Honey Lemon Soda (2021)

Not *that* bad, but not *that* good either...

I admit I was a little scared to watch this movie, as many of the comments I saw talking about this criticized it saying it wasn't good and that people dropped it like a hot pocket... BUT, being a reader of the original manga and knowing of Raul from Snow Man, I decided to give it a try. TL;DR: it wasn't good, but definitely not as bad some others made it out to be, as I've seen farrrr worse before in the shoujo genre. Let me explain:

STORY: If you're a fan of the genre, this will be nothing new, nor groundbreaking. If you're not a fan of the clichés and heart-pounding moments, I'd suggest you skip this one. The pacing of the story is very fast at the beginning, and then somehow towards the middle to 3/4 in, it gets a little slow and draggy. It follows the formula of a typical high school shoujo romance - ML protects the "weak" FL, both start dating, they break up for some random forced reason, and insert slow-mo chase scene with inspiring music and the FL/ML having an epiphany to tell the other person that WAIT they actually DO love them! But instead of one running scene, there's a whopping total of two. The director seemed to compile scenes from the manga that seemed a bit disjointed and forced, like one second there's a serious thing going on, and it hard cuts to the characters at the beach. There wasn't much of a solid flow or transition of the storyline, which is probably what turned a lot of viewers off.

ACTING: Raul definitely didn't suit the image of Kai for me, and same with Yoshikawa Ai for Uka. However, by the end of the film, they seemed more well-adjusted to the roles. Yoshikawa definitely outshined Raul with her acting as she was more natural in her role. The character of Kai isn't supposed to be greasy or cheesy, but it definitely felt like Raul was overdoing the "cool" factor, making his line delivery pretty greasy (which also wasn't his usual tone of voice, so it seemed forced).

MUSIC: I laughed a lot at the soundtrack (and that's not a good thing). I actually expected more Snow Man or Johnny's songs in general, but there was just the one at the very end, and instead we got a bunch of poorly made English songs that sounded like random royalty-free songs you'd find on Google. Especially the intro song.... iykyk. I thought they got some random, already-made song and just stuck it in, but then the singer proceeds to croon "Honey Lemon Soda" in the lyrics and I died inside. I was super confused and slightly awed that they actually made this song for the movie. And why English? Is this a trend now??

REWATCH VALUE: Hmm.. I probably won't rewatch this as there are plenty of shoujo movies that are better. But I won't judge if you do watch this because honestly it wasn't as bad as many others. Just be a little patient, let it take some time, and watch the credits til the end because that stuff was cute, man.

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"A love so sweet and refreshing, just like Honey Lemon Soda."

Visually pleasing and refreshing, which was exactly what I wanted after seeing the poster and the trailer.

Very undevelopped story and weird pacing, too focused on the "hero saves damsel in distress" thing, which unfortunately might make it look like Kai only falls in love with girls suffering from bullying (since his ex also suffered from bullying) and that he will break up with Uka until he finds another victim.

Don't get me wrong, I know it's not like this, I'm not villainizing him. I'm just saying they made him wrong, objectively speaking.

Acting was fine, it was clearly too soon for Raul to play a main role immediately but I thought he did great in the final scene, and Yoshikawa Ai clearly did too.

I haven't read the manga but I would for sure recommend it because this definitely was super rushed (understandably so, but with 2 hours of movie they could have developped the story more or made more changes to adapt it better into a movie).

The bonus scenes and the song at the end were amazing. Nice soundtracks during the movie too although they are very simple. I thought they fit to the whole vibe and aesthetic of the movie. Overall, it's a decent time pass movie.

Lots of flaws, but nonetheless, I had a good time watching it. 9/10 will be my subjective rating and 7/10 will be my objective rating.

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