a very good bittersweet ambience, with music being a constant remainder of the good times left in the past, the company that they had disappearing due to sheer chance, the impending separation that would eventually happen once the main story is completed, you know that every happy moment has a sad backstory to it, Saga playing her mom’s favorite song, Sugar playing her clarinet with the heavy expectations she put on herself to be a great snow fairy, and so on.

Voice acting was really good, all characters fit perfectly

Am I overanalyzing a moe show for little girls? Yes, but I don’t care, I loved this show. It was really self contained, even though I love my Akihabara-moe pandering and self aware stuff, watching this show that was completely enveloped in this bubble of complete isolation of any kind of niches, no 4th wall breaking, no references, none of that stuff.

My only big complaint is that they only gave Pepper one dedicated episode and it was about teaching a tortoise called LANCELOT how to fly just so he could hang out with a pigeon, I’m sad this show didn’t have as many fun episodes as that one. Oh and the creepy old fairy that wants to romance Ginger, who is not even a redhead anyway. And the 2 boy fairies that also were way too brutal in their particular episode.

8/10

359 screencaps, most of them from Pepper because her design is amazing.