Forum - View topicNEWS: Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 Manga Gets New Anime
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FishLion
 Posts: 65 |
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I think I need a good word for something that we don't have authorial intent for but the applicability is broad enough that a reader could certainly believe it was the authorial intent without background knowledge. I know I had several readings of Tolkien's work myself that I later learned clashed with his authorial intent, but I would have sworn he intended before learning otherwise. I feel like this is the case with Ranma, because allegories are rarely one-to-one (see X-men representing marginalized groups while hopefully not literally calling them mutants) you could say something like the hot water represents something metaphorical and thus how he feels exposed in his female form and with the proper methods can feel comfortable and masculine. That isn't necessarily how I would read it, but it is present enough in the series that without digging up the author's interviews I couldn't disprove that reading, I feel like there has to be a good term between allegory and applicability? Either way, thank you for pointing out allegory means authorial intent as opposed to a reading not based on intent. Also that is definitely the word but they get really silly when you call them that so I just call them silly so instead of complaining about my word choice they can address my arguments. @Fluwm See above for why I am probably reaching for a word I don't know, the metaphor that is beyond simply applicable but not intended by the author and therefore technically not allegory. @Piglet the Grate I am just aware of the same weird accusation people make that because some people have a queer reading of a story and want an actor that supports that reading (hopefully also because they are the best choice for the voice obviously) out of a pool of many capable actors, that other people are trying to force others into seeing it as a queer story. I don't think there's anything wrong with not reading any story as queer, but I do draw the line at people saying "because they don't shout THE CHARACTERS ARE QUEER any reading of them as queer is wrong" or implying that people are trying to get a queer VA just to "force" the character to be queer, when really it's easy to claim Ranma as subtextual queer rep even if it isn't the text of the story. I wasn't trying to backhandedly attack anyone here or read into what you said, I am just saying that if anyone thinks people calling for a trans person to voice a character is some plan to force others into accepting a queer reading then that is silly. To be fair, someone saying "A TRANS VA MADE THIS, RANMA IS LITERALLY TRANS IN TEXT OF THE STORY" would also be really silly. I am just calling for people to allow multiple readings to exist and accept that different readings of subtext can exist without attacking other people for wanting stuff that matches their reading. It really isn't any different from people arguing over who the best VA would be, but for some reason someone having a queer reading and wanting actors who are also queer (because in their mind someone who can best represent those transgender adjacent experiences is the right choice). It's kind of like when an actor researches for a role, but queer people have a unique perspective on body incongruence and they very well could bring something special with that depth of experience. A non-queer person could also be the better choice, I'm not sure because I like voice actors but am not good at imagining what else they would be skilled as so I will leave that to the casting director. Also as an aside, I am just gonna throw out that a lot of non-trans people playing trans roles have been disgusting. For example Jared Leto in Dallas Buyer's Club and Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry were both awful cases of having trans people be the center of the narrative with a really gross and misguided view of queer people. I don't think you have to be trans to play a trans character, but I do think that you at least need trans people consulting to make the experiences and portrayal realistic. This isn't related to Ranma, as I think their story is more of an extremely clear parallel than Ranma being trans, but since you said the best actor should have the role I do think that aspect is relevant. I do also think you are a bit confused regarding how these things work, because trans people and men/women are not mutually exclusive groups. A trans woman playing a woman is still a woman voice actress playing a woman. So people can call for only trans people to play trans roles and not be advocating for "discrimination against transgender VAs" so that "they were only allowed to voice transgender characters." When people do want trans characters by trans voice actors, it's usually because the current examples of trans characters are highly sensationalized and exaggerated when played by others so they just want a portrayal with an ounce of realism. The main point is, it makes sense queer fans might call for a trans VA because they think their experience will add to the role and not because "Ranma is trans so the VA must be trans" type of thinking. I'm not gonna be hurt if the director doesn't agree with that interpretation, especially considering how few trans VAs there are to my knowledge, but I'm also going to think it's silly if people start to say "they are trying to imagine Ranma as queer, where could they possibly have gotten that interpretation? I will also close by saying that while my original post was not trying to backhandedly target anyone, I read the rest of the thread after your comment and we already have someone else saying Ranma is "being co-opted for a political agenda" which again is pretty silly. Everyone reads personal meaning into art. Plenty of people see fictional characters going through and surviving loss and find catharsis from it, even if it doesn't directly match their experiences. People love to argue about who would be the best the best VA because they have strong opinions on the topic. Why is it an agenda when queer people read into the writing and relate their experiences and then want VAs that support that reading? If you had a dedicated cult following of a VA do the exact same thing no one would blink, but when queers do it it's because agendas. It's such a plain double standard to me, but then again there are also people that get upset at the idea of shipping because a romance between two characters not textually romantic goes so against their notions it feels like a betrayal, so clearly people look at inspired media and interpretations very differently. |
