Ranma 1/2 (1989)
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 The idea of a boy that turn into a girl if he getting water on him was a unique idea.
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Ranma ½ (らんま½, Ranma Nibun-no-Ichi, pronounced Ranma One-Half in English) is a Japanese anime series based off the manga series of the same name by Rumiko Takahashi. The anime is composed of two separate series comissioned by Studio Deen which aired on Fuji TV from 1989 to 1992. The first, Ranma ½ (らんま½, Ranma Nibun-no-Ichi), aired for a single season of 18 episodes in 1989 before being cancelled due to low ratings. However, the series was quickly revived as Ranma ½ Nettōhen (らんま½熱闘編, Ranma Nibun-no-Ichi Nettō-hen) which ultimately had a longer and more successful run of 143 episodes that aired in six seasons from 1990 to 1992 before being cancelled as well. Following the second cancellation, a series of OVAs were produced in an effort to continue the series. Eleven OVA's were ultimately produced from 1993 to 1996. Twelve years later in 2008, a twelfth OVA was produced as part of the "It's a Rumic World Exhibition".
Why It Rocks
- As said in the infobox quote, the idea of a boy that turn into a girl if getting hit by water is a unique idea for the time, and this show had an excellent execution.
- The animation, especially in the later episodes, is really great and is one of the best from a late 80s show, as it was animated by Studio Deen who is responsible for having animated most of Ranma works, such as this show and the OVA's movie.
- The art style is also really good even for it's time, and is still one of the most iconic art style of it's time, despite that Ranma isn't really as popular as Dragon Ball Z or other animes like this.
- The animation in the later episodes is even better, since it get more fluids than before, and the colors palette as well as the art style improved even more.
- Great soundtrack in most of the episodes, most of the musics are based on chinese sounding musics and here it do a good job to replicate them, not to mention that some of the songs are hilarous to listen to, such as "You're so Uncute" (The song name, not the insult Ranma said to Akane).
- Great characters design that also look cute at times, such as both Ranma and Akane, or for most of the double sided characters.
- While it is mostly an action show, it is not without comedy, which is surprising great as with this anime, you will lauch a lot, and there's a lot of hilarous moments, or even some hilarous character designs (such as Ranma dad being a Panda), the humour is also mostly based on Japanese culture in some of the episode, even the moments where both Ranma and Akane being angry toward each other is funny to watch.
- All of the openings are pretty good, especially the second one, the animation in them is also great too and you can know some of the characters in the first opening.
- Great voice acting in both the sub and english dub, speaking of the english dub, it is probably one of the few animes to had dubs that is even better than the original Japanese version, much like the original Naruto anime French dub (though this depend on your taste).
- Lot of likable and great characters.
- Ranma Saotome
- Akane Tendo
- Shampoo
- Ukyo
- Ryoga
- Kasumi
- Genma
- Most of the tie-in video games are great, although some of them are pretty bad, here a list of good/decent games based on the franchise.
- Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle
- Ranma 1/2 (PC-Engine)
- Ranma ½: Chougi Rambuhen (Despite the framerate problem)
- Ranma ½: Akaneko-dan teki Hihou
- Ranma ½: Netsuretsu Kakutouhen
- The Ova's that got spawned are really good, though sadly some of them we're only released in Japan.
- The movies that we're released we're also great, and had even better animation than the show.
- The fight scenes are very good and had the best animation of the whole show, not to mention that some of the fight are also really memorable and you would refuse to even forget them, much like the fights of Yu Yu Hakusho.
Bad Qualities
- While most of the episodes are good, there's some bad episodes here and there, much like most of the shows that was released, such as:
- "Ranma, You Are Such A Jerk!": One of, if not the worst episode of the entire series, as well as having Akane at her absolute worst.
- "Bathhouse Battle! We're in Some Hot Water Now": One of the most infamous episode of the series due to the nudity.
- Unfortunately, the series didn't get to the ending of the original manga, which is quite dissapointing and this was a major reason of why this show got criticized for that problem, and it also ended the series on a cliffhanger, although we might have hopes because a remaster in 2024 is coming on Netflix and it could be a huge potential to end the series and probably make it even better than the original if so.
- The show isn't safe from unlikable characters, both good and bad ones:
- Akane, while not a terrible character and is actually decent, she can be very mean-spirited to Ranma as well as being angry at him for poor reasons, one time Ranma did take a bath first but Akane did enter but she seen Ranma naked, due to this, she got angry at Ranma because of being naked, she could have just knocked the door if someone was there, and none of this would happened. To make things worse, she calls Ranma a Pervert and then says that "it’s different when a girl sees a boy".
- Happosai is easily the worst character of the entire show, as he always steal woman lingeries, such as underwears, bra or even Bikini, which is already innapropriate for an anime aimed at childrens or even teens. He is also a immensly perverted master that is like Master Rochi from the Dragon Ball franchise, but not only that character was likable but also is a hero and a likable and hilarous character, but Happosai is instead a loathsome villain with nothing good to say about him except his martial arts skill.
- And if this wasn't enough, he was also the reason of why some of the episodes where he's in sucked or at least goes wrong.
- Sometime, the show can get mean-spirited to some characters, one exemple being to both Akane and Ranma.
- Some of the episodes are fillers, and there's a lot of them in season 3, in which that season was one of the worst season of the show because of this, even if that season had some good episodes.
- The French dub, while still good, had some names change, such as Akane renamed as Adeline, or Shampoo being named as Bambou, though fortunately, the remake will keep the original characters names as seen in the trailer for it.
- It doesn't help that some of the dialogues are poorly translated from the original Japanese version, though it isn't as bad as in the French dub of Fist of the North Star though.
Reception
Despite receiving low rating in 1989, the show is positively received by fans and critics who praised the show art style, the soundtrack and the fight scenes but criticized some of the characters, especially Happosai and sometime Akane for being mean to Ranma.
The series would spawn movies, video games and even a remake in 2024 on Netflix.
Trivia
- According to Toshifumi Yoshida, the English dub scripts took around two weeks to a month to write before the ADR recording began. The ADR recording took about a week to two weeks. Then the post production work took a month or more, depending if some lines need to be re-recorded or not.
- Due to the negative backlash towards the English dub, Brigitta Dau was fired after playing the voice of female Ranma for the first six episodes of the TV series and the first two episodes of the OAV series. Since then, Venus Terzo has taken that role, resulting in a much improved English dub.
- Manga creator Rumiko Takahashi derived Ranma's name from the Japanese expression "kaitô ranma" which means "solving a problem swiftly and skillfully". She based it from that phrase because she was having difficulty thinking up a name for him.
- Rumiko Takahashi was originally going to have the characters "change" whenever they were hit or punched, but changed it to hot/cold water when she realized the characters would change every few seconds during a fight scene
- Prior to inheriting the role as the voice of Female Ranma, Megumi Hayashibara originally audition for the role of Akane Tendo.
- In the opening theme animation, several characters from the series appear but their hair colors differ from how they appear in the series itself, such as Shampoo having green hair instead of blue and Kodachi Kuno's hair being several shades lighter.
- Azusa Shiratori, Mikado Sanzenin and Cologne briefly appear during the opening theme animation in the first season, but none of them appeared in any of the episodes of this season. They do however make their animation debuts in the follow up series.
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