In the world of Highland, fairies used to rule over humans and were respected by silver sugar masters. This would change 500 years later when humanity was finally able to usurp the fairies and started to sell them in slave markets.
15-year-old girl Ann Halford, wanting to follow in her mother's footsteps by becoming a Silver Sugar Master, must go to Lewiston to attend a sugar sculpture festival to receive a medal from the royal family. However, the journey would be dangerous, so this forces Ann to buy a fairy slave to act as her bodyguard. As such, she purchases a mysterious warrior fairy named Shalle Fen Shalle, but it comes at the cost of her being torn over whether to free him or use him as protection.
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is a Light Novel series written by Miri Mikawa and illustrated by aki, which was published under the Kadokawa Beans Bunko imprint from 2010 to 2015 for 17 volumes. The light novels are licensed in English by Yen Press. It has two manga adaptations; one that was serialized in Hana to Yume Online from 2012 to 2014, and another that began serialization in Young Ace in 2021. An anime adaptation began airing in the Winter 2023 anime season.
The light novels provide examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Bridget Paige, heiress of the Paige school of sugar crafters, is utterly obsessed with Shalle, offering to buy him from Anne at first sight. Shalle rejects her advances until he has no choice but to give her his wing to protect Anne.
- And the Adventure Continues: The first arc of the story regards Anne and Shalle traveling with Jonas to get to a competition for Anne to become a Silver Sugar Master. She fails, but in the process, has her skills recognized by the very high-ranking members of the nobility that are the judges, including a request of the queen to participate again next year. Shalle, saying he wants a pastry made by a Master, refuses her initial Sugar Confection gift, as a means to stick around with her for another year. This more or less sets a status quo for the next year in-story.
- Bitch Slap: Jonas gets the mother of all slaps from Anne for not only trying to take credit for her sugar sculptures, but also sabotaging her and nearly getting her killed after taking advantage of her vulnerable situation. The slap knocks him flat on his butt and leaves a nasty mark.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Jonas at first appears to be following Ann out of the belief he was in love with her. However in the third episode, he steals her entry to the silver sugar festival and smears blood on her clothes so she would be too preoccupied with the wolves.
- Bittersweet Ending: For the Season 1: Anne finally earns the title of Silvar Sugar Master and the medal to prove it, completing her goal of proving her mother's skill, the chauvinist school that mistreated has now been publicly defamed in front of the king due to Sammy's actions against her; but for the sake of it, Shalle has to be Made a Slave, giving his wing to Bridget for her testimony in Anne's favor. The final shot of the season is Anne crying out for Shalle to return while he leaves in Bridget's carriage.
- Body Horror: Standard practice for enslaving fairies is to rip one of their wings off and seal it in a bag for the owner's safe keeping. If this sounds painful, it is, especially since wings are essentially a fairy's heart. It's especially disheartening for the fairy in question as the holder can crush the wing to torture them, or destroy it to actually kill them.
- Condescending Compassion: When Anne is hard at work making sugar despite being bullied by the other Radcliffe Workshop staff, Elliot doesn't reprimand his staff. Instead he picks her up and says that such hard work isn't suited for women and that he'd prefer she serve him tea. This is not only in front of the men who assume she only got as far as she did through seduction but also his fiancée.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Sympathetic Slave Owner. There's no shortage of webcomics, manga, and light novels that depict slave owners who treat their slaves kindly in a heroic light, but this particular series only applies the trope to people who give their fairies access to their wings, meaning the fairies in question are always free to leave. Bridget, in many ways, is a criticism of this archetype; she thinks putting a fairy slave in a Gilded Cage is a kindness, and the series doesn't spare any opportunity to remind us of how spoiled, selfish, and petty she is.
- Defrosting Ice King: Shalle is a stoic fairy who resents humans due to the death of a girl he considered family and his general treatment during enslavement. He slowly softens up over the course of the series due to witnessing Anne's kindness and spunky attitude.
