Honey Lemon Soda

For 15-year-old Uka Ishimori, middle school was the toughest experience she lived through. She was dubbed "Rocky" due to always freezing up in front of other people and was endlessly bullied as a result. Now in high school, she has a chance for a fresh start and to improve herself. But during her first week, she is accidentally soaked in juice by her classmate Kai Miura, a flashy guy with lemon-colored hair.

On paper, Kai is everything that Uka lacks—he is popular, aloof, and bold enough to speak his mind. Despite their contrasting personalities, Kai encourages her to slowly come out of her shell, offering a helping hand when others avoided to do so. Although Uka initially wanted to forge friendships, she has realized her true feelings—she has fallen in love with Kai. What started with a lemon soda is about to change Uka and Kai's lives forever.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Miura, Kai Main

Yano, Shougo Japanese

Ishimori, Uka Main

Ichinose, Kana Japanese

Takamine, Tomoya Supporting

Toki, Shunichi Japanese

Kanno, Serina Supporting

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Seto, Satoru Supporting

Yashiro, Taku Japanese

Endou, Ayumi Supporting

Nemoto, Miyari Japanese

Seki Supporting

Kumazawa, Gentoku Japanese

Nagano Supporting

Hirose, Yuuki Japanese

Yasushi Supporting

Tanabe, Kousuke Japanese

Mikarin Supporting

Tachibana, Mei Japanese

Nishikiori, Hiroshi Director

Ootera, Fumihiko Sound Director

&TEAM Theme Song Performance

Honda, Takeshi Key Animation

Reviews

Feb 2, 2025

Jafrias

Recommended

Preliminary (4/12 eps)

New anime NO SPOILER early review
Story: insecure bullied girl who's afraid to speak has an encounter in which she makes a choice to go to a public school instead of a smart kids school. This is story of a girl coming out of her shell with the help of her love interest, lemon soda.

Opinion: Except the random theme of Lemon soda being thrown at you, this anime makes me feel fuzzy. I watch it in the morning, the warm colors art, BGM and pace is very relaxing. This is a love story where a guy changes the girl's world, this is a story of watching ... the MC take little steps one by one to confront her bullies, her fears, her challenges to grow and change as a person. I can't help myself but to root for her and drink lemon soda.

🔥HOT BONUSES:
1. All female have the same unique drawing of moe eyes, but that shape + the MC's yellow color eyes = Lemon slice eyes.
2. No lemon soda bottles were harmed in this anime, only people.
3. Did i mention Lemon Soda already? Sprite please collab.

⚠️: I will edit this review at the end of the season with my final thoughts with no spoilers at my "Anime List" on my profile, i will NOT delete this early review. If you want to check the season review or other anime reviews i do, you can check it here: https://myanimelist.net/animelist/Ron014

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Feb 10, 2025

Honakawa_rina

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (5/12 eps)

There are 3 things I want to discuss about this anime. The first is the anime visuals, the second is the anime story, and the third is the anime music.(I only watched the anime and didn't read the manga).

OK, first I want to discuss the visual aspect. In terms of visuals, this anime has unique character designs. The character designs in this anime feel like old anime, where the character designs are very 2D. That's a good thing in my opinion, because most anime nowadays have too 3D character designs and that makes the character of the anime somewhat less. There is still one more ... thing I want to discuss about the visuals of the anime, namely the images of the characters' eyes. If you are aware, all the important characters in this anime have yellow eyes. I think this is a unique thing that adds plus value to the anime's visuals. The shortcomings of this anime in terms of visuals lie in the animation which is too stiff and the character images are less consistent, the character movements feel stiff and the inconsistency in this anime makes the viewing experience less comfortable.

The second thing I want to discuss about this anime is the story. Of the 5 episodes that I watched, I felt that the scenes that occurred in each episode seemed to be repeated and only new characters were added. The passing of this anime feels quite slow, and the drama presented feels annoying and excessive. Overall, this anime story has more negative points for me than positive points.

The third thing I want to discuss in this anime is the music. Firstly, the opening music, the anime opening music is quite good and enjoyable for me. I feel that the opening music for this anime is like KPOP music, and for some reason I feel nostalgic when I hear this anime music. The ending music for this anime is also no less good, I like both of them. Then the best music in this anime is in PV 1 of the anime. The OST music in the first PV of the anime is really good. and what made me interested in watching this anime was the OST music from the anime's first PV, even though I was disappointed with the anime adaptation.

Overall, this is not a bad anime and is still worth watching for drama anime lovers. It's just that I'm not a fan of drama anime, so I won't like anime where the drama is too excessive and the characters are too mentally weak.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 8, 2025

Olivia_Neverlock

Not Recommended

Preliminary (3/12 eps)

At first, I liked this anime, especially the atmosphere of its scenes, which were filled with soothing piano melodies. Besides that, the opening and ending music were also incredibly cool. I really loved them. I even thought this would become my favorite anime of the season, but after watching up to three episodes, I started to lose patience with its flat plot. Even though the animation quality was bad and stiff, I could still tolerate it as long as the story or plot was engaging. However, *Honey Lemon Soda* couldn’t even offer me anything exciting to develop its narrative. It felt like those Wattpad stories ... written by middle school girls in between their after-school breaks—very plain and boring.

The conflict in the early episodes was quite thrilling and tense, in my opinion, but objectively speaking, it might come across as "just okay." The bullying that happened wasn’t that dramatic, lacked emotional impact, and was very cliché. Not to mention how the "blond prince" kept helping our main character while showing his irritation—it really annoyed me.

What made me finally decide to drop this anime was my outburst of anger when I saw the "blond prince" refer to our protagonist as an "inanimate object." Even though it was meant as a joke, I found it completely unacceptable. On top of that, the way our main character responded so foolishly, which somehow made her fall for him even more, made my frustration boil over.

This isn’t the worst anime out there, but you’re better off not watching it. There are plenty of other high school romance anime that are far better than this one.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Honey Lemon Soda Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Feb 5	52 replies	by traed »» 2 hours ago
	Poll: Honey Lemon Soda Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jan 22	58 replies	by Camoboi1 »» Feb 7, 12:44 AM
	Shoujo fans are hyping up anything this days ZXEAN - Jan 15	42 replies	by griddyweeb »» Feb 5, 9:03 PM
	I really like Honey Lemon soda, what's your thoughts + episode 4 discussion ( 1 2 ) Ron014 - Jan 29	60 replies	by bahimiron »» Feb 5, 12:27 AM
	Poll: Honey Lemon Soda Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jan 29	70 replies	by sukisan1 »» Feb 4, 10:24 AM