This article is my review the Honey Lemon Soda anime, which is an adaptation of part of an ongoing manga series by Mayu Murata. Honey Lemon Soda is a Japanese high school-based romance story which focuses both on a budding romance between the principal protagonist, first year high school student Uka Ishimori, and her close friend and eventual love interest, the blonde (or honey lemon soda-colored hair) Kai Miura. While romance plays a key role in the show, much of the season focuses on the growth of Uka, who had (and has) a sheltered upbringing and was bullied in junior high school, which have combined to contribute in different ways to her social and confidence issues. Kai, whom she grows to see in romantic terms, first makes his presence felt by helping Uka make friends and showing her that there is nothing wrong with wanting something and being willing to stand up for oneself.
Note that I am not reviewing Honey Lemon Soda in a vacuum. I decided to tackle this project in significant part because I had already drafted an article on the show’s treatment of hair color, specifically the hair of the blonde Kai Miura. I published my hair color study as a separate companion article.
Spoiler Notes and Other Notes
While I will discuss the main characters and general plot of Honey Lemon Soda, I am writing the review in such a way that readers who may consider watching the show in the future can read my review without worrying about my writing harming their future viewing experience. I will point to specific details in such a way that people who are already familiar with the show or underlying manga can understand my opinion of specific events. With that being said, people who are not familiar with the anime or the manga and plan to watch the anime in the future may also consider bookmarking my review for later reading.
Note that my review is based on watching Honey Lemon Soda with Japanese dialogue and English subtitles. I have not read the manga, so I am reviewing the anime in and of itself without any additional knowledge of the source material.
Honey Lemon Soda Details
The source material for the Honey Lemon Soda anime is an ongoing manga (Japanese comic) series. The manga, which began syndication on December 28, 2015, is penned and drawn by Mayu Murata. The series is ongoing and on currently (as of the publication of this review) on volume 27.
The Honey Lemon Soda anime is based on the manga. It aired for 12 episodes from January 9 to March 27, 2025. The anime is a joint production between studios J.C. Staff (animation) and TMS Entertainment (production and planning). It is directed by Hiroshi Nishikori and written by Akiko Waba.
You can learn more about the series on Anime News Network (anime and manga), AniDB, My Anime List, and Wikipedia.
Refreshing Synopsis
The principal main character and view-point protagonist of Honey Lemon Soda is Uka Ishimori (voiced by Kana Ichinose), who is 15 years old and just beginning her first year of high school in the opening episode. (Note: High school in Japan is three years, so Uka is in 10th grade.) Uka is quiet, shy, and an be fairly described as nondescript. The show tips its hand in the first two episodes in showing us that Uka had been bullied relentlessly during junior high school based on her name and, perversely, her being unable to fight back against the bullies. We also see that Uka’s father (voiced by Kazuyuki Okitsu) could be charitably described as over-protective, although the show does not make any immediate connection between that and Uka’s difficult time in middle school. The very first scene of the show is a flash-back, where a crying Uka on the street (still in junior high school) is helped up by a mysterious blonde haired youth who will unsurprisingly turn out to be the co-protagonist, Kai Miura (voiced by Shōgo Yano). We learn that Uka had failed the entrance exam for a prestigious all girl’s school and as a result had to attend the local public high school (where Kai had told her he was going during their brief first encounter).
Uka and Kai have a peculiar meeting on their first day of school when Kai tries to spray a couple guys who were messing him with his honey lemon soda, but hits an unsuspecting Uka instead. While Kai was initially and arguably insufficiently apologetic, he subtly showed solidarity by showing up in class in his gym clothes (Uka had no choice but to change into hers since her uniform was drenched in honey lemon soda) so that Uka would not be the only one standing out.
