Furious at the insult, Princess Flora then drops the ring holding her gemstone into a cooked fish and throws it out the window, to the shock of everyone present.

Honey proceeds to tell the handsome jewel thief the story of how she was orphaned and brought up in a convent, and of how she befriended Lily, who, like her, was abandoned.

Phoenix then tries to persuade Honey to sell Lily to him, but Honey, who is still unaware that Lily has swallowed the princess's ring, furiously refuses (after driving Phoenix's initial offer of a million dollars up to ten million dollars, and then coming to her senses) and immediately flees.

Honey and Lily hide in the basket of a hot-air balloon, which soon lifts off with Phoenix and Princess Flora's suitors still in hot pursuit.

When she was captured by a nomadic people, who force young women to walk bare feet over a pit of hot coals to see if any one of them have revealed a tattoo of a rose on her foot, Honey Honey turned out to have that tattoo that they were searching for so long.

Masaki Tsuji, previously a writer for the unrelated Cutie Honey and numerous other works (anime and otherwise), was the series' head writer, and Takeshi Shirado, a Toei veteran whose credits included Cutie Honey, Mazinger Z, Devilman and Space Battleship Yamato, served as series director.

The anime aired in the same Saturday-evening time slot as several popular Super Sentai shows, and achieved low ratings as a result; thus, the series was canceled early, and several manga storylines, including one in which Honey Honey visits Hollywood, did not appear in the anime.

However, the TV series would later achieve a fair amount of success in Europe and Latin America (although many of the character names were changed in the non-English dubs; i.e., Honey Honey is Pollen in French, Fiorellino in the first Italian dub, Favos de Mel in Portuguese, and Silvia in Spanish).

Dubbed into English by Sound International Corporation, with distribution by Modern Programs International, the anime series aired, uncut, in the United States on the CBN Cable Network (later known as The Family Channel) in 1984 and was also partially released on home video by Sony.