The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Ranma ½

Ranma Saotome has just gotten back the legendary Cursed Springs (Jusenkyo) of China and has been engaged by his father and his best friend, Genma and Soun, to Akane Tendo, Soun's daughter. Ranma and Akane are off to a rough start and it doesn't help that Ranma has a curse from Jusenkyo: turning into a girl when splashed with cold water. Throughout the series, more characters are introduced, some with curses similiar to Ranma's, and Ranma and Akane begin to love each other, even though they refuse to admit it.

Ranma ½ is based on the manga series by Rumiko Takahashi. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.

Here's a shocking thing, despite voraciously watching every anime I could get my hands on when Ranma ½ was at its peak popularity in the US, I never actually watched it. I saw maybe the first episode or two but back then, what I wanted out of anime were complex, evolving stories—not comedies that preserved a status quo for a hundred or more episodes. All this is to say I lack the nostalgia goggles that many of my fellow reviewers have. So what's my verdict? It was way more entertaining than I expected.

It's hard for me not to like a kung-fu fight between a small girl and a panda—especially one that ends in WWE-style with the panda bashing the girl over the head with a street sign. If that isn't peak cinema, I don't know what is.

In general, this episode is a mix of comedy and character introduction. The personalities of the three daughters are plain to see through their actions—as is Ranma's when you consider that his father has to constantly beat his ass to keep him in line. Likewise, the love-hate relationship between Ranma and Akane works well. They each have their hang-ups but it's plain to everyone how well they fit together. After all, both have fiery tempers and want nothing more than to train and fight.

The show looks great as well. It's not afraid to change its animation style or color pallet on a whim. It's also true to its manga roots, going so far as to show the sound effect text on the screen—though I wonder how well that works for those who can't read Japanese.

Regardless, this is a fun first episode. I don't know if I'll become a regular watcher but I'll probably check out a few more episodes while new characters are still being thrown constantly into the mix. If nothing else, one thing is clear: Ranma ½ is a classic for a reason.

If you were looking for a newbie's perspective on Ranma ½… this won't be it. Not only was the series my gateway to anime and manga fandom beyond what was available on US TV 25 years ago, I completed a full rewatch of the TV series just weeks ago. I watched my dubbed VHS of the first two episodes so many times that I could practically recite the lines along with the characters, despite it probably being a good decade since I last watched it. This is the opposite of a newbie's perspective. I won't bore you with a walk down memory lane this time, but know this: MAPPA has adapted the first episode of Ranma ½ nearly shot-for-shot from the 80's version, albeit with a bit of extra sauce and 100% fewer nipples and, in one of the season's more puzzling choices, buttcrack.

It's actually a bit hard to discuss a series that's as embedded in my head as Ranma is—it's like trying to explain air. Air is a gas composed of several elements, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and vaporized water. Ranma ½ is a martial arts comedy about Ranma Saotome, a boy who turns into a girl when doused in cold water and turns back from hot water; his father is Genma, who turns into a panda; and his unwilling fiancée Akane Tendo. The humor of the first episode mostly revolves around this discomfort that arise around this situation—Ranma's horror at his new body, Akane's general dislike of men and her distrust of this new fiancé who has been thrust upon her, and Genma and Soun's general incompetence. I laughed at the same gags I always do—“There's a pervert in the bathroom!” always gets a chuckle out of me, and Ranma's rude comments about his female body's better proportions sets up that Ranma is as vain as he is arrogant. But I have no idea how this will come off to a newbie.

As mentioned, it's almost identical, down to most of the living voice cast reprising their roles. Megumi Hayashibara is basically replicating her first major role. But MAPPA has taken it upon themselves to toss in some stylistic flourishes compared to the original. This is mostly the addition of some on-screen text, especially for incidental sound effects, and some more exaggerated facial expressions. The animation is great, as expected for the studio, and I especially enjoyed the background art. On the other hand, some comic timing has been lost, which is a shame.

I'm sure some of you younger fans may be frustrated at a lack of newbie perspectives, but you have to understand – Ranma ½ was a generation-defining series for American anime fandom. It's practically encoded in the DNA of oldheads like us.