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FishLion
Posts: 65 |
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Then there's times authors could want to cover themselves from criticism. For example, Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge had a huge backlash for how gay it was that had the writer claiming the only gay subtext was supposed to be homophobic but the actors made it homoerotic and at the time. He could have been telling the truth, but that was after the huge backlash so we will never know for sure. Meanwhile many actors and the director said there was supposed to be sexual subtext, but not especially gay, and you also had a producer saying this
The movie is seen as a classic gay camp horror these days. You have a coach, spoiler[who the student runs into at a leather bar, end up levitating while he's whipped with animated towels,] which is all extremely gay. So is the backlash correct ( only in regards to the text being homoerotic, not correct as in it was right to have a homophobic backlash) or is the writer correct that is was meant to be homophobic, or is the director as the arbiter of the film the final word and it is not gay at all because he didn't think it was? With things that have a lot of producers like anime it can be so hard to know a single intent unless the director is very involved in keeping everyone on the same page. So coming back to Ranma, we only have one creator for the manga, our word of god there is Rumiko Takahashi. I saw one person quote her as "I don't think about it, and I don't think you should either" when I googled that there were no results except this forum and a goodreads review for an unrelated book, so take that with a grain of salt. Even with that as a starting point though, it is perfectly possible for a non-trans woman to write solely with the intention of "gender hijinks" and dig into trans experience. It isn't meant to be serious examination of personal gender exploration or even gender expectations, so if anyone is looking for some deep cross examination to make a point about society this isn't the best place, but it is still silly to think "How could someone imagine trans things here? He never found an endocrine specialist or took shots, he fell into a magic spring, so there's no way you could possibly interpret it that way or you are appropriating the original story to make your own." Her "not thinking about it too hard" means she's more likely to accidentally make it a story that relates to the trans experience, because apparently she didn't make it not to be that. So if the subject of the story is hijinks resulting from being a gender that doesn't match the body and it's not avoiding being trans specifically, it's actually way more logical to interpret the character as queer than not. Not that I think any one has to do that or not, but I do think claiming that people want to take over the story by having a perfectly logical explanation that doesn't go against authorial intent is getting into high key silly territory. Last edited by FishLion on Fri Jun 28, 2024 11:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Revolutionary
 Posts: 603 Location: New England |
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Very interesting. While I do find some of the sex-swapping humor to be funny, this series is quite dated. Especially the old guy. His behavior around not just women, but teenagers is absolutely disgusting. If he wasn't there, I would enjoy the series so much more. I enjoy the rest of the series... just not him.
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i got the shivers!
 Posts: 85 Location: Brazil |
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Can you really say it's dated if it's still a thing that's being done in manga almost 40 years later? I don't know how anyone can be a fan of Ranma if they have an issue with the way it deals with sex, gender, or teenage fanservice when that style of humor is the entire core of the series and makes up most of the humor. I figured this series would probably spark some controversy with modern American audiences but I didn't know it would be this bad. I wonder if the show will even be licensed in America at this point. |
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Gamen
Posts: 240 |
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I mean, Ayakashi Triangle did. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1412 |
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Mild criticism isn't a controversy and the show doesn't even exist yet. At least spare us all this bait until the remake's out. |
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funkfoot
Posts: 55 |
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Despite all the furor on social media with people calling Yamato in One Piece a trans man they still cast a woman for her voice in the English dub so I think any large or mainstream anime is going to focus on marketability and creator intention over scoring some brownie points with the online crowd. You might be able to get away with that in a niche production but anything mainstream or popular would probably have a lot of requirements set on it.