Uka makes an effort to talk to Kai – recognizing him as the boy who had stopped to help her several months earlier. The gruff Kai takes a peculiar interest in the meek Uka. He offers a critique of her tendency to apologize every time she fears she has said something wrong or may have offended him, telling her to stop apologizing and stand up for herself. Kai goes further, taking it upon himself to “socialize” Uka, especially when he learns from her that she wants to have what one could describe as a normal high school life with friends. Kai also puts his money where his mouth is – so to speak. We see in the first couple of episodes that a few of the kids who tormented Uka in middle school also matriculated to her high school, albeit in a different first-year class. Without diving into unnecessary details, the show makes quick work of them – Kai helps Uka deal with them herself while making it clear that he would be there to help her if she affirmatively asked him.
While Uka’s standing up to her bullies (with her new friends behind her) in the first couple of episodes does not fix all of her problems, the show uses it as a springboard which allows her to move forward with her new friends – many of which she meets because Kai goes out of his way to encourage her to talk to people and people to talk to her.
While a more well-adjusted and confident girl without Uka’s baggage may find Kai’s efforts to help her somewhat condescending – especially in light of the fact the show does highlight that Uka is intelligent in an academic sense, Uka develops a strong admiration for Kai and trusts everything he tells her. She also makes a few genuine friends, beginning with some of the girls in Kai’s friend group. Other students in the school begin to think of their relationship as Kai being Uka’s guardian or something to that effect – in no small part because that is how Kai himself tends to frame things.
Unsurprisingly, Uka begins to develop romantic feelings for Kai, and there are early signs that Kai has some feelings for Uka, which he also being 15-going-on-16, may not be able to fully process. Since this is very much a shoujo (for girls) romance, there of course has to be an ex-girlfriend/rival for the bad boy’s(?) affections – and we meet Serina Kanno (voiced by Rie Takahashi) in earnest as we approach the middle of the show’s run. The budding romance may defy some viewers’ expectations. however, I submit that the romance plot remains the subplot for much of Honey Lemon Soda’s run.
The main focus in the first half (one could argue first three-quarters) of the show is Uka’s coming out of her shell. We watch as Uka goes from a girl who can barely get through a sentence (to the extent she said anything at all) without apologizing to watching her confront her bullies, make friends, play a constructive role on a trip, volunteer for a class leadership position, consider her own independence or lack thereof, and find a place for herself in her school with Kai’s help but through her own strength. For those viewers who come for the romance, I will note without unnecessary specifics that the love story aspect of Honey Lemon Soda does take precedence in the final stretch.
Sticky Highlights
I am borrowing the old Nihon Review format for this review. Below, I present six key highlights of Honey Lemon Soda before proceeding to the review proper. I discussed Nihon Review in an article on review scoring systems and previously applied this review structure in my review of Days With My Stepsister.
- Shoujo Tropes: Honey Lemon Soda is very much a shoujo romance with an undeniable feminine wish-fulfillment component (pretty bad-boy with a gruff exterior takes initially unexplained interest in helping shy, emotionally damaged wallflower). While the show checks all the expected genre boxes, it distinguishes itself to some extent by making a serious effort to grapple with the effect that bullying in junior high school had on Uka, including in the context of her somewhat unusual (compared to her peers, at least) upbringing. Moreover, the show is aware that romance is only possible for Uka once she confronts her unpleasant school past.
- Bullying: I opined in my review of the second season of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun (I also reviewed season one) that school bullying is a difficult thing to do well in anime. Honey Lemon Soda succeeds with flying yellow colors to the extent that it examines the effect that past bullying had on Uka. It is comparatively weaker in scenes where Uka comes face-to-face with her old bullies, which highlight the show’s weakness in writing secondary characters and its tendency to create drama through very convenient timing.
- Main Characters: Uka Ishimori is a compelling protagonist who I could see being relatable to people, especially girls, who dealt with bullying and shyness in their own school days. She is articulate in her monologues, and this allows her to explain in her own words how bullying affected her. Kai Miura’s classmates see him as an aloof, cool, handsome guy who might be hiding some kind of dark past. It would be no exaggeration to say Uka is in awe of Kai. As an adult watching from the outside, I appreciate that the show is aware (as is Kai to a point) that Kai is a well-meaning, awkward teenager, who has a genuine desire to help Uka help herself, but who is sometimes clumsy in doing so. While the show raises questions about Kai that it does not answer in its 12-episode run, I appreciate that it did point to aspects of his personality which motivated him to take a somewhat hard-to-explain interest in the plight of Uka Ishimori. Their romance, to the extent it develops over the course of 12 episodes, is very much tied to Uka’s personal growth.
