Review of Honey Lemon Soda

When I started watching this I remember being creeped out by their eyes (trademark of the manga it seems) and after hearing some of Miura's lines I was thinking "Oh, my God, why is this so bad?!". I don't even know how I got to episode 2 as I was seeing it week by week. But now that it ended, I am sad I can't bring myself give it an 8, because I really enjoyed it. I watched the opening and ending credits during each and every episode, which is not something I typically do. I particularly liked the ending video, with the high contrast paletteand the high schoolers goofing off. For me it captured the atmosphere of Hachimitsu and it's the only highschool anime where I felt the whole class played some role.

In terms of plot there are some nice points about bullying and how to (try to) deal with it, also about having a healthy school atmosphere. The two main characters actually have a lot of chemistry, more than I would have expected, although I still found most of Miura's lines to be cringe beyond redemption and by the end I was also exhausted by Ishimori's crying.

I have mixed feeling about the animation style used in episode 11. Many see it as experimental and, sure, it is, but overall to me it killed the atmosphere of the show and was not very well executed. I didn't see the point of doing this as a one-off, and whatever artistic thrills it might have brought it took away from the story itself. It gave me more the impression that they ran out of money or out of time to cover the source material. And although the animation style went back to "normal" for the last episode, I still felt a decline in quality, at least in some scenes.

I really enjoyed the overall feel of this story, there's some romance and solid chemistry between the leads. There were aspects that annoyed me about both main characters, they were a bit of a shoujo cliché, but I guess that's the story the mangaka wanted to tell. But the positive atmosphere this show builds makes it worth watching despide all my nitpicking.