This episode begins on New Year’s Eve with Ichigo saying goodbye to the princes, they’re heading home while Ichigo is staying at the school. Ichigo stayed behind to practice her cooking skills with Vanilla, but Ichigo gets disappointed when Vanilla tells her she has to leave for the Sweets Kingdom. So, Vanilla asks Ichigo if she wants to come along for a visit. Hell, yes. Vanilla uses her sweets magic to transform Ichigo into a sweets fairy sans wings, and bring her through the oven entrance to the Sweets Kingdom.

 

        After traveling though a dark tunnel, Ichigo and Vanilla end up on a train filled with sweets spirits taking them to the Sweets Kingdom.  During the train ride Ichigo sees a chocolate waterfall and a river of candy, and we find out that there are several portals to the Sweets Kingdom located around the school, and after passing the portal you end up on the train. Ichigo and Vanilla are soon joined by the other three spirits, and we find out that Vanilla wasn’t supposed to bring Ichigo there without permission from the queen, bad Vanilla.

 

        Well, Ichigo finds out that tonight is the biggest festival of the year for the Sweets Kingdom (Py N Year Festival), and it’s the responsibility of the spirits to gather ingredients and make a giant sweet for the festival. Ichigo want to help but they only allow her to carry the ingredients they gather, a human can’t help with the cooking.

 

        While gathering ingredients from the nearby forest Ichigo sees all sorts of wonderful things like Marzipan fruit trees, Bananas that have chocolate inside them, a coffee tree, cabbages that have vanilla inside them, and many other wondrous things. As the group is heading back to the castle poor Ichigo is netted by three rouge sweets spirits (Kasshy, Andy, and Narcy; just try to guess who Narcy is). The other spirits call them the “dropout trio” but they refer to themselves as the evil gang and they want the stuff Ichigo is carrying. What’s really funny is that each of the rouge spirits looks and acts strikingly like each of the princes.

       Chocolat has had enough and tries to take Ichigo back using force, but the Kasshy uses a chocolate bomb to hold them off. At that moment, Honey happens upon the scene and tells Vanilla to come with her after the evil gang and she sends the other three back to the castle.

 

        Well, soon Ichigo is freed from the netting because it breaks as they’re dragging her along the ground, and Honey and Vanilla catch with them. Honey chews out the boys telling them if they want to start attending school again, and get their real magical spoons back she’ll recommend them to the queen. The only response Honey gets from the boys is that they call her Honey-pig as they run off into the woods. Vanilla pulls a fast one on Honey by fooling her into believing that Ichigo is a new sweets spirit called Fraise, and Honey sends Vanilla and Fraise back to the castle.

 

        Once they get back to the castle Vanilla makes some candy wings for Ichigo so she’ll fit in. Soon, Vanilla is dragged off to help with the preparation so Ichigo heads off to explore the city while they work on the big project for the festival.  

        While exploring the village, Ichigo spots Kasshy and decides to follow him, and while trailing him though the forest Ichigo falls down a “rabbit hole”.  Ichigo/Alice then appears to be back in the forest even though she’s sure she fell down though a hole. Then Ichigo meets a masked sweets spirit who seems to be very old and she give Ichigo a dirty spirit spoon and tells her that this will unlocked her future. The masked spirit then directs Ichigo to a glowing road and tells her that will lead her to the spirit she’s seeking.

 

        Ichigo soon stumbles upon the evil gang and gets discovered as they’re making their plans to interrupt the big festival. After tasting some of their snacks, Ichigo asks them why they’re not in school, and she tells Kasshy that she sure the queen would forgive them if he gave her some of his wonderful cookies. Later, Ichigo learns that they got kicked out of school and lost their magical spoons for cheating during a sweets contest.

 

        As the sweets spirits are putting the final touches on the giant chocolate castle Ichigo makes it back to the main castle. Just as Vanilla is greeting Ichigo, the evil gang appears driving a giant monster like creation made out of sweets to ruin the festival. Well, Ichigo steps into the path of the machine, and the gang tries to stop the machine, but it crashes into Ichigo and the chocolate castle causing a giant mess to be made.

 

        As the queen looks down on the whole mess, she picks up a piece of the evil gang’s creation and gives it a taste. The queen eventually smiles and grants the evil gang their magical spoons back. Honey says that the queen has accepted their cookies, and tells the other spirits to begin the festival. 

        As fireworks go off over the queen’s castle we switch scenes to see Ichigo lying in her bed bathed by moonlight, and we see the old spoon resting on her nightstand. Well, that’s all for this episode.

 

        Well, this was a very sweet episode, pardon the bad pun. Was it a dream or a reality, or maybe a bit of both? Hell, who really cares, I’ll I know is that Ichigo received something very important.  I believe that Ichigo really did travel to the Sweets Kingdom with Vanilla and experienced all those nice adventures along the way. It was very funny how each one of members of the evil gang’s personalities matched one of the princes’ personalities to a tee, and Hanabusa’s avatar (Narcy) in the Sweets kingdom was especially funny.  I think that the whole purpose of this episode was for Ichigo to meet up the old sweets spirit because I get the strong feeling that the “old crone” was Ichigo’s grandmother’s sweet spirit. Following this line of thought, I’m beginning to feel that once a sweets spirit makes a bond with a human it’s forever, so I think the reason the old sweets spirit was wearing a mask was to symbolize the loss of her human partner. I think that Ichigo’s grandmother’s sweets spirit gave Ichigo the dirty spoon and we’ll find out that the spoon unlocks the magical recipe book that was given to Ichigo. 

        At the end of the episode it was strongly suggested that Ichigo’s group will win the first round of the grand prix and will be competing against the President of the student council and her sweets spirit, Honey, for the right to go to Paris. While this competition will be very exciting I can’t imagine Ichigo and the boys being able to defeat Honey and her vastly more experienced human partner, besides Ichigo can’t go to Paris chasing after Henri, she has to be with her tsundere pretty boy Kashino.

       Oh, by the way, the sweets spirit version of Ichigo was so extremely cute that it almost gave me diabetes. Also, I would have loved to have been the dorm supervisor over the holidays, we could have made some beautiful strawberry cake, and I know it would have tasted wonderful.