Review of Honey Lemon Soda

Honey Lemon Soda is a catfishing scam on this dating app called Jc Staff. You can think of this production as two animes in one, because episodes 1-6 are one, while episodes 7-12 are a completely different one. The anime starts out like that ideal person you meet on a dating app. You feel a genuine bond, one where you think you'll have a long-term relationship and be together for many years to come, reminiscing about the good times. It's an old-school slowburn romance that, if you've been around this game for a while, will remind you of the good times. You have two very good leadswho practically carry the anime because the supporting characters are about as useful as a holiday during the pandemic. The story makes it clear that while the ultimate goal is romance, we first have to go through the ordeal of developing each of the characters so they're ready for a relationship. Starting with the girl, Uka, a shy protagonist who was a victim of bullying and enters a school of dubious reputation just to be happy. The entire first half focuses on her and how she will take small but steady steps toward that ideal version of herself. Along this path, she will be accompanied by Miura, the male protagonist, who will be there to provide the girl with moral support. For six chapters, this whole journey feels very beautiful because you maintain the illusion that the story genuinely cares about its characters and wants to give them plenty of space before beginning to intertwine their paths romantically. Oh God... we couldn't have been more naive...

This is where the catfish reveals itself, and we realize that the sweet person we've been talking to for a month and a half is actually a strange man who, instead of trying to steal information from us, just wants to steal our time. You can't imagine how vastly different the two halves of the anime can be. In the second half, they completely forget about the personal development of each protagonist to start forcing the romantic plot because they're running out of time in the season. Then, the story begins to break with what the characters had already achieved up to that point in order to adapt to the needs of the script, making the characters regress to their previous versions as the setting required. The problems weren't only at the script level; there were also continuity and animation issues. The continuity in the second half was horrible; one episode would end and at the beginning of the next, you wouldn't even know where you were; it felt like you'd skipped a couple of episodes. Characters who weren't initially in the scene would appear out of nowhere, even with dialogue. The animation in this part became even more experimental, playing with the anatomy of the characters depending on the scene, generating discomfort in the viewer due to the visual inconsistency this generated. Chapter 11 is by far the worst, even attempting to replicate a race in the purest Science SARU style in Devilman Crybaby. This chapter feels like an astral journey after consuming substances that old Kishimoto had stashed in his drawer when he wrote the ending of Naruto.

It's sad that this treatment has been given to a romance anime, but coming from JC Staff, it doesn't surprise me either. For that reason, I want to initiate the initiative to change the name to JC Scam.