nights of Ramune opens gently, almost reverentially, on a
beautifully composed shot of a badly damaged female robot floating in outer
space. Limbless, seemingly lifeless, she only shows signs of consciousness
when a larger ship pulls carefully up and begins to retrieve her. She
protests weakly as she's dragged in.
It's a melancholy and touching opening for a series that almost
immediately shifts into hyper-titillation mode, with a nearly-naked woman
writhing in sexual ecstasy. Cacao is a Holy Virgin, a servant of the Third
Warrior, and she's a master of gathering and directing psychic energy that
can be used for everything from creating shields to predicting the future.
It's not clear why energy-gathering requires so much moaning and panting,
but hey, a Holy Virgin's gotta do what a Holy Virgin's gotta do.
In a series of unexplained plot shifts, Cacao is suddenly sent into
outer space with a less-accomplished (but more emotionally stable) Holy
Virgin partner, Parfait. The two of them have a mission to discover the
Fourth Warrior, Ramunes, who is somehow needed to save the galaxy.
Unfortunately, when they find him, he turns out to be an evil overlord who
obliterates planets in order to harvest orphaned children for
reasons that aren't quite clear. With his fleet of powerful ships and his stable of badly abused but
phenomenally endowed woman warriors, he seems unstoppable--and Parfait
and Cacao, though appalled by his actions, may be constrained to serve him,
according to the laws of their odd sect.
Sound confusing? Not surprising.
On the surface, Knights of Ramune is a bright shiny bouncy
eye-candy piece. On closer examination, it has the signposts of a serious
anime space opera: blasted planets, orphaned children, evil interstellar
overlords, psychic priestesses and giant fighting robots. For eye-candy, it
moves at a surprisingly sedate pace; for drama, it's garbled, glib, and
spattered with very weird comedy. With the patchy plot and the deranged
touches--particularly "Spiritual Advisor" PQ, a whiny, obnoxious pink
blob with enormous eyes--it's often not clear what the writer's intent is
or where the story is going.
Fortunately, something's capable of filling the gap: breasts. These two
episodes feature an unbelievable amount of nudity, primarily from women
that make Pamela Anderson Lee look like an eight-year-old. As with so many
other anime series, the oft-bared breasts aren't the main point; despite
the unusual number of sexual situations, this isn't meant as porn, it's
just trying to catch the eyes of boys who happen to like a lot of breasts
in their cluttered space/mecha/comedy melanges.
And they certainly are eye-catching, due to their size and
proliferation. But they're also frequently in the way of potentially
exciting scenes. Like the monumental space battle where an entire planet's
defense system is demolished by Ramunes' mecha fleet (captained by a woman with
enormous, nearly-bare breasts). Or the well-choreographed sequence where
Parfait (incidentally naked) tries to work out the controls on an
experimental mecha while in a messy combat situation. There's a lot going on here,
and it's frequently interesting, if badly organized. It's just frequently
left in the shadow--er, shadows--of a rather obsessive prurient
interest.
