Honey Lemon Soda

Episodes 1-2

It's hard to deny that Honey Lemon Soda is wish-fulfillment, but I think that what kind of wish-fulfillment you see depends a lot upon your own experiences. For me, a survivor of school bullying, the wish it's granting isn't that a prince charming will come along and save you – it's that someone will tell you that you're worth saving at all. The thing about the kind of bullying Uka Ishimori survived in middle school is that it teaches you that you deserve it. That somehow, you are the sole reason for your misfortunes, and that you have to apologize for your very existence. What Uka gets from Kai in these first two episodes isn't that he's riding to her rescue on a white horse, armor shining, but that she's being reminded that she's a person who deserves to be there at all. Kai's not so much saving her as seeing her.

He doesn't appear all that sure why he's doing it, either. When Kai and Uka first meet, she's tripped on the street and is crying, and he's the only person who stops to help her. This nicely illustrates the idea of him seeing her when no one else does; it's not that other people don't see her, it's that they choose not to see something that makes them uncomfortable. Uka's distress is awkward for others, and we could take that to imply that such has always been the case for her. Surely there weren't any kids in her middle school who wanted to help her or talk to her like reasonable human beings, but they were made uncomfortable about doing so. Kai is the first person to recognize Uka's distress and act on it, which to her must look incredibly kind and brave. Just listen to how many times she apologizes across these two episodes; a piece of her is afraid that Kai and his clique will be tainted by associating with her because “Stony” is nothing but a pebble in society's collective shoe.

That doesn't mean there isn't an air of the faintly ridiculous or patronizing. Kai's attempts to socialize Uka definitely can be read as the latter, although I think the intent is more to show how he's still a kid himself and doesn't entirely know how to deal with the situation, something at least one of his friends has picked up on by episode two. To a degree, he's treating Uka like a stray dog, which isn't great, but his heart is still clearly in the right place, as we see in the basketball scene where he notices how badly she wants to be part of the game. (I'm also willing to buy that she's been practicing at home and is too embarrassed to say so, instead coming up with the silly “image training” excuse.) His gruffness when he realizes that Uka silently left the classroom before he could talk to her says volumes about his feelings and how he can't quite figure them out himself. Just because he's subject to the adoration of girls doesn't mean that he wants it or knows what to do with it. He strikes me as the kind of teen who maybe “dated” someone because it was the thing to do but wasn't quite sure why or what that meant.

Honey Lemon Soda's source manga, by Mayu Murata, is one of my favorite ongoing shoujo titles, and I'll be the first to admit that this anime adaptation doesn't capture Murata's art particularly well. The use of yellow as a theme color makes sense, but it ends up looking more like “electric banana” than “honey or lemon yellow,” and the eyes do not translate well at all; just because Murata uses golden brown in her color art doesn't mean that the anime should have attempted to replicate it. There's also something awkward about the bodies, which I think comes down to attempting to be too faithful to the manga art; making them move is very different from giving the illusion of movement.

But despite its visual issues, this is still going to be worth watching. The manga's better on almost all fronts, but it's important that stories like this are brought to the screen. If you've been in Uka's position, you know why. If you haven't, this is an easier way to experience it and to see that it's not about being saved – it's about learning that you deserve to save yourself.

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