Ranma ½

Episode 6

So here we are at the midpoint of the fall season. There haven't been any announcements about how long Ranma ½ is supposed to run, but I can make some guesses about what's to come based on my knowledge of the material and context clues. I think it's safe to say this version will be skipping over the anime-only episode about Dr. Tofu's mother coming to town and searching for a woman with child-bearing hips to marry him. Rather, we're going to get through the martial arts rhythmic gymnastics, martial arts figure skating, and Shampoo's character introduction, based on the OP. After that, will we get a seasonal break? Or will we just jump into the next season with a shiny new opening sequence?

But let's focus on the here and now. It's time to meet the Black Rose Kodachi Kuno, Blue Thunder's younger sister herself. She's the star athlete of St. Bacchus' School for Girls' (a clever bit of legacy translation of St. Hebereke, where “hebereke” means “drunk”) martial arts rhythmic gymnastics team and has a strategy of doing everything in her power to assure herself a win well before the match even starts. After she dispatches Furinkan's team, Akane gets recruited to compete in the place, even though she's never done rhythmic gymnastics before.

This arc introduces what will become a recurring motif in the series: martial arts versions of things that aren't traditionally combat-oriented. Martial arts rhythmic gymnastics makes sense; ribbons resemble whips and are handy for tying people up, those clubs look like they could pack a wallop, and dodgeball is basically anything-goes martial arts as is, so it's pretty obvious how to use the ball. Plus, if you think about it, a lot of forms of martial arts aren't far off from contact gymnastics. Things are going to get weirder and weirder as we go, so get ready.

Then we have the matter of Kodachi herself. After disabling Furinkan's gymnastics team, she shows up in Akane's room to try to take her out, almost gets knocked out by Ranma chasing P-chan, and rescued. She thanks Ranma with a bouquet of black roses… which she's laced with a paralytic, and proceeds to try to force herself on the helpless boy. While I admit Ranma pulling his lips back further and further as she begs him to take her kiss was a funny sight gag, there's some discomfort to this scene. What she is doing is sexual assault! If the genders were reversed, it would be no laughing matter… well, okay, Ranma ½ does have a lot of sexual assault as comedy jokes, especially coming up, so maybe that's not a great comparison.

She is a Kuno, after all. A few weeks ago, I talked about her brother as representing how men act entitled to women's bodies. Kodachi flips the genders – she claims possession of Ranma as well, but while her brother was physically dominant, she resorts to the use of drugs. When Akane finds them on the roof over her bedroom, she kicks Kodachi away but directs her anger at Ranma just as much as she does at Kodachi. Women sexually assaulting men isn't as prevalent an issue as the reverse, but it still happens; when it does, the victims struggle to be taken seriously. There will be plenty of occasions where Akane sees Ranma in a compromising position and assumes the worst, but it's rare that Ranma has been rendered so helpless. Kodachi represents not just a sexual threat, but the threat of not being believed.

This is definitely one of those cases where the comedy stays funniest if you don't look too closely and don't think about it too hard, and unfortunately, my job as a reviewer is to look closely and think too hard. The next scene that comes up certainly holds up better to close scrutiny, when Kodachi comes to see Ranma at school. And here we see why Ranma ends up in the kinds of situations that he often does with girls: he is completely helpless in the face of tears.Kodachi starts crying and he collapses into an awkward puddle, literally hiding behind Akane as an excuse for why he can't date her. Here's a hot tip, Ranma: if someone who literally tried to rape you asks if you hate them, it's okay to say yes! But I've said it before and I'll say it again: the boy has no social skills, and that goes double when it comes to girls.

Unlike most of the main cast, Kodachi was recast in both Japanese and English. Her Japanese voice, Ayane Sakura, plays Aira in DAN DA DAN, who is also highly competitive and completely cracked in the head. I've been hearing a lot of her English voice actor, Allegra Clark, since I've been playing Persona 3 Reload. Clark is one of the best English voice actors working today, and hearing her as Kodachi was a delight.

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Ranma ½ is currently streaming on Netflix.