Sugar Apple Fairy Tale Season 2

Episode 16

It should have been a foregone conclusion that Anne would guide the Paige Workshop to victory in the selection, but if season one of this series taught us anything, it was that what ought to happen isn't always what does happen. That makes it feel a bit more like a hard-fought battle when the Paige Workshop's Christmas, er, snow tree is chosen as the winning sculpture because Anne being the best doesn't always mean that people are willing to acknowledge her skill. Add in the bad blood between her current employer and the church fathers (even if the issue is all due to the Paiges' stubbornness) and this was by no means a guaranteed win.

Anne's guidance did net them the victory, though, and once again we see the major difference between confections born of her imagination and those created by other people. Most of the other sugar crafters we've seen work in solid forms, trying to replicate reality with a sugar form that is a direct mimicry of something in the real world. Look at the Radcliffe Workshop's entry – Anne immediately notices that their king looks a lot like Challe, meaning that Keith likely used him as the model once again (albeit this time from memory) in order to make a figure that came from life. But the Paige Workshop's snow tree is unlike anything found in nature. It calls to mind piled-up snow or a snow-covered coniferous tree, but it's an imaginative image of it, not a direct copy. This has been a theme for most of Anne's sculptures – she takes an idea and builds something abstract but evocative that captures the feeling she's looking for. It's a much more avant-garde approach than that taken by the traditionalists, and if it's not meant to directly show how the industry has stagnated, it still points out the way that things have stalled.

It's not an approach that has won her much love from other sugar crafters, and that looks like it's going to continue to be the case. Jonas' uncle's face when the Paige Workshop shows up is just shy of furious, and the fact that he's just been shown up by a girl again isn't likely to help matters. Bridget's father may be a misogynist when it comes to sugar crafting, but the head of the Radcliffe Workshop takes that and adds anger to it, which makes him much more dangerous. Just look at the people his workshop has fostered – Sammy and Jonas are hardly ringing endorsements of the culture there. Elliot may not seem all that trustworthy, but at least he recognizes Anne's skills, and the other craftsman also gave her a fair welcome and a chance to show her stuff. The ire she seems to have inspired from the Radcliffe Workshop may turn out to be more dangerous than it looks right now.

I have to admit that Elliot and Mr. Paige did end up doing at least one of the right things when they returned Challe's wing, especially since Anne forgot to name that as her condition for winning the selection. True, both of them wanted to get Challe away from Bridget, but this was still a very aboveboard move for them, especially since they only just realized that Challe is a warrior fairy – and that Elliot was attacked by another warrior. Keeping his wing and ordering him to protect Elliot would have been the easy – and possibly smart – thing to do; that they essentially gave him his freedom shows that they have more honor than I would have thought.

The plotline with the new warrior fairy is worth keeping an eye on, both because it looks interesting and because it's another chance for Sugar Apple Fairy Tale to try to work with its difficult slavery storyline. I'm a little worried because there are all sorts of ways for it to go wrong, but I guess we'll just have to sit back and see how it unfolds.

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Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.