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EP. REVIEW: Ranma ½


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tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 2172
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 11:41 am Reply with quote
The review makes it sound the writer is stressed about something but the score is quite. I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno. Takahashi said she only wrote the manga as a comedy when questioned about the possibility of Ranma becoming pregnant. It reminds of Kiruko from Heavenly Delusion who suffers an identity crisis over their gender as Ishiguro wanted to write a serious story about genderswap yet the character of Maru claims he loves Kiruko regardless of gender
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 12:51 pm Reply with quote
tintor2 wrote:
The review makes it sound the writer is stressed about something but the score is quite.


I wrote it on four hours of sleep, which may have been the cause of the strangeness in the tone.

Quote:
I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno. Takahashi said she only wrote the manga as a comedy when questioned about the possibility of Ranma becoming pregnant.


Going to need to see a source on that Takahashi quote.
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Shenl742



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1525
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 12:59 pm Reply with quote
To get it out of the way, I don't know what Takahashi herself said about whether or not Ranma could get pregnant...but she definitely addressed that it was possible in the series itself!

In the (manga-only) Musk Dynasty arc, the titular antagonists are descendants of people who would throw animals into the drowned girl spring, use a magical bucket to "lock" them into their cursed forms, and then mate with them so their children get superpowers.

So yes, under certain conditions, it IS possible for Ranma to get pregnant!
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Nigel Planter



Joined: 09 Jan 2023
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Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:10 pm Reply with quote
This site goes into detail on the pregnant quote: https://www.furinkan.com/features/articles/pregnant.html

tl;dr Trish Ledoux, the English translator of the Ranma 1/2 anime asked Takahashi about it at dinner once and she said the thing but it was an off-the-cuff question in private so the actual "canon" of it being true could be debated.

...I suppose it's too late and too futile to ask people not to be weird with this series?
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:11 pm Reply with quote
Nigel Planter wrote:
This site goes into detail on the pregnant quote: https://www.furinkan.com/features/articles/pregnant.html

tl;dr Trish Ledoux, the English translator of the Ranma 1/2 anime asked Takahashi about it at dinner once and she said the thing but it was an off-the-cuff question in private so the actual "canon" of it being true could be debated.

...I suppose it's too late and too futile to ask people not to be weird with this series?


I'll be honest, my first thought was, "Are we starting this already?"
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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 798
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:11 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
tintor2 wrote:
I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno. Takahashi said she only wrote the manga as a comedy when questioned about the possibility of Ranma becoming pregnant.


Going to need to see a source on that Takahashi quote.

I remember an interview with her in an early to mid 90s issue of Animerica where she said that you're not supposed to think too deply about Ranma getting pregrant, or something similar. Can't say which number of Animerica it was right now, though.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:15 pm Reply with quote
Swissman wrote:
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
tintor2 wrote:
I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno. Takahashi said she only wrote the manga as a comedy when questioned about the possibility of Ranma becoming pregnant.


Going to need to see a source on that Takahashi quote.

I remember an interview with her in an early to mid 90s issue of Animerica where she said that you're not supposed to think too deply about Ranma getting pregrant, or something similar. Can't say which number of Animerica it was right now, though.


That was an off-the-cuff comment made jokingly to Trish Ledoux, a member of Viz's translation team.
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jmckenna15



Joined: 23 Sep 2020
Posts: 147
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:29 pm Reply with quote
From the review:

Quote:
It's a watershed series, not just for anime and manga fandom as a whole, but for people who learned some things about themselves from being exposed to a story with a more flexible approach to what it means to be a boy vs a girl.


This could be the same problem that Urusei Yatsura had. Both works by the same mangaka, both were watershed anime for their time and gained legions of new fans for what was then some pretty new -- and at times revolutionary -- themes. But here we are 40 years later, with both stories inspiring dozens, if not hundreds, of other authors to do their own stories with that influence guiding them that the re-makes might not rise above being an appreciation for anime history or nostalgic oldheads seeing a beloved property from their youth getting a nice new coat of paint.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Urusei Yatsura, and the cartoonishness that David Production did with it was pretty funny. But I couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of the jokes were repetitive or had been done better elsewhere. Revolutionary stuff can't really be repeated. Then it's not revolutionary, it's just the new normal.
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jmckenna15



Joined: 23 Sep 2020
Posts: 147
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:31 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:


I'll be honest, my first thought was, "Are we starting this already?"


