Knights of Ramune (also known as V.S. Knight Lamune & 40 Fresh) is indeed an anime with a story line. I'm sure of it. There has got to be one in here somewhere!

The main characters are Cacao, the well endowed lady with long blue hair, and Parfait, the slightly less endowed lady with short red hair. Oh, and jut so we're clear, I'm not mentioning how endowed they are due to my own personal observations, but because this anime makes a point of mentioning it several times. But I digress. Anyway, they have been good friends since childhood. Cacao is a "Holy Virgin" who possess magical powers. Parfait, who is away on a training mission when we first meet her, is summoned back to the temple where Cacao and the other Holy Virgins are, and thinks that she will finally be able to join them.

That's not the case, however, as our two heroines are instead given a task to rescue the 4th Warrior in outer space. At this point, we're not really told anything about who this Warrior is, or what the significance is behind him being the 4th, but they all seem to think that this is pretty important business, so whatever.

They won't be going alone, however, as they are joined by PQ, a smart mouthed round... uh... thing, who had been accompanying Parfait on her training. I think it's supposed to be a robot...? Whatever. PQ absolutely defies qualitative description, so I'll just put these pictures up and leave it at that.

In space they find this bad ass dude who had been kidnapping children from different planets. The two ladies rescue them and send them on their way in escape pods, but this one yellow haired orphan girl, named Lemon, decides she'd rather hang out with her two new big sisters instead. There's something a little creepy when this little girl character is put into the same equation as these two hot babes. What kind of show is this?

Suddenly there's a huge space war and they all wind up inside a GIANT ROBOT! Yaaaaaaah! Bet you didn't see that coming! As the robot plummets onto a nearby planet, the enemy forces attack to get their robot back. Luckily the girls stumble upon some rudimentary controls to fight back and use Holy Magic to land safely, but are unable to find the robot's cockpit.

Parfait does find a bath though. At least, she thinks it's a bath. When enemy controlled robots attack again, Parfait finds that she can actually control the robot while in the bath. Turns out that's not a bath after all, it's the cockpit! You know what that means?

NAKED ROBOT PILOTING!

Yep, to make the robot unleash its full potential, Parfait has to get naked.

Now, before everyone gets all uptight and starts throwing around the big "H" word, let me clarify something. Yes, this anime features a lot of gratuitous fanservice and nudity. But it's not *that* bad. It never takes things too far. It's not what I would call tasteful, but it's tounge-in-cheeck enough to be funny. There are some heavier, uncomfortable moments where the villian character abuses his female subordanents, so that may be a problem for some people, but other than that the show is mostly light-hearted fair that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Woah! What's going on here? Ahh, don't get too excited. It's not what it looks like. Well, not really, anyway.

Since the show is pretty much just an excuse to throw some eye candy at the fanboys, it helps that it's a well drawn show with decent animation. Expressions are especially well done here and make it fun to watch. The colours are very bright as opposed to having a muted pallet like other shows do, and (fanservice notwithstanding) the show is drawn in a shiny style that I find very appealing. There was some interesting use of shadow with stark graphic black areas. There is some very basic looking CGI that is laughable by today's standards, but was probably something special back when this show first came out. All in all, it's nice to look at for reasons beyond the obvious, at the very least.

That all said, yes, there is an actual plot to this show that will unfold as you watch all the episodes. It can get confusing and convoluted, but it's still there! And I suppose it's pretty interesting too. However, just so everyone knows what you're getting into here, when you get right down to it, Knights of Ramune is really all about this:

The Disk:

Originally released in Japan in 1997, the Knights of Ramune DVD features a transfer that has the slightly jittering screen feeling typical of anime from before everything was completely digital. The image is not going to be as clear and sharp as most recent anime DVD releases, but it's not terrible by any means.

The English dub ranges from not completely terrible at best to pretty darn bad its absolute at worst. I think they pronounce a few things wrong too. Lemon's voice sounds very fake, like it was pitched up digitally. There are a few cringe worthy moments where the performance seems very unnatural, but it's not like the material they had to work with was Shakespeare or anything like that. If you're really uptight about this sort of thing, you might as well stick to watching it in Japanese with English subtitles. But since Knights of Ramune is such a silly show anyway, perhaps watching the English dubbed version will just add to the fun.

Also on the disk are some character profiles, which feature video clips for 6 of the series main character's most defining moments. If you have a DVD drive on your computer, you can access some character sketches, an art gallery, and some other stuff that doesn't really matter but is nice to have anyway. Naturally, there is an assortment of trailers for other shows on this disk as well.

The disk's most appealing feature (again, fanservice notwithstanding) is that you've got 3 hours worth of anime on here! This is the complete series of 6 episodes, and it's all available at a surprisingly inexpensive price. Even if you don't end up liking the show that much, you still can't beat that deal!

Conclusion: I suppose I could write up some grand statement telling you if you should buy Knights of Ramune or not. I could talk about how the animation is pretty good. I could talk about how the character designs are very well realized. I could talk about how the show has got style with great use of colour. I could talk about how the personalities of the Holy Virgins are at least somewhat interesting. I could talk about how, despite first appearances, this show is not just all fluff and there is an actual story that you probably could follow and piece together until it makes sense should you choose to do so. I could even talk about the quantity of animation you're getting for the money you're spending. But, even though there is much more to the show than meets the eye, let's not kid ourselves here. It's a dark, outer space adventure story overflowing with silly fanservice, innuendo, and jiggle.

So, putting everything else aside, how much you will enjoy Knights of Ramune ultimately hinges on your how much you enjoy looking at this:

So, I gotta tell ya, from a personal standpoint, it's not too bad! I can tolerate that!

Sayonara.

W A R N I N G !

This article contained JIGGLE and was not meant to be read by kiddies who could be scarred for life now.
If you were offended by this article then you really shouldn't have read it in the first place, stupid.
If you complain about it then I will make fun of you. Ok?