The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Honey Lemon Soda

Uka Ishimori had a miserable middle school experience, bullied for her shyness and social awkwardness. She's determined to remake herself in high school, but that's easier said than done. She finds a ray of hope in lemon soda-loving popular boy Kai Miura and slowly begins to feel more comfortable in her own life.

Honey Lemon Soda is based on the manga series by Mayu Murata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

Honey Lemon Soda will begin streaming on Crunchyroll on January 8. Anime News Network received press screeners and was allowed to publish our impressions early.

I find myself in a difficult position with Honey Lemon Soda. On the one hand, I adore the manga. It's both one of my comfort reads and one of the books that the tormented middle schooler in my soul finds hopeful. I relate to the heroine, Uka Ishimori, on an almost painful level. I've been there. I know what it feels like to feel like you have to stand as still as stone so that no one notices you, how it feels like there's nobody who could possibly help you out of a bad situation because the adults don't get it, and the kids have proven themselves monsters time and time again. Even in this story version, Uka's insecurities are writ large. If you've never been in Uka's place, she could seem annoying or pathetic. But if you've lived through bullying, there's a good chance you'll recognize her.

But…that's about all this adaptation does right. That's not to say that it's bad, exactly – Uka's issues remain front and center, and Kai is still a combination of weirdly sage and a teenage boy who can't communicate to save his life. The characters are probably the strongest part of these two episodes; the one little shot of Ayumi standing behind the boys growling at Uka's bullies is pitch-perfect, and Uka's dad secretly visiting the school to make sure his daughter isn't in a den of hooligans tells us a lot about him. I would argue that the characters are the most important piece of this story, too. It's about Uka learning not so much to come out of her shell as it is safe to do. That requires a firm understanding of her and her new friend group, which I'd say is off to a good start.

Sadly, the manga art hasn't translated particularly well, especially the eyes; they tend to look a little bug-ish, and the level of detail in the irises that works in Mayu Murata's manga doesn't quite work here. Characters frequently look at least a little off-model, and there's a stiffness to the way most people walk that has nothing to do with Uka's low self-esteem. The near-constant piano plinking also doesn't quite work for me. I know what they were going for: a mild sense of beautiful melancholy, but it instead hits notes of melodrama. I imagine the story can look melodramatic to some people, but I also don't think that's its intent.

Still, Honey Lemon Soda touches on one very specific fantasy: someone out there who can, if not save you, at least help you learn to save yourself. Faulty adaptation or not, I'm sticking with this one, and even if the anime isn't working for you, I'd suggest picking up the manga, especially if you've ever been Uka.

I think the thing that people who haven't been bullied don't understand is how it sticks with you—often for years and years without you realizing it. You're so used to being the outcast that it becomes a core part of your identity—that even should the overt bullying stop, you mentally stay in the same place. I remember the shock I had on the day I discovered that not only did everyone not actively hate me, but some even looked up to me. It was so outside of the expectations I had been trapped in that it never even occurred to me that it could be true.

This is the kind of revaluation Uka is going through in this episode. She's been trapped in her own little box for so long that she didn't even notice the box was gone. And instead of actively trying to get out of the box, she's been waiting for someone to pull her out of it—wondering why it hasn't happened. Thus, the first part of this episode is her realization that pretty much everyone in her class is 100% neutral towards her. She's never done anything to stand out in a good or bad way. So when she speaks up and helps someone in need, she's making a great (if belated) first impression—showing that she's smart and kind.

Of course, it's right after that moment that “the box” suddenly reappears. Her former bullies are more than happy to try and force her back into her victim role. While she hasn't realized it yet, she's not the girl she once was. She is now willing to fight back and knows some people will help her if she asks—even if she fears putting that to the test.

And while she still needs someone to meet her halfway, she can finally take the first step into a much wider world of friends and romance. All in all, it makes for a darn solid episode of television—and one that struck me on a deep, personal level.

A while back, I bought the first volume of Honey Lemon Soda based on word of mouth. A critic I respect liked it, so I gave it a shot sight unseen. I did not, nay, could not finish the first volume. And despite reassurances that it gets better from there, further volumes have not and shall not grace my bookshelf.

