Ranma ½

Episode 7

How would you rate episode 7 of
Ranma ½ (TV 2024) ?

Community score: 4.2

Hoo boy. It seems fitting that a week after ANN readers have a big conversation about nipple erasure and whether the show's nudity counts as fan service, we get the horniest episode of Ranma ½ since Nihao My Concubine. With Akane out of commission, it falls to Ranma to don a leotard and defend the honor of Furinkan High School's martial arts rhythmic gymnastics team and himself from having to date the craziest bitch he has met to date.

I had a whole idea lined up to delve into an in-depth discussion of just what it means that the first time Ranma has to fight in girl mode, it's a sport where the male version is largely unrecognized on the international stage. Men's rhythmic gymnastics have made a lot of headway in getting recognized in the last 35 years since this episode aired, including the delightful anime series Backflip!! (please watch Backflip!!). However, back in the '80s, it was very much a girls-only sport except for a tiny contingent of Japanese athletes. This makes the insult to Ranma's gender three-fold: he must fight a female opponent in female clothes in a female sport. While Kodachi's penchant for cheating makes the fight more comical than intense, he still has to take the girl's sport seriously.

But wow wow wow did this episode put me off. If the camera had the opportunity to focus on a girl's thighs, it took it. I've always been of the opinion that outside of certain chapter title pages, Ranma ½ is not a particularly fan-service-heavy show. Rumiko Takahashi is unafraid of drawing breasts, but she generally does so in a very matter-of-fact way rather than sexualized. The characters spend a lot of time bathing because of the premise of the story, and if a panel is funnier with breasts in it, then by golly, there will be breasts. Conversely, in this episode, the storyboarding goes out of its way to keep thighs, underbutt, and leotard-clad crotches in the shot. More than once, the action would be in the background with Ranma's or, less often, Kodachi's legs in the foreground.

So here we have obtrusive fan service that wasn't in the original that, I would argue, likely interferes with the creator's vision. But hey, the fight is good, so we're good, right? WRONG! The fight is not, in fact, good. Action-wise, this is probably the worst episode of the series thus far. The flow of the battle is, as usual, largely faithful to the original: Kodachi does everything in her power to incapacitate Ranma both before and during the fight, with her masterstroke being chaining P-chan to his wrist. Since Ryoga has a vested interest in breaking up Ranma and Akane, he does everything in his little piggy power to obstruct Ranma as well.

Neither the action nor the comedy is up to the standard set by the series thus far. I'm not sure if MAPPA has overstretched their animators or if they were just too focused on the thighs, but nothing has quite the usual impact. There's a lot of cutting away at the moment of impact, or what is depicted lacking the necessary oomph to sell it. On the other hand, this show has never been the best version of the jokes' comic timing, and this episode was worse than usual. The jokes leading up to it were funny enough, especially Ranma and Ryoga doing the world's most spiteful all-nighter before the fight, but during the match, it's marred by frequent cutaways to the audience and the aforementioned obsessive thigh focus.

On the other hand, Ichiro justifies his existence for the first time… kind of. Originally, the commentary was done by a nameless St. Bacchus student, but here it's done by our very own broadcast club president. His quippy commentary is stuffed with wordplay and gags, following the script of the manga nearly identically. At the very least, his presence didn't detract from the proceedings.

This was easily the weakest episode of the series so far, but next week is the start of another storyline with an extremely promising voice cast. If they pull that off, all will be forgiven.

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Ranma ½ is currently streaming on Netflix.