- Secondary Characters: Uka and Kai are solid protagonists and written credibly for their age and life experiences (granting there are unknowns about Kai). The secondary characters are comparatively one-dimensional and written more to fulfill specific roles in Uka’s story than as fleshed out characters in their own right (Serina Kanno is a qualified exception for one episode). The character writing is an issue since one of the central points of the story is Uka’s growing satisfaction with making friends in her class.
- Heavy-Handedness: Honey Lemon Soda has an unfortunate paint-by-numbers approach were he to be removed from the United States to setting up drama. Does Uka need to confront the kids who tormented her in middle school? They appear before her in school or (randomly) outside of school with uncanny timing. Is it time to dig into Kai’s dating past? Suddenly the whole school is talking about Kai’s rumored ex-girlfriend and Uka, who is naturally curious, suddenly cannot help but run into the girl of mystery. Kai and Uka are not immune from heavy-handed set-ups, albeit it is less jarring in their case. This has the effect of making what is at its heart a humane story about Uka accepting and reconciling her past and beginning to move forward with the confidence that she can and should be able to enjoy her life feel inorganic – as if things happen when they happen because the 12-episode schedule demands it.
- Ending: Honey Lemon Soda was always going to end in medias res on account of the fact that it is adapting only part of a long and ongoing manga series. It finds what I would consider a good stopping-off point, fulfilling its nature as a shojo romance – granting that it had to rush a bit in the last three episodes and it ended up raising many questions about Kai that were left unanswered.
Citrus Review
Honey Lemon Soda consists broadly of two separate-but-related stories. One of the stories is unsurprisingly the slow-burn turn to romance between Uka and Kai. However, the main focus for most of the show is Uka’s development as a character. While I would not go so far as to describe the story as being broken into arcs, it tends to focus its energies on one main issue at a time. For example, the first couple of episodes deal with establishing the peculiar dynamics of the Uka-Kai relationship and how Kai helps Uka confront some of her bullies from junior high school. We see Uka progress as she makes friends on a school trip and eventually decides to be an active participant in her class’ cultural festival preparation. Much of the middle part of the show is devoted to learning more about Kai’s junior high school past and examining how certain revelations affect Uka. We eventually deal with Uka’s home life and how her upbringing affects her personality and finally take a brief glance at Kai’s out-of-school life as the story focuses more on the culmination of Uka’s initial character arc and her (mutual?) romantic feelings for the person she credits for giving her the push she needed. The show is usually not mono-focused, however – these main story-lines are peppered with smaller scenes in the daily life of Uka which play a part in her overall development.
The Uka we meet at the beginning of the story has an extraordinarily low self-valuation and a tendency to apologize for breathing. While Uka never internalized the twisted idea that she deserved to be mistreated, she did accept to some extent or another that the bullying was inevitable, and some of her low self-esteem is rooted in her feeling unable to assert herself. Romance is not a central issue at the beginning of Honey Lemon Soda, but Kai’s having helped Uka in a chance encounter a few months prior to the beginning of their high school tenure cemented him as a special person in Uka’s eyes – specifically because he saw her when she was used to being scorned or ignored. His relationship with Uka is peculiar. While Kai is Uka’s knight in shining armor, he has no desire to save her. Kai’s opinion is that Uka needs to stand up for herself and have the courage to state what she wants. He sees his role as being there to support Uka when Uka helps herself. Of course Kai is a 15-16 year old boy with limited life experience. He has a tendency early in the show to become frustrated when his disciple, whose social skills are admittedly stunted, is unable to discern what he wants her to do. One can quibble with some of his methods as he pushes Uka to try things or cautions her against trying other things. I reflexively cringed when Kai announced that he was socializing Uka or leaned into being Uka’s minder, even granting that his motivation was to use his own popularity to break the ice between Uka and her classmates. Kai understands Uka better than anyone else in the cast and he deserves credit as a 2D boy for seeing that Uka wants to be able to stand up for herself. But Kai is imperfect. There are scenes wherein his analysis of Uka is of debatable veracity. Kai also has a partial blind-spot relating to Uka’s feelings about their friendship. While he is aware that Uka admires him, he is not always aware of the interplay between Uka’s reliance on him and her feelings of inadequacy.