The thing that Honey Lemon Soda does exceptionally well, I am told, is its depictions of coordinated bullying and harassment. This is a prevalent issue in Japan, but it happens everywhere because of how humans, indeed most social animals, tend to operate. Uka's tendency to shut down and freeze, her belief that she is the problem and not everyone else, and other unhealthy thought patterns ring true. However, even if there's reality drawn into the broad strokes, the line-by-line writing is just awful.

The biggest problem here is Miura. Every time he opens his mouth, the most absurd thing you've ever heard comes out. Not a single thing he does or says has a trace of humanity. This makes the episode more entertaining; many of his lines are absurd to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny. He sprays people who complain about his blond hair with a two-liter of lemon soda that he carries around, and in multiple scenes, he'll wander in, say something trite to Uka, and walk off while she thinks about how insightful his observation was. Uka isn't far behind, either. The scene where she runs into a convenience store and embraces a bottle of lemon soda like the one Miura carries made me imagine the clerks complaining about this weird girl who keeps making the lemon sodas all warm with her body heat and then leaving. Her new friend Endou passes her a basketball, and suddenly, she's a superstar, dribbling and weaving, even though she hasn't held a ball in years. Because she does a lot of visualizing.

“That's not how that works!” I yelled at the screen. “You can just manifest athletic skill without physically practicing!” It's so overwrought that it feels like a parody of shoujo manga.

Plus… J.C. Staff, I know you're capable of doing better than this. You're the studio of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Honey and Clover, and Nodame Cantabile. Why is it that in the last few years, your shoujo adaptations have suffered the most? Honey Lemon Soda's animation is as bad as the writing, already frequently off-model even in fairly close shots. The compositing is especially egregious, with the character animation a complete mismatch to the backgrounds. Frankly, it's a little insulting.

By this point, you may be thinking, “Caitlin, isn't 2.5 stars a little high for what you're describing?” Maybe, but I can't say I wasn't entertained. Plus, even if Honey Lemon Soda is weird and alienating as a romance, the care that goes into the bullying storyline gives it some worth. Maybe it deserved a better adaptation.

If Honey Lemon Soda were a real brand of refreshing carbonated beverage, it would almost certainly be confined to the dusty racks of the neglected soda machines that you find in the corners of corporate megastores, right next to all of the years-old cans of Dr. K, Great Value Cola, and Twist Up. Does it technically accomplish its job of providing a concoction of stale water and pure corn syrup for you to drink when there is literally no other option available to you? Sure it does. Is there any reason to choose it over the better products that you can almost always find just within arms reach and for only a few cents more? Absolutely not.

It might sound like I am reacting extremely negatively to Honey Lemon Soda, but the real problem is that it simply doesn't add up to an anime that is worth having any kind of strong reaction one way or the other. Like any knockoff soda-pop worth its generic and legally distinct name, this show is going out of its way to be as bland and inoffensive as possible while also exerting the bare minimum amount of effort.

Protagonist Uka is the same impossibly pathetic and terminally shy leading lady that we've seen in a hundred of these kinds of romance stories. Kai Miura is exactly the kind of brusque-but-devoted-and-also-super-hot love interest who has seemingly been manifested into reality solely to act as the smoldering force of nature that will give Uka the confidence and happiness she has always been denied. If you've ever seen even one episode of a series that shares this basic setup, I promise you will find nothing in Honey Lemon Soda that will surprise or shock you.

Granted, not everyone wants novelty and experimentation in their sappy love stories, which is totally fair. To Honey Lemon Soda's credit, the story does occasionally hit those inherently satisfying formulaic notes, such as when Oka finally works up the nerve to spray her school bullies with some of that titular soda and formally ask for Kai's help in kicking their wimpy asses. This isn't one of those misguided dramas where the two main characters are enveloped in something too toxic or unbelievable to be enjoyable.

The issue, though, is that Uka and Kai are such paper-thin archetypes that they don't possess any real chemistry, which means that the show is banking on its audience's ability to self-insert into Uka's role as the absurdly unpopular and lonely misfit. The whole scenario of her life and relationship with Kai then only works as pure, unvarnished wish fulfillment, and that simply isn't something I'm interested in, especially when the show in question is so drab in its presentation and production values. Honey Lemon Soda isn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but rather than simply settling for the cheapest junk on the bottom shelf, I'm happy to browse the aisles a little longer in search of a drink with some real flavor to it.