Edit: Y'all I thought I liked this manga and then I read the latest chapter (54) and I'm seriously starting to question my own taste. If you're a fan of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, this manga is like that trash shoujo Let's Fall in Love that Nozaki pens. I could totally imagine that Murata Mayu is just the pen name of some degenerate bum high school dude who has no idea what romance is and just randomly inserts fluffy chapters and stupid devices that have no basis in plot and somehow manages to make a hit manga because clearly all it takes to make a hit manga is not storytelling capability but just some weekly trash with pretty art and a heart squeezing moment at the end and MURATA MAYU HAS THAT FORMULA DOWN PAT. I LITERALLY HATE HOW MUCH I LIKE THIS MANGA. I swear to y'all, I read chapter 54 and I had to sit down ask myself what I did to get to this point in my life. I'm playing limbo with the author right now, I lower the bar for what's acceptable and she just moves it lower. I'm playing a game of chicken with this manga.

This is probably the trashiest shoujo I'm absolutely in love with.

Let me explain. Honey Lemon Soda hits pretty much all the shoujo stereotypes. I mean, the premise is insanely cliche: unpopular average girl MC falls for her school's bad boy hottie. Execution wise, it also ticks all the boxes. Everything from her classmates' over the top reactions, the overdramatic reveal of exes and love interests; these are all things we regularly see in the genre.

But this stupid manga has warmed my little shoujo heart because while it's cliche beyond belief, it does the cliches right. There's a reason why these tropes were popular in the first place, and Honey Lemon Soda exploits that for all it's worth. The good moments are staged, unrealistic, and overdramatic, but they're SO CUTE. If you're looking for some guilty pleasure feel good romance, this is it. I actually hate how much I love it. I've been reading it pretty much since the scanlations first came out, and every time I hop on a manga site it's like the first title I check for updates.

I do also think the series has something to offer with its characters. These days I feel like I read shoujos more for the MCs than the guys, and Uka doesn't disappoint. Well, she does. She's very lightly useless, but the whole point is that she's someone who tries her best and it makes you want to root for her. In fact, Miura, the lead male, flashy as he is, always seems to take the background to Uka. He tends not to get too involved, and while everyone freaks out over him, it's clear that she's the real star. He's kind of just a catalyst to her development. Besides the main pair, the side characters tend to be... well, they don't stick out too much, but they're very sweet when noticed! Even the "villain" characters for some of the story arcs turn out to be nice people, which I guess is pretty typical of shoujo, but Honey Lemon Soda really does the resolutions the right way, and once the arcs of drama are resolved, the author doesn't forget about those characters. The "villain" characters actually make reappearances, which really helps you to like them more.

This kind of brings us to my next point: the story is stupidly overdone but the resolutions make you accept the unrealistic build ups for what they are. This isn't some cute super realistic relatable manga, it's a guilty pleasure reading built on hopes and dreams, okay? There's like 5000 things wrong with it but that's honestly what makes it so good. The kind of stupid plot helps spoon feed readers the cute romantic iconic shoujo moments we're looking for, so it's okay to look past the fact that Uka wasn't actually wearing her dress backwards and other stupid plot holes. I can accept the fact that everyone at their high school overreacts to everything and I can accept Miura's generic sad backstory because the author is so good at milking those end-of-chapter scenes for everything they're worth. The art isn't my favorite style, but it's pretty and really sparkly, and there's a lot of cute chibi inserts which lead to particularly cute and funny scenes, and let's be real, the whole backbone of this manga for me is particular scenes.

So yeah, check it out if you're looking for some escapist feels good content, and I'm gonna go reread.