Those first 18 episodes (that got cancelled) are best of the series - so warm, soulful and relaxing. Blockbuster had a couple of dubbed volumes and it's still one of my favorite dubs (Ranma and Slayers being the best I've seen).
Eh, some of the episodes got boring... Namely all the filler around Dr. Tofu. And that random extra Ryoga episode where that rich couple adopts P-chan. Ranma vs the butlers was cool, though.
@@Davethe3rd To each their own. For me the later episodes were boring. It felt like the same few gags over and over. During first season everything felt fresh. The Dr Tofu stuff was more interesting than another transforming character or obstacle race.
I never really got much further than the first 18 episodes, which I recall quite fondly from the old days in the early 2000's finding them on VHS as a young teenager. Absolutely magical stuff for me back then ! Did the tone shift quite drastically following those first 18 episodes? I remember they had a somewhat stop-and-go yet well-timed comedic pacing intermixed with a strange sort of calm, easygoing impressionