Pictured above: a ridiculously small percentage of the Ranma 1/2 cast, fulfilling the rule that a Takahashi manga has to have more characters than Game of Thrones. |
There are few series
that invoke a deep sense of fan-based nostalgia as Ranma ½, which
could have easily gone down in history as Rumiko Takahashi's most
popular and beloved series until Inuyasha came along and knocked it
off its throne. It also helps that while Ranma and Inuyasha are both
wacky fantasy-based romantic hijink programs, Inuyasha benefited from
being more accessible to U.S. fans, airing on American TV, and
appealing to young female viewers with its telenovela romance of
Inuyasha and Kagome.
Ranma, however, is
special and always will be to me. When I think Ranma, I think about
renting the first VHS of Ranma 1/2's anime from the local
Blockbuster, then watching it in my mom's room on her tiny television
set and watching the martial arts madness fly across the screen. I
never actually finished the anime – a lot of episodes plus films
and movies made it a hard project to complete when the Blockbusters
doesn't keep new tapes in stock – but I still have a great fondness
for the animation and the opening/ending themes, which have become
iconic in their own right.
God bless whoever uploaded their own pic of the Ranma VHS to Amazon. |
(Ranma, somehow, was
not the silliest anime I managed to rent at that time; I somehow got
my hands on such series as Birdy the Mighty and Oh My Goddess' OVA
and Devil Hunter Yohko. It's probably for the best that I always
watched them when my parents were at work during the summer –
especially with Yohko!)
Beyond the warped
VHS haze of memory, I can recall reading a bit of Ranma in
practically every format Viz Media made it available in: individual
issues, un-flipped and flipped graphic novels, and now the 2-in-1
omnibus re-releases. As I reread the series via the omnibus releases,
I can feel my subconscious slip back into what was once my
neighborhood comic shop, where I gobbled up issues of Sailor Moon and
Gundam Wing and Card Captor Sakura and Oh My Goddess and Princess
Prince and yes, Ranma ½.
Reading Ranma, in
retrospect, reminds me a lot of another manga-ka who I've recent more
recently and is actually tied in real life to Rumiko Takahashi's work
– and that is Mitsuru Adachi, author of such works as Touch and
Cross Game. The first two volumes of Ranma definitely feel like
Adachi and Takashi at the very least talked shop about the story
while working on their respective series. It has heavy shades of
Adachi's balancing act of slapstick humor and heartfelt character
moments, punctuated by hilarious facial expressions and visual gags.
Of course, Ranma ½
by its very nature tips it over into Rumic World territory. Adachi's
series are very much centered in reality as they are mostly
sports/rom-com manga. Takahashi's work past Maison Ikkoku are very
much centered in fantasy and speculative fiction. The basis of Ranma
Saotome's world is one in which people can become cursed to change
bodies based on the temperature of water splashed on them and a young
woman can beat up thirty men before class without breaking a sweat
and people fight each other with ribbons and weighted umbrellas and
signs but can't somehow figure out how to tell another person that
they like them.
How can you tell
when a manga fan got into the whole scene exactly? Other than asking
them directly? Ask them what was their first Rumiko Takahashi manga.
Older fans who remember buying manga one chapter at a time or
serialized in magazines, post-Barnes and Noble, will say Maison
Ikkoku. College-age fans might say Ranma ½, when graphic novels
really started blowing up and manga showed up in more stores. Younger
fans will say Inuyasha, back when Adult Swim showed anime at night
and men in silver wigs and red hakama dominated convention floors.
Now, our youngest fans will most likely say Rinne, although the
prevalent popularity of Inuyasha (and the fact that Toonami has been
airing the last season, finally)
will skew that answer 50/50. It's not a perfect method, but I imagine
most of the time, it won't lead your wrong.
There's
a fear about revisiting old favorites. You imagine that after so many
years, even nostalgia can't save a pile of crap. Ranma ½, however,
is just as ridiculous, fast-paced, and entertaining now as it was
when I was in grade school. I still laughed aloud at many sections,
from the dangerous hands of Doctor Tofu to Ryoga's wandering ways to
the Akane/Ranma banter and all of the martial arts stuff that makes
me wonder when the hell learning is supposed to happen at this school
if everyone keeps beating up everyone else.
I
literally cheered when Ryoga turned pig as well as soon after when
Kodachi the Black Rose blew into the scene as dramatically she does,
because they were markers I remembered of some of my favorite
characters from the series. Yes,
Kodachi! I've been trying to covet her infamous 'oh ho ho' laugh pose
and style since almost 1999.
Maybe someday, I will be on Kodachi's level of pose game and overall
HBIC status.
I
should probably denounce some part of Ranma ½ for not being as
progressive or thoughtful on societal issues as newer manga are, but
bugger that. I don't see Ranma ½ as aiming to invoke a conversation
on anything meaningful. The main character changes into a girl's body
when it rains and his dad turns into a panda and
there is Tatewaki Kuno who is, well, Kuno, and all the people Ranma
has to fight on a regular basis because he's engaged to a girl who
can't stand him – what is there to be serious about? Everything is
too busy being silly to be meaningful, and that's how I like it.
My
current project is now rereading the entirety of Ranma ½. If
revisiting the rest of the series is like the first two books, it
should be the most fun I have reading this year.
I
really have no excuse for the soft porn fighting and fanservice
series Devil Hunter Yohko though. I should have had our Blockbuster
card taken away for renting that.
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