Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2020
- Messages
- 66
This story really lives up to its title: artificial yet refreshingly sweet, and definitely could give you diabetes if consumed without moderation.
HLS is essentially a character-driven story. Both leads are great and definitely better than the regular shojo manga leads. The author utilized a lot of cliche and shoujo tropes, but managed to keep the whole thing fresh with deviations that are very in character. One thing that certainly stood out is how both leads character growth are handled. They matured greatly through out the course of the story. The way their relationship develop is, while surely filled dramatic moments at times (duh, it's a manga), really steady. The conflict doesn't drags out more than necessary and the way they resolves them are quite mature (they are pretty open about their feelings). They learn a lot from one another and actually push each other to be the best version of themselves. Truly one of my favourite pairing in the
One thing that rubs me the wrong way is how the author handled side characters. I mean, most of them does not get proper introduction, even tho they appear quite a lot through out the story. Because of that, I sometimes don't even know a character name for 10+ chapter and only finding out through a brief mention in the end of the arc or something. It could be very confusing, especially when the only thing you could use to tell them apart is their hairstyles.
On the other end of the spectrum, there exist characters who actually got introduced properly (and seems like an important character), but ended up rarely making small appearances here and there. So yeah, still a bit confused about this.
TL;DR HLS is certainly worth reading, especially if you are a fan of shoujo manga. It's sweet and refreshing, just like a honey lemon soda. 9/10.
HLS is essentially a character-driven story. Both leads are great and definitely better than the regular shojo manga leads. The author utilized a lot of cliche and shoujo tropes, but managed to keep the whole thing fresh with deviations that are very in character. One thing that certainly stood out is how both leads character growth are handled. They matured greatly through out the course of the story. The way their relationship develop is, while surely filled dramatic moments at times (duh, it's a manga), really steady. The conflict doesn't drags out more than necessary and the way they resolves them are quite mature (they are pretty open about their feelings). They learn a lot from one another and actually push each other to be the best version of themselves. Truly one of my favourite pairing in the
One thing that rubs me the wrong way is how the author handled side characters. I mean, most of them does not get proper introduction, even tho they appear quite a lot through out the story. Because of that, I sometimes don't even know a character name for 10+ chapter and only finding out through a brief mention in the end of the arc or something. It could be very confusing, especially when the only thing you could use to tell them apart is their hairstyles.
On the other end of the spectrum, there exist characters who actually got introduced properly (and seems like an important character), but ended up rarely making small appearances here and there. So yeah, still a bit confused about this.
TL;DR HLS is certainly worth reading, especially if you are a fan of shoujo manga. It's sweet and refreshing, just like a honey lemon soda. 9/10.