- Distressed Dude: Challe becomes this in season two, having given up his freedom in exchange for Bridget revealing who sabotaged and framed Anne.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Downplayed. Under Bridget, Shalle has essentially been made into a PG-13 Sex Slave, and is forced into being in an intimate relationship (her first order being that he kisses her) with her since she now holds his wing. While this is portrayed as a tragedy and despicable of her, it doesn't come with as dark a tone as it could have been.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Bridget decides to get sloshed on wine when she realizes that she can't buy Challe.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Jonas might be a petty jerk, but even he is uncomfortable with his fellow students trying to boil Ann's hands to destroy her career.
- False Friend: Jonas manipulates his way into accompanying Anne and has his fairy slave steal Anne's silver sugar from under her nose.
- Fantastic Racism: As the result of a long human/fairy war, fairies are currently enslaved by humans.
- Foreshadowing: There are a few subtle signs that Jonas is not as benign as he let on: in his first appearance, he reminds Ann she was weak and constantly brings up his status.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Bridget is deeply jealous of Anne, who was able to become a respected sugar artisan despite being a woman and who has a good relationship with Challe.
- Happiness in Slavery: Despite fairy slavery being a widespread practice, there are some fairies that seem to be content where they are. Kat's fairy Benjamin, for example, gets routinely bossed around, but he tells Mithril that he knows where his missing wing is and can take it any time he wants, implying that he stays with Kat by choice. This is also played for drama in the case of the twin fairies, as they explicitly say that they're happy to be enslaved because they see themselves as inferiors to humans.
- Hypocrite: In the first novel, Anne has a staunch rejection of fairy slavery, reprimands a man for trying to hurt Mithril, and is uncomfortable with their suffering. Despite all this, she goes and buys a fairy slave herself to accompany her on her trip to Lewiston. Shalle is all too happy to point this out up until the point where she frees him at the end of the book.
- Bridget was barred from pursuing her dream, so instead of admiring how Anne was able to do so, she resents her and refuses to help her when she's being sabotaged. She complains that nobody thinks of her and can only think of the workshop to the man she essentially forced into slavery in exchange for keeping Anne's dreams from being ruined—the very same injustice she suffered.
- Interspecies Romance: Anne, a human girl, is set up to fall in love with Shalle, a fairy man. They are married come the end of the series. Other human/fairy pairs are teased throughout the story, such as Kathy who all but states she has a crush on her master Jonas, or Duke Alburn whose beloved Lady Christina was a free fairy.
- Irony: Bridget is convinced that nobody thinks about her wants and needs, a feeling that understandably began when her father forbade her from becoming a sugar artisan, but spiraled into her becoming bitter and selfish. However, her father didn't bar her because he's sexist, he did it because he knows their family workshop is in dire straits and didn't want her to have to deal with the stress that came with the job of workshop head. It's implied that his poor health was a result of the stress he was trying to spare her from.
- "Just So" Story: Both women in general and fairies are discriminated against, and like many cultures there's a folktale explaining why society is justified in doing so. In their own creation myth, the first human woman eventually betrays the first human man and falls in love with the first fairy man.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Compared to Jonas, Duke Alburn is someone who's gone mad from his grief but isn't quite as despicable. However, he isn't a great or responsible guy either as he verbally abuses Anne, destroys her initial works, and eventually threatens her with death all the while neglecting affairs of the state. But whereas he does beat Jonas physically for his lack of results, he notably never lays hands on Anne and gives her the chance to finish her work while she treats him as someone who needs compassion and understanding.
- Made a Slave: A common happening for fairies. Anne and her fairies have an unusual relationship in which they both have their own wings, but choose to travel together with her anyway and can leave when they feel like it. Shalle, however, has to go through it at the end of season 1, selling out his wing to Bridget for Anne's sake.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- While Anne can't prove that she made the sculpture Jonas entered, he make it clear that he does not have the skills to have done so himself and is humiliated.