Fun Fact: As far as I can remember, Ranma ½ is likely the first manga I ever read. Now, we're going back around twenty years at that point, and I'm sure I randomly flipped through some of the first volumes of Pokémon that made their way stateside, but when I finally was old enough to start riding my bike to my local library on my own, Ranma ½ was one of the series they had a lot of copies of, so I started with Vol. 1 and just kept on reading. It's been long enough that I honestly don't remember much about the story or the characters outside of their basic setups. However, I can still recall the covers of those Viz English editions with vivid clarity.

The point is that the Nostalgia Goggles are fitting snuggly over my eyes with the premiere of this new Ranma ½ adaptation, folks. I'm not even about to apologize for it. For one, it helps that the vibrant and lively production from MAPPA is taking all of the right lessons from david production recent run with Urusei Yatsura, giving Ranma and Akane's misadventures all of the spark and vigor that story deserves. Something about Rumiko Takashi's work goes perfectly with the halftone flourishes and exaggerated sound-effect inserts. It genuinely feels like reading a comic strip that has come to life.

Also, let's be honest: Takahashi is one of the best to ever do it, and anyone with a penchant for the kinds of sassy rom-com adventures we used to get all of the time in the '80s and '90s will feel right at home watching what may be the peak of the genre. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of fun to be had in the more introspective and low-key romance stories we get these days, but if you can point me to a manga that does ever-so-slightly risqué madcap shenanigans better than Ranma ½…well, I'd probably ask you to for the title so I could immediately add it to my reading list, but you get the idea. The past thirty years have given us hundreds of would-be's and also-rans that would kill for a leading duo even half as funny and likable as Ranma and Akane, and most of those shows didn't even have the good sense to turn the main guy's shitty dad into a ridiculous giant panda.

At the end of the day, Ranma ½ only ever aspired to be one thing: Really, really entertaining. So far as I'm concerned, this new adaptation seems to understand that mission statement perfectly, and it is firing on all cylinders. Watch it if you like things that make you smile.

I have seen some baffling censorship decisions made over the years, but this new version of Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½ may take the cake. The nipples I was expecting to be taken out of the artwork because apparently that instantly takes something from nonsexual nudity to sexual nudity, but the butt cracks? Really? Was it so horrific that Ranma might poop in girl form? Are butts, which, like nipples, everyone has regardless of sex, truly that sexualized? Who is girl Ranma's butt hurting? This seems worth mentioning not only because it's frankly weird (and weird-looking) but also because the way Takahashi draws bodies has always been one of my favorite things about her art. Even if they aren't anatomically perfect, they're appealing, and this choice makes it very clear that no matter how many scenes are drawn straight from the manga and no matter how many cartoony sound effects they draw in, this is not the source material.

That said, it's still a decent adaptation. Like many others, Ranma ½ was my introduction to manga (and the only thing that got my youngest sister to read again after a “the dog dies” book at school), so it has a special place in my heart. The original anime does, too, and on the surface, this seems like an acceptable update. In part, that's because efforts are taken to ensure that it doesn't look updated: so far, no one has a smartphone, and Akane's school uniform retains the hemline of the 1980s. Genma even still sends Tenma a postcard and has a paperback book to guide him around Chinese training grounds. This is also important to the story because, in a world with the internet and social media, it would be very, very easy for Ranma and his dad to avoid the cursed springs at Jusenkyo, thus eradicating the plot's inciting incident.

Still, this doesn't quite capture the manic energy of the first anime, and that's not just because I miss the “Ya pa pa” song. Ranma here feels a bit more introspective, genuinely hurt by Akane's abrupt reversal when she finds out he's a boy, and Nabiki's snark isn't quite up to snuff, although that could simply be because the story's just starting. It's not a bad thing that Ranma has more emotional interiority; it was just a surprise, and that may turn out to be a good decision in the long run. It certainly will make it interesting once the cast begins expanding, and even though I don't love how the art tries so hard to look like an old-school comic book, I am curious about how this new version will proceed. I'll be curious to hear what people who never saw the original series feel about this, and for right now, I'm tentatively excited to see where this goes.