The romance plot develops over the course of Honey Lemon Soda, but it only takes center stage in the second half of the show (however, much of the second half still focuses more on Uka’s social growth). Uka treasures Kai for seeing her and going out of his way to help her, and those feelings of admiration gradually take on a romantic dimension. To Honey Lemon Soda’s credit, it is acutely aware that it would have been impossible for the Uka we meet at the beginning of the story to be in a relationship, not least because she could not imagine someone having romantic feelings toward her. While one of the hallmarks of this particular shoujo set-up is for the ordinary girl to have doubts about her prospects with the handsome popular guy, Uka’s inhibitions are grounded in her life experiences. Uka’s inferiority complex when she encounters a potential romantic rival is understandable. She eventually reaches a place where she is unambiguously enjoying her school life – especially after confronting major issues related to her past bullying and her relationship with her parents (I will not describe the latter for undue spoiler reasons). But this gives rise to another problem – she subjectively sees her relationship with Kai as asymmetrical. In Uka’s mind, she would not have her happy school life but for Kai, but she could not fully return the favor, not least because Kai is not inclined to talk about himself. Kai’s feelings for Uka are less clearly defined for much of Honey Lemon Soda not least because we see most events from Uka’s perspective. I will note that while Kai takes a distinct interest in Uka from the first episode and the eventual transformation of their relationship has an air of inevitability, Kai’s feelings toward Uka definitely evolve over the course of 12 episodes. Kai’s progression is not fully accounted for, and here is still much to explore about his character, but the show does tip its hand on how Kai’s relationship with Uka is distinguishable in a good way from a past relationship of his which comes to the fore in the middle of the show’s run.
Honey Lemon Soda brings both of the main plot threads to a good enough conclusion in the final episode, granting that the show only covers part of a long, ongoing series. While the final episode constitutes something of a victory lap for Uka, showing how much she has grown over the course of 12 episodes, it does not portray Uka as being fixed. Uka has friends, looks forward to school, and maybe has something more with a certain boy in her life – but she readily notes that the pain of her junior high school days and everything that came with that is still with her. There are many things that are still more difficult for Uka than for most girls her age. But still, she moves forward at her own pace.
Having noted what Honey Lemon Soda does mostly well, we turn to some of its flaws. While Uka and Kai are well written individually and as a pair, the secondary characters are comparatively weak. In the highlights section, I described the secondary characters as all being written to fulfill roles. For example, Ayumi Endou (voiced by Miyari Nemoto), who is part of Kai’s friend group from the start, quickly becomes Uka’s closest female friend and confidant. Uka correctly picks up on a crush that Ayumi has – but nothing is done to develop or incorporate that information. Despite Ayumi regularly being with Uka and offering her support, we know about as much about her at the end of episode 12 as we do at the end of episode one. The issue is even worse with other characters in Uka’s class, most of whom are indistinguishable. There is Kai’s close male friend who seems to exist in the show solely to use his knowledge of Kai to give cryptic advice and/or warnings to Kai and Uka. There is Ayumi’s love interest, who seems to exist to be hyper and have funny-colored hair.
Uka makes friends with several other girls in her class, but they do little to distinguish themselves in any way that does not involve their feelings about Uka and/or Kai. The bullies from Uka’s middle school days travel as a pack and appear whenever they are needed for Uka’s character arc, but there is nothing interesting about them. Only Serina Kanno, the rival of sorts, is given a meaningful backstory (in a single episode, but granted) separate from being a cut-out in Uka’s story. The flat secondary characters in conjunction with how often they appear makes Honey Lemon Soda feel oddly episodic. Uka grows continuously from on experience to the next and her relationship with Kai evolves over time, but the rest of the cast – again with the qualified exception of Serina – are stagnant (most of their changes come with respect to their opinions of or relationship to Uka).
I previously reviewed a 2023 high school romance anime called The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten and lodged a similar complaint to the one I raised in the above paragraph about its treatment of secondary characters. However, the problem is more acute in Honey Lemon Soda. The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten focuses very little on the main couple’s school life, and their growth and character development is grounded in their one-on-one out-of-school relationship. Conversely, much of the first season of Honey Lemon Soda focuses on Uka making friends and finding satisfaction in her school life. While it is easy to follow that Uka is excited about making friends, the story would be more compelling if her friends were given more independent impulses and motivations. To better highlight the issue with the flat secondary characters in Honey Lemon Soda compare it to the first season of Kimi ni Todoke, which aired in 2009-10 (it was produced by J.C. Staff, who was the co-producer of Honey Lemon Soda) and it featured in one of my early anime hair color articles. Kimi ni Todoke is structurally similar to Honey Lemon Soda in that it stars a shy girl who has been the target of bullying and and begins to make friends and enjoy school with a push from a popular boy who takes an interest in her. But the first season of Kimi ni Todoke (which has its own set of flaws, mind you) shines to the extent it does an excellent job developing the two best friends of the main character to the point where said friends can hold their own in starring roles in a few episodes in the second half of the first season. The main character’s friendships in Kimi ni Todoke are more compelling because we understand why her friends love and care about her and why they would be good friends to have. Of course, the first season of Kimi ni Todoke was stretched to 25 episodes instead of 12 while covering similar temporal ground, so that difference may explain its advantage in secondary character development compared to Honey Lemon Soda.
The most serious problem with Honey Lemon Soda’s script is that much, if not most, of the drama flows from characters – usually Uka – being in precisely the right or wrong place at the right time for plot purposes. While I will not go into too many specific examples, you can generally assume that if Uka needs to confront her middle school bullies, the bullies (always in a group, always in the same group) will pop up. This even occurs outside of school, including one case where the bullies’ presence is needed by someone other than Uka. If a potential romantic rival needs to be introduced, you can rest assured that the whole school will suddenly start talking about her and she will appear at the most convenient time and place for Uka to begin asking herself questions. There are many such cases – including with Kai, although the Uka-Kai scenarios feel less contrived due to the fact that they are always watching each other (I did however roll my eyes when Uka ran into Kai while going to a bookstore by pure chance on a day off when they needed to see each other for plot reasons). This issue wore on me over the course of 12 episodes, and it gives the script an unfortunate paint-by-numbers air. While most anime do indulge in certain contrivances for the sake of plot development, I would prefer this kind of character-driven story to feel like it is being driven things happening logically and naturally in the characters’ world instead of being forced to happen at point A or point B to check off another plot point. Readers can see my review of 2024’s A Sign of Affection – a college-based romance with a similar set-up to Honey Lemon Soda (swap the heroine’s deafness for being bullied) – as an example of a show where the drama flows more naturally from the characters’ going about their lives.
One additional quibble I have with the script is that the writing in dramatic scenes involving characters other than Uka and Kai tends to be heavy-handed. Uka’s and Kai’s one-on-one interactions are generally well-done and trust the reader to understand their perspectives and contextualize their views with respect to Uka’s inhibitions and Kai’s awkwardness. When other characters are involved in dramatic or meaningful scenes – see e.g., Uka’s bullies, Uka’s father, or random classmates with a bone to pick with Kai – the script shows less faith in viewers, employing a distinct tell, don’t show approach that does not in this case accrue to the show’s benefit. I will however rekindle my qualified exception to this critique for Serina Kanno – while she usually suffers from the heavy-handed writing that plagues the secondary characters, she proves to be a strong character in her own right for one episode when she is given some degree of freedom to offer her own perspective in a way that trusts viewers to understand her as well as why her story adds important context to understanding the main Uka-Kai relationship.