Honestly my first thought was "it really took us 2 whole episodes before this came up?"
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LinkTSwordmaster



Joined: 23 Dec 2005
Posts: 561
Location: PA / USA
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 2:03 pm Reply with quote
The initial episode felt perfect on every level, the second episode was fun, but I felt it didn't keep with the zippy pace of the first. Thinking back on my time with the manga, I'm not sure I had a ton of fun in general with the school characters, so it's probably more a personal taste thing.

Overall, it feels like it's a really great time to show off Ranma to friends in 2024 - both episodes so far exist in parity with what I'd seen in my head while I was reading it originally, and I'm definitely looking forward to them taking their time and giving what will hopefully be a full+accurate translation of all of Ranma's various volumes.
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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 798
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 2:45 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
Swissman wrote:
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
tintor2 wrote:
I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno. Takahashi said she only wrote the manga as a comedy when questioned about the possibility of Ranma becoming pregnant.


Going to need to see a source on that Takahashi quote.

I remember an interview with her in an early to mid 90s issue of Animerica where she said that you're not supposed to think too deply about Ranma getting pregrant, or something similar. Can't say which number of Animerica it was right now, though.


That was an off-the-cuff comment made jokingly to Trish Ledoux, a member of Viz's translation team.

Quite possibly, I'm not debating that, but you asked for a quote, I responded.
Coincidentally Nigel Planter's link was posted just one minute before my posting:

Quote:
So, after tons of scouring, we tracked the original source to an editorial in Animerica Volume 2 Number 9 in which Trish Ledoux recounts asking Takahashi the question and "I don't think about that and you shouldn't either" being the answer.


So I remembered it right, it originally appeared in Animerica. My memory didn't fail me this time, after 30 years.
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Piglet the Grate



Joined: 25 May 2021
Posts: 799
Location: North America
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 6:24 pm Reply with quote
Biggest change I noted was in a character design.

My $0.02 - Akane has gone from being somewhat odd looking and "uncute" in the original anime to being cute in the remake.
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Varkias



Joined: 20 Oct 2010
Posts: 33
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 6:42 pm Reply with quote
I somehow entirely missed this new character that narrates what's happening on screen in the second episode. Anime dazed
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 5245
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 7:05 pm Reply with quote
tintor2 wrote:
The review makes it sound the writer is stressed about something but the score is quite. I thought people would be angry by the gender themes with Ranma's gender being used to create several jokes just like what happened to Kuno.
The notion that Ranma would be wildly offensive to casual American fans has only existed in the minds of weebs that are always stirring up fake controversies when Ranma has been wildly popular with trans fans for years as a series that was awakening for a lot of queer anime fans. I've seen more handwringing from horny cis straight fanboys how they can't see Ranma's nipples anymore than anything about the gender stuff.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4555
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Tue Oct 15, 2024 7:40 pm Reply with quote
Swissman wrote:
I remember an interview with her in an early to mid 90s issue of Animerica where she said that you're not supposed to think too deply about Ranma getting pregrant, or something similar. Can't say which number of Animerica it was right now, though.


I don't have the issue but I have a book from 1997, Anime Interviews: The First Five Years of Animerica Anime & Manga Monthly (1992-1997) edited by Trish Ledoux and published by Cadence Books, a division of Viz Communications, which has a 1993 interview with Rumiko Takahashi conducted by Seiji Horibuchi. Unless they edited it out of the book reprint of the Animerica interview, the Ranma pregnancy question doesn't come up and wouldn't really fit the friendly-but-professional tone of the interview.

EDIT: Nevermind, I missed the sub-reply later on that said it was from an editorial, not the interview itself.
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