Ranma ½

Episodes 1-2

She was a girl who hated boys, he was a boy who turned into a girl, can I make it any more obvious?

He was a martial artist, she was also a martial artist, what more can I say?

Oh, hello there. In case the badly butchered lyrics to a 2002 hit Canadian pop-punk song didn't clue you in, I'm pretty sure that by now I qualify as an “oldhead” within the anime community, with over two decades of fandom under my belt. And Ranma ½ was the series that started me down this terrible, terrible road.

But! The series that I'm here to talk about, the one that has two episodes up on Netflix? That's not the Ranma ½ I grew up with. Not your mommy's Ranma ½, one might say. Except that I shouldn't have said that, and I'm very sorry I did.

It seems unfathomable to me that there are fans out there who don't know the basic premise, but in case you're among them, here we go: years ago, Genma Saotome and Soun Tendo agreed that their children would marry to ensure that the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts would carry on for future generations. But when Genma and his 16-year-old son Ranma were supposed to come by, instead a panda and a teenage girl show up. It turns out that a few weeks ago, Ranma and Genma went to train at some cursed springs in China and fell in. Now, when doused with cold water, Genma turns into a panda and Ranma turns into a well-endowed female version of himself. Hot water turns them back.

Thrust into the middle of this is poor Akane Tendo, Soun's youngest daughter. A victim of her own prettiness, she hates boys with a passion. Her older sisters, Nabiki and Kasumi, insist the match is perfect, since Ranma is half girl. Never mind that Ranma is rude, vain, and saw her naked. Never mind that Akane feels deceived by him not telling her what was going on until she saw his penis. They've been outvoted and are now engaged.

Their troubles compound when Ranma enrolls at Akane and Nabiki's school, Furinkan High. He learns that every day, Akane must fight her way through scores of boys because the village idiot, Tatewaki Kuno, made a declaration that anyone who wins a fight against her has earned the right to ask her out. Naturally, Kuno is not pleased about her engagement to Ranma, and the two boys fight it out. Except Ranma jumps out the second-story window, not realizing there's a pool below him and accidentally triggering his transformation. He flees the school to avoid being found out with Kuno in hot pursuit.

But here's the thing: Kuno is stupid. Really, really stupid. However, one could not possibly blame him for not intuiting that the boy he was fighting and the pantsless girl he encountered outside of school were the same person. Ranma, on the other hand, should have probably caught on when Nabiki handed him a letter addressed to “The Pigtailed Girl” inviting "her" to meet him at the school. Instead, he's blindsided when Kuno hands him a bouquet of roses instead of fighting him.

While MAPPA has chosen to keep the series set in the '80's – this is one of the stories where the availability of cell phones would shift the paradigm considerably, after all – they've updated the visual style. Yes, that does mean we don't get to see nipples or, in one odd case, Ranma's buttcrack. I'm somewhat mixed on the shift in style. It's a more faithful recreation of Rumiko Takahashi's expressive character artwork than the old anime, where characters tended to come across a bit more stoic. However, they've also for some reason added more cartoonish backgrounds and manga-like sound effects flying across the screen, which doesn't add anything except making the visuals busier.

I also know the first two episodes of the old series beat-for-beat, very nearly line-for-line, and outside of the updated art style, the first episode is almost an exact recreation of the original. That's largely because the old first episode was faithful to Takahashi's manga; if anything, some of the brilliant comic timing of the old series has been lost. Not that newcomers will notice, or probably even most longtime fans, but I missed small touches like Genma scooting out of the way when Akane picks up a table to smack Ranma.

But then, the second episode did prove that this new version has some juice of its own. Kuno walking into a closet in his uniform and emerging seconds later in his hakama as his classmates ask him if he's Superman was an entirely new gag, delightful in its unexpectedness. On the other hand, the episode introduced a new character played by legendary voice actor Tomokazu Seki who serves only to narrate what's happening. Gosh golly, am I sick of anime going out of its way to tell me what's happening on screen as if I had audio descriptions turned on. It remains to be seen if this character actually adds anything other than commentating on what is quite plain to see.

The first two episodes don't give that much to chew on in this regard, but for better or worse, Ranma ½ is a series with a serious case of gender. 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. Not that it's particularly progressive in its ideas, it's just… well, I'll talk about it when we get there.

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Ranma ½ is currently streaming on Netflix.