Title: Honey Lemon Soda Vol. 10
Author: Mayu Murata
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance
Publication Date: September 23, 2025
The Story
We open up with resolving the mystery behind Iwakawa and why she was hanging around Ishimori so much. Kai wanted to intervene; however, Ishimori was able to handle it all by herself. After everything was revealed, Kai was proud of the fact that she didn’t need him to come running, but he confessed that he had already figured everything out. He even apologized to Ishimori for remaining in “stand-by-and-wait” mode for too long, but it was comforting to him to know that she was able to handle things herself.
Once everything had settled, Iwakawa ended up cutting her hair and changing up her looks. We shift our focus shortly after to Kai and Ishimori going on a date. While Kai says that they are going to an arcade because Ishimori refers to it as an amusement park, they end up going to an actual amusement park instead. There, she gets a cute little bear couple for them, almost gets sick on the rollercoaster, and wants to ride the teacups. It’s a typical warm and fuzzy date, but all of this precedes the school camping trip.
While there, we get some of the typical antics that one would expect from a school camping trip (including a confession for one of our side characters… won’t spoil who, though!) Iwakawa gets a bit of development here as she begins to show her true self a bit more. With all of the young love floating around, Ishimori decides to say something that she has always wanted to… so she approaches Kai, and this is where our volume ends.
Characters
Our main focus was on Iwakara and who she truly is, why she was targeting Ishimori, and what she thought about Kai as a whole. While I don’t want to spoil it, it was… well… a bit of a letdown, and I’ll leave it at that… or until I get to the Final Thoughts section, where I attempt to dance around it some more without blowing major spoilers. Wish me luck there.
Kai and Ishimori received some nice development in the sense that their relationship is finally starting to become more normalized. Going on the date to the amusement park was a nice touch, and with Kai trusting her more and more, you could kind of see the callback to when Ishimori was scared because she thought that once she could stand on her own two feet, Kai would move on to someone else, but this volume erases that completely as it is pretty concrete now that Kai is dedicated to Ishimori and Ishimori alone. He even opens up a bit during the camping trip and boldly claims in front of everyone that Ishimori’s body type is his type as well! A little awkward to proclaim that in front of so many people, but that fits Kai’s personality quite well. Of course, they do share some more tender moments together, which shows that Ishimori has nothing to worry about when it comes to dating him!
Final Thoughts
Well, I was correct that we were going to get Iwakawa’s story in this volume, but I’m sad to say that it was quite the letdown. I was hoping for a deeper, perhaps psychotic reason to explain the way that she had been acting, but when it was finally revealed, the punch just wasn’t there. In fact, it felt a bit too sappy and run-of-the-mill. Plus, she was just introduced in the previous volume, and not even a total of five chapters later, her arc, essentially, came to an end. It felt like a complete rush job without much thought put into it. It was as if Mayu Murata decided to add a character, give her a couple of chapters of interesting stuff, then wrap it up with a boring explanation for it all, then stick the character on the back burner.
While Iwakawa didn’t completely end up on the back burner, you can tell that her importance significantly dwindled after everything got settled. There could have been something truly special here, but all we got was a quick and forgettable side arc that didn’t truly go anywhere, nor did it have any lasting effects on the series. It kind of makes me wonder what the point of it was outside of potentially using it as a way to artificially extend the series. Like, where does Iwakawa even go from here? Are there any arcs planned that will put the spotlight back on her? It seems we already shifted back to Kai x Ishimori with zero indication of anything to come. Even this volume’s ending wasn’t a cliffhanger.
Granted, the ending was a pretty feel-good moment, but there’s nothing that makes me say “Wow, I can’t wait until Volume 11!” I have no idea what’s coming next, which means we’re probably going to get filler next time around, or we’re going to get another contrived plot to add unnecessary drama to the series. Either way, the romantic stuff here between Kai and Ishimori was cute and heartwarming. It was truly nice to see their relationship build a stronger foundation, but the entire wasted potential with Iwakawa really hurt my overall enjoyment of this one. Hopefully, we can do better next time.
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This item was purchased for review.
