Honey Lemon Soda

It had potential. It's nice to see a female lead with semi-realistic anxiety. However, the way it's handled Uka working through her anxiety and the treatment by others felt icky.

I'll start off with what I liked. I like Uka. Again, it's refreshing to see a female lead with decently written anxiety. When there's female leads like Komi from Komi Can't Communicate who have anxiety but that somehow makes everyone fall in love with her, it's nice to see a realistic approach. Uka struggles to talk to people, and because of that, she's often the target of bullies. The way the bullies acted was pretty similar to how they'd act in my experience as well when I used to be pretty quiet. Now there's certainly some very unrealsitic, cringey moments, but there was also some relatable ones. Along with that, there's scenes where Uka is standing there and wants to be a part of the conversation, but is too anxious to speak up and no one cares enough to try and get her involved in the conversation. It's sad but semi-realistic. Again, there's many unrealistic, cringe-worthy scenes, but there's also some good ones.

Alright, time to get into what I dislike. I was trying to be as positive as I could. First of all, why do they all have yellow eyes? Is it some poison in this disgusting sounding soda that they're all addicted to that changed their eye color? Maybe the poison got into Kai's brain the most since he has blonde hair and is incredibly annoying.

Kai. The male lead. Not all bad but I really don't like this guy. Sure, he has his moments that are sweet, but does he have to act like Uka is someone who needs to be fixed? A lot of the time he's not very friendly towards her and kind of just tells her what to do. There's another way he could help her with her social anxiety that's more sympathetic. He could just be friendly to her and try to include her more in his friend group. It's not that hard ?. But noooo instead he needs to be cool and mysterious. Aye yae yae. I don't like this guy. Uka deserves better.

Why does it always have the girl that has to be flawed? Can't both the female and male leads be flawed and work through those flaws together?

Animation. Oh boy oh boy, the animation. A lot of the times it looked great. I loved the backgrounds when they were outdoors especially. But then...the 3D assets hit!! For example, the desks in the classroom look so bad. They don't blend into the scene at all and complete stand out as one of those copy-paste 3D assets you'd usually see in manhwa. It looks bad. So the animation is usually either a hit or miss.

Would I recommend watching this? No, not really. None of it is good except for Uka. Someone needs to get her out of this universe and put her in Fruits Basket instead.