Since I am reviewing the Honey Lemon Soda anime, I will cover the aesthetics, having covered the story. It is visually somewhat above average for the genre, stronger than some very low-animation school romance productions I have reviewed, such as Angel Next Door, but clearly short of high-level efforts such as A Sign of Affection. All of the characters are drawn to be some degree of attractive (Uka is clearly intended to be ordinary in appearance compared to some of her peers) and some of Uka’s classmates are hard to distinguish, (which is a writing issue as well as a design issue), but the show pays solid attention to detail on points such as hair color and uniforms (Uka wears her uniform without any embellishments and her skirt is noticably longer than what the other girls wear). Honey Lemon Soda is not a highly animated show, but the animation is decent enough – but the characters sometimes move unnaturally. There are instances of poorly rendered CG flourishes (see for example the caution tape image I included close to the top of this section). The anime does like to use yellow as an accent theme, which is inoffensive but ultimately does not make it stand out.
While I did not think about it too much while watching, I am inclined to agree with Anime News Network reviewer Rebecca Silverman (after having taken the time to collect screenshots) that the “golden brown” eyes of all the characters stand out in an odd way.
Regarding the slightly above average in-show production values, I will note that both the opening (theme song: “Magic Hour” by &Team) and ending (theme song: “Wonderful World” by &Team) sequences feature high quality animation and visual aesthetics – with the opening being particularly impressive in the animation department. The band performing both songs is a boy band – the songs themselves fit Honey Lemon Soda well enough.
The animation quality is not wholly consistent from episode-to-episode, especially in the odd fever dream-esque penultimate episode 11, but it is consistent enough for all normal purposes. I did tend to enjoy the background music – while it was not greatly varied, it fits the show well, especially in the more dramatic moments.
The voice acting (note again that I watch with Japanese dialogue and English subtitles) was solid enough, with Kana Ichinose delivering a very strong performance as Uka – especially in providing different-but-consistent voices for her internal monologues and more tentative manner of speaking. I thought Shougo Yano sounded a bit “old” for Kai, but his gruff performance effectively conveyed Kai’s personality and why Uka occasionally has difficulty reading him. The always-excellent Rie Takahashi (who featured in one past article for her singing and another for her starring role as in my 2022 TV Anime of the Year) delivered a strong performance as Serina Kanno.
Sweet and Sour Conclusion
Honey Lemon Soda grades out in the average to touch above range – perhaps either a five or six out of ten if I were using the old Nihon Review 1-10 scale. While I cannot be certain (having not read the manga, which I have been led to understand is highly regarded), I came away with the suspicion that the anime team had to take certain short-cuts to cover what it wanted to cover within 12 episodes – which may have been relevant to my main complaints about the show’s writing. Granting the script’s unfortunate weaknesses, Uka and Kai, but mostly Uka in this case, do more than enough to elevate Honey Lemon Soda to decent.
Setting aside fans of the genre or fellow anime hair color anthropologists, I would give the Honey Lemon Soda a qualified recommendation for people who find may Uka’s character – specifically her having been the victim of bullying and her also having had an unusually sheltered upbringing in the context of the 2010s – interesting. The show is Uka-centric to the point that I would not recommend it to people who did not come away from my review wanting to learn more about her, especially since neither the aesthetics nor the rest of the cast (the solid Kai included) do enough to recommend it without reference to Uka. It is a decent shoujo romance – but not the sort of outstanding one that may be of interest to people who would otherwise avoid these sorts of shows.
I would be interested in seeing a second season of Honey Lemon Soda, granting I suspect that it would be more romance-oriented than the first. In the event we do have a second season, I hope the pacing is more deliberate such that it could avoid some of the issues I complain about in this review. Of course, my 2024 anime of the year ranking was led by a second season show which improved greatly on the first, so I suppose anything is possible.