- The head of the Radcliff Workshop and his son face an even worse public humiliation at the second competition than Jonas did at the end of the first one. After the latter nearly maimed Anne and the former refused to believe her when she implicated his son as the true culprit, and the latter also went as far as to sabotage her chances at winning by stealing her sugar, Anne manages to prove her innocence in front of the royal family and crowd of spectators. Unlike the first competition where she was only able to prove that Jonas didn't make the sculpture he entered, this time she's able to get evidence so clear that her primary tormentor breaks down, begs for forgiveness and confesses. His own father slaps him with everyone watching and they both have to prostrate themselves in front of the royal family and apologize.
- Bridget later finds out that her family is not fond of the idea of her running around with a fairy slave she obviously bought to be her personal boy toy, and she throws a hissyfit when her father announces his plan to give Challe back to Anne if she can improve their workshop. When her response to this is to become even more hyperfixated on him, her father takes Challe's wing, bars her from spending time alone with him, and orders Challe to stop indulging her.
- Our Fairies Are Different: Fairies are born from all sorts of things, but this can only be accomplished through the gaze of a living creature. Their wings are their hearts and if even one of them is destroyed, this kills the fairy. Fairies also vary wildly in size, with many being pixie sized but some able to grow to human or taller.
- Properly Paranoid: When Anne's silver sugar gets stolen, she immediately suspects Mithril did it, since he was in the carriage with the barrels of sugar while she was out. Even though Jonas was sabotaging her, the very end of the arc shows a very full and very satisfied Mithril after having eaten his way through all the (stolen) sugar.
- Quantity vs. Quality: With the sugar apple crop in decline, the Radcliffe workshop devotes its refining efforts to mass production with less emphasis on quality control.
- Sleepyhead: Benjamin, Kat's fairy, is always either asleep or about to sleep.
- Showing Up Chauvinists: While Anne's mother was a talented and respected craftswoman, Anne herself eventually realizes that her chosen field of sugar sculpting is male dominated, and not many men take kindly to her. The students of the Radcliffe Workshop in particular are incredibly sexist to her, with them even accusing her of coasting off of Kat or Kieth's favor. She spends the third arc having to work twice as hard to prove she can do her job, and even then they still get mad and try to burn her hands in boiled sugar out of broken pride. It should be noted that they didn't seem bothered at all by how everyone agreed that if Anne weren't in the picture, Keith would have beaten all of them. It's specifically when Anne is shaping up to defeat Keith that they resort to sabotage.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It turns out that even amongst people who don't object to fairy slavery, Bridget's obsessive behavior towards Challe is seen as unhealthy and unbecoming. Before Anne can even do enough that Bridget's father will give her Challe's wing, he intervenes and bars Bridget from spending time alone with Challe.
- Too Dumb to Live: Even after the Radcliffe brats' attempt to maim Anne fails, they still try to frame her. They could have gotten away with it had they not gone the extra mile of stealing her sugar. The workshop's public image is destroyed in front of the royal family because a couple of men just couldn't swallow their pride.
- Sore Loser: Jonas and his family go around spreading rumors that Anne was the one who cheated after his plot fails.
- Spoiled Brat: Bridget seems to think that because she wasn't able to pursue her dream, the world owes her what happiness she can get. Every time it seems like she won't be able to take Challe away from Anne she throws a hissyfit.
- While Rome Burns: Duke Alburn's neglected his stately duties for so long and become so obsessed with Anne building the perfect sugar confection of Christina that he ignores everything else around him to focus on Anne's work, even as an army is at his gates, inside his castle, and coming to take him captive.
- Word Salad Title: In any other story, "Sugar Apple Fairy Tale" would seem like a random mishmash of cutesy words, but here it at least refers to two of the most important elements of the story (the sugar apples that produce silver sugar and the fairies).
- Wrong Genre Savvy: When Bridget meets Challe, she assumes that Anne treats him as a slave and offers to "rescue" him by offering him what amounts to a Gilded Cage.
- Yandere: Bridget is this to Challe. She goes around destroying a bunch of things in her room after she finds out that she might not be able to keep Challe. This is both scarily reminiscent of the behavior of domestic abusers and only a single day after Challe became her property. She then twists his wing, orders him to never see Anne, and hugs him
