Shoujo Ramune

Shoujo Ramune

Shoujo Ramune anime OVA cover art
Shoujo Ramune

OVA Overview

Shoujo Ramune (小女ラムネ) is a 4-episode slice of life anime OVA that released episodes between October 2016 and March 2018. The episodes average out to be 19 minutes each. But since they don’t have OPs, that evens out to about the same amount of content as your standard anime episode.

If you’re not already familiar with Shoujo Ramune, you might be familiar with a similar series, Non Non Biyori. Just like Non Non Biyori, Shoujo Ramune follows the daily lives of some elementary or middle school girls who live in middle-of-nowhere, Japan.

However, as an OVA, Shoujo Ramune is much smaller in scope. Maybe 90% of the OVA takes place at a small candy shop on a lonely stretch of road in the mountains. Basically, just imagine the candy shop from Non Non Biyori, but with a middle-aged man running it instead of a 20-something-year-old girl.

When you consider that this candy shop doesn’t seem to get any business besides the three main girls of the series, it’s hard to believe that it’s successful enough to stay open. And, it’s not even like these girls are big spenders. In the first episode, two of them share a single popsicle.

Anyway, the girls have a special relationship with the owner of the candy shop. Besides each other, he’s basically their only friend. They spend their free time hanging out around his shop and asking him for advice on anything from relationships to making it big as an idol.

In some senses, Shoujo Ramune is also like Mitsuboshi Colors. Both have 3 young girls and both have an older man who runs a store and entertains the girls. But the setting is completely different and Shoujo Ramune isn’t a comedy.

Characters

There are only five characters in Shoujo Ramune. So, let’s start this section by going over the main girls. They are Komako Semenovich, Chie Sayama, and Tenka Adachi. Of these three, Komako is easily my favorite both in terms of her character design and personality.

Komako has pale skin, white hair that’s put up into twin tails with pink ribbons, and blue eyes. She also wears a white dress. Her personality is very subdued and she speaks in a matter-of-fact way. And because she’s a bit shy, she has the shop owner give her advice on how to be noticed by her crush.

Komako, Chie, and Tenka from the anime OVA Shoujo Ramune
Komako, Chie, and Tenka

Chie wears a blue tank top and a yellow skirt. Her skin tone is on the tanner side and she has visible tan lines. She also has brown hair and brown eyes. Chie’s the most plain of the three personality-wise, but there’s still plenty of good Chie content.

Tenka has the most outgoing personality of the three. And this makes sense considering her dream is to become a popular idol. She has the candy shop owner help her develop an online presence to gain fans. As for her appearance, she has black hair and brown eyes and wears a purple shirt with a green tank top under it paired with purple shorts.

Kiyoshi Tachikawa is the candy shop owner. It’s unclear exactly how old he is, but I’m going to guess that he’s in his 40s because his hair seems to be going a bit grey. Apparently, he opened the candy shop after deciding he wanted to get away from city life.

The final character is Yuuko Sayama, Chie’s mother. Of the five characters, she’s the only one I’d call a supporting character. She also begins dating Kiyoshi partway through the OVA.

From Dreams to Reality

This is the part of the review that goes into spoiler territory. You see, each of the three girls has a dream that they want Kiyoshi to help them achieve. Komako wants her crush to reciprocate her feelings, Chie wants a father, and Tenka wants to become the greatest idol.

By the end of the 4 episodes, each of these girls had made major steps toward their dreams — with the help of Kiyoshi, of course. So, let’s start with Chie’s dream because it’s the one that Kiyoshi has the most direct impact on.

Early on, Chie mentions how she wishes Kiyoshi was her dad because she likes him. And as I mentioned, Kiyoshi does end up dating Chie’s mom later on. Once they start dating, he even tells Chie that she can call him her dad now, but she says that she’s going to keep calling him “old man” because that’s what she’s used to.

Tenka Adachi's idol debut from the anime OVA Shoujo Ramune
Tenka Adachi’s idol debut

Technically, by the end of the OVA, Kiyoshi isn’t Chie’s stepdad. So her dream wasn’t completely achieved. But, the same isn’t true for Komako. Her dream of having her crush reciprocate her feelings came true thanks to Kiyoshi’s advice. She got to spend one-on-one time with her crush during the summer festival.

Lastly, there’s Tenka’s dream of becoming an idol. While Kiyoshi did attempt to help Tenka grow an online audience, that’s not really how he helped her with her dream. Instead, he helped by giving her the confidence she needed to be able to get up on stage and perform in front of people.

Also, while Tenka doesn’t become a successful idol by the end of the OVA, she does make her debut in a small competition. And, of course, Chie, Komako, Kiyoshi, and Yuuko show up to support her.

Conclusion

Shoujo Ramune is a 7/10 from me. All three of the main girls are good, which is the thing that matters the most in an anime like this. There’s a lot of great content involving them, especially during the portions of the episodes that focus on each girl individually.

I also want to finish off this review with a fun fact that I learned while writing this. As you may know, ramune (ラムネ) from the title is a kind of lemon-flavored soda in Japan. Well, what I never put together is that ramune comes from the English word “lemonade.” The more you know.

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