The title has a rather unique premise and story mechanics that further enforces the shoujo romance that affects our character's motivation and behavior.
To summarize the story it’s about the adventures of Chocola and Vanilla. They are queen candidate witches sent to the human world to collect heart crystals. Whoever acquires the most heart will become the next successor to the throne and rule the entire magical world. The premise looks simple enough to understand but once the actual heart crystal collecting takes place, this is where the show actually shines its bizarre style of romance.
Sugar Sugar Rune's heart mechanics are more complex but easily digestible. They need to gather the heart crystal opposite sex by making them fall in love with them. Heart crystal varies in color depending on how deep the person has fallen in love with them.
What interesting about heart capture mechanics is that it serves as the introduction of the shows world-building. From the perspective of Chocola and Vanilla will have basic knowledge between the interactions of the magical world and the human world.
The Deus Ex Machina makes sense. We know they will keep collecting hearts from each individual humans so this kind of soft reset in the relationship of our heroines is quite essential for them. Though it may look like the show is working as an episodic guy of the week formula but there are always a consistent build-up and change of pace from time to time. Our heroines are learning new things on each new encounter and there always new things happening in the show that will keep the audience interest.
When it comes to the story the 2 main heroines, Vanilla, and Chocolate style of interaction provided very interesting dynamics. Chocala and Vanilla's personality and behavior are completely polar opposite from each other. Chocola is brave, daring, stubborn, naive, and outgoing while Vanilla is shy, frail, wimpy, level-headed, and strategic. But even with the huge differences Chocola and Vanilla friendship is solid until the end of the series. Even if they are technically rivals, their relationship doesn't falter.
In contrast in the magical girl series that has a lot of magical battles, Sugar Sugar Rune has less of it. Its magical battles are the show weak points for not being animation magic. Instead of focusing on making extravagant magical battles or transformation where the magical girl series are well known for. Sugar Sugar Rune is more like a “Slice of Life Isekai” where it’s about the daily lives of Chocola and Vanilla in the human world, where they learn the complexity of human emotions. Experiencing firsthand the sweet joy and bitter sadness of life that influence their motivations and character development while at the same time fleshing out some side characters among the way that makes each episode enjoyable. There is always a moral lesson to learn and feels a good moment in the show that made it a good slice of life.
The character art style is a combination of vampiric goth design and sweet girlish fashion. This also extends to the Magical World Design of being a Halloween town and Candy Land at the same time which blends creatively well. For me, Sugar Sugar Rune aesthetic is quite unique and the updated anime design from the manga is an improvement.
The OP and ED song has quite a charm for it and the soundtrack has some good moments and timing when it comes to the critical scene. Overall everything in the sound and music department is good.
And for added bonus, the magic incantation is not even random gibberish. If Sugar Sugar Rune doesn’t look European enough, it also sounds one for using a lot of French Word in its magic incantations. Like “Agrandissment” mean “expansion” in French. Expanding further consistently to the names of the character from the magical world like Meilleure, Chocola where “Meilleure” indicates expensive gourmet chocolate in French. And up to places in the magical world like Le Royaume means “Kingdom” in French. There is definitely a huge amount of research is dedicated to it.
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Exploring the World Building Further
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Collecting hearts in the human world is pretty much essential for the magical world for it serves as currency. For example how the magical world economy work is that “Heart Crystals” value can range from “Crimson Heart” which means “Passionate Love” has the highest value amounting to 5000 ecure while a color “Pee Color Heart” is worth 5 ecure. This ecure value can be used as a commodity to purchase magical items in the shop. This item can further help chocola and vanilla in getting more hearts. These items can range from make-up kits that can make you prettier or up to special items that can make people attracted head over heels at you. This does make our girl's morality questionable for playing on other people's hearts. But in the magical world, this is just a daily job routine essential in the magical world. This also differentiates the magical world from the human world. The ecure currency also serves as a metric in measuring the 2 witch candidate’s progression.
Witches and wizards are forbidden to fall in love with humans. It will spell death or punishment for whoever defiles the rules. Wizards and witches have only one heart while humans can produce an unlimited amount which makes absolute sense.
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Anime Vs Manga
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In Conclusion
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Sugar Sugar Rune nowadays is not for everybody because its art style, animation, and episode duration are not appealing to try out for modern audiences. But if you don’t mind the gothic cute art style and episode count while the same time looking for simple magical girl series without any too much elaborate magical battles. Sugar Sugar Rune is certainly a good magical girl series to try out. It has good humor, likable characters, an easily digestible story, and some good slice of life moments that is worth checking it out.
And if you still end up wanting more? I recommend reading the manga for the deep story lore.