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Amritzer
Posts: 18 |
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Trans people should voice characters like Bon Clay, or Ivankov from One Piece.
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4948 |
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psh_fun
 Posts: 56 |
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I think anyone should be able to play anyone as long as they have the right voice for it. Despite the new Guilty Gear Strive game making Bridget transgender they still cast a woman for the role since they wanted the character to sound very girly and cute. Bon Clay and Ivankov have very silly, goofy, and masculine voices so they cast men for the roles. Voice acting is probably one of the hardest industries for transgender people because a lot of the treatments and surgeries can affect your voice. A lot of the ones I see on X talk about how they don't really get cast for non-trans roles because of the way their voice sounds and after they come out their roles are more limited or they still get cast for their original gender since their voice didn't change. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 643 Location: North America |
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I am not seeing the relevance of this contention to anything I wrote.
It is certainly easy to just make the claim that Ranma is a "subtextual queer rep", but many will disagree without a very convincing argument that is the case.
Fair enough, but I never made that contention.
I apply Kant's Categorical Imperative here, that the only moral rules are those applied universally, so it is morally inconsistent to require a transgender character to be only voiced by a transgender VA, and not similarly require a cisgender character to be only voiced by a cis VA. In addition, even if we believe a transgender character is better voiced by a transgender VA, that would come out in a blind audition that picked the best VA for the role.
This is the apparent source of the quote: https://www.furinkan.com/takahashi/takahashi92.html
If I were re-writing the story, Happosai would get run over by Truck-kun the first time he appears, since he is a contender for least likeable character in anime. |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 660 |
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Gotta say it’s pretty ballsy to attempt to pretend you’re providing proof when the actual link proved it has nothing to do with the claim “ What would happen if Ranma got pregnant? (“I don’t care to think about that, and you shouldn’t, either.”)” Also the mods have already edited your previous posts to stop using denigrating language so maybe take the hint and stop using it. |
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ThrowMeOut
Posts: 262 |
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Ranma 1/2 was one of the first series that really got me into manga and anime and I love it for that, yet I also hold the opinion that it's best left in the past. A lot of it hasn't aged great, and what has aged well has been ripped off, recycled and improved upon by other series, plus nothing can change that wet fart of an ending it has except a total rewrite.
But whatever. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4442 Location: New York |
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The big problem is ultimately the jokes run out of gas very quickly. Put aside all the gender stuff for now, take everything at face value. The jokes stop being funny early on because they keep getting repeated over and over. Even this website, when reviewing the original series, pointed out the main issue with later volumes was that it was just not funny. And for a comedy series, that is the biggest sin one can make. Now add how a lot of the slapstick is viewed more as obnoxious than endearing (Someone’s getting hit for a misunderstanding, AGAIN) and the ending which is the mother of all punch out endings, even more so than Yatsura. I mean, Yatsura’s ending sucks too, and Beautiful Dreamer was at its core, a scathing critique of Rumiko’s formula, but at least in-universe no one is happy with it. spoiler[Hence the anime movie ending with everyone ready to lynch Ataru]. Here’s it’s a punch out, but there’s no one ready to even be angry about it, everyone’s content to ride this train forever. It’s not funny, it’s not the least bit satisfying narratively, it’s just a joke long past its expiration date. |
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ThrowMeOut
Posts: 262 |
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Yeah Ms. Takahashi's endings are so notoriously terrible that I still remember being absolutely floored by Maison Ikkoku having a conclusive and satisfying ending. She can write a good ending when she cares to, wish she'd do it more often.
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