Honey Lemon Soda

Episodes 6-7

The hardest thing about going for what you want is feeling like you deserve it. That's a battle Uka's been fighting since episode one, and these two episodes show two different sides of her struggle. Episode six, which deals with the culture festival, is about Uka doing her absolute best to prove that she deserves to be a part of her class. Naturally, in her mind, this means doing as much of the work required for the café as possible, even though that's not actually necessary. If others aren't willing to step up and help, it's at least half because they don't understand why Uka is taking so much on herself. (The other half is just good old-fashioned laziness.) If Kai hadn't performed the superhuman feat of stopping her bike, no one would have known she'd been crashing it at the bottom of a hill over and over again. Uka is willing to injure herself to show she deserves to be a part of the group.

That might strike some people as over the top and unbelievable, and yes, it is exaggerated for the purposes of entertainment and making a point. But it's also simply a marker of Uka's mental health and how badly she's been hurt before. Unless she's explicitly invited or someone goes out of their way to offer to help, her assumption is that the only thing she's good for is working herself to the bone. She's not enough on her own; she has to continually prove her worth. Not even Kai fully grasps that, and he seems to have made an art of studying Uka.

He's not exactly being subtle about it, either. Maybe it's just me, but I got the impression that he really didn't want to be in the little video, and saying, “You can leave Ishimori to me,” was both a way of signaling that dissatisfaction and making it clear that his interest isn't just in being her “keeper.” Not that Uka is ready to see that – she may well believe that Kai pulled her out of the activity on the steps because he thought it would make her uncomfortable (which, in all fairness, it did) rather than out of jealousy. But as Kai is forcibly reminded in episode seven, unless he spells things out for Uka, she won't understand. She doesn't believe that she deserves Kai. In her mind, he belongs with Serina, one of the beautiful people.

The look on Kai's face when Uka leaves the classroom before summer break saying that she'll “see him next term” says a lot more than he's been willing to admit out loud, and his disappointment when Ayumi beats him to the punch about taking Uka to the festival is again louder than any words he's expressed. Serina could read his signals (although the kiss was pretty hard to miss), but Uka doesn't have the social skills or the self-confidence to understand. Admittedly, Kai is also looking not to make the same mistakes with Uka that he made with Serina, although I'd argue that their relationship wasn't ever going to last; they're much too similar. But Serina lost her sense of self with Kai, and that's not something he's going to put Uka through. Kai's main goal was simply to see her and her worth; the romantic feelings came later.

I have to hand it to Honey Lemon Soda, though – it handles the romantic elements very well. There's no melodrama with Serina and Uka, just two girls who like the same boy and are trying to maintain their budding friendship by being honest with each other. Kai is awkward about his feelings, acting on the tropes he's been told are romantic through consumption of pop culture; if anyone thinks he's smooth, that's because they're blinded by his looks and don't see the teenage boy underneath.

Ultimately, Uka's relationship with Kai has to take a back seat to her relationship with herself. The story knows this, and although their relationship is developing, it's not moving artificially quickly, apart from Uka's speed at falling in love. But however things pan out for them, all of Kai's grumpy attempts to get Uka's cellphone number notwithstanding, Uka at least has Ayumi, the unsung champion of this series. That girl is a treasure, and I hope everyone realizes it.

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