A youth growing up on a desert planet is suddenly swept into conflicts between rebels and the galactic empire. Star Wars Episode VI? Well close. Replace the callow Jedi-in-waiting with an innocent to the point of utter cluelessness, flightless Superman named Photon Earth, Darth Vader with the absurdly named, absurdly vain, lust-driven Papacharino Nanadan, and conflate the plot functions of Princess Leah and her two droids into a hot anime babe, Keyne Aqua, who spends an amazing proportion of her screen-time naked, instead of The Force, the power of Aho,* and you get an idea of Photon--Star Wars redone as an ecchi comedy.

Of course, there are sterotypic elements befitting a sex comedy--a rival to Keyne (who also fulfills the plot function of Uncle Owen's vaporator field in Star Wars), an episode set at a hot-spring resort, and lots and lots of nudity, with really funny censorship of male characters by floating black dots covering strategic parts--though in one bathing scene we catch a glimpse of Photon's manhood (boyhood?). And the galactic emperor is more loathsome than Palpatine in a way fitting the ecchi nature of the series. (One scene involving the Emperor stray close to, and maybe over the line between ecchi and hentai.)

A very funny six episode OVA complete with exaggerated facial expressions, ridiculous plot devices, an air of absurdity created by Photon and Keyne's rival Aun being drawn in a much less realistic style than Keyne and the other characters, and a villain about as successful as Wiley Coyote.

The whole bloody review is a parental warning. Besides full-frontal nudity, sexual situations (nothing explicit), there is lots of coyote-and-roadrunner style violence--well, mostly: in Photon people (mostly Papacharino Nanadan) bleed profusely, though they seem no more the worse for it than old Wiley is after being blown up or crushed.

So, is it 13 and up, or not suitable for any viewers under 18? Well, it feels like a PG-13 sex comedy, but done with the more lax Japanese attitude toward nudity.

* Aho means idiot or fool, but is left untranslated in the subtitles. It is one of two words for idiot that figure prominently in the series. Aun writes the other--baka--on Photon's forehead at one point, and after discovering this, on a whim he in turn writes it on Keyne's forehead, thereby, inadvertently marrying her according to the customs in the galactic center. Hence, the English subtitle: the Idiot Adventures.

Ratings (out of 5, 1 being worst, 5 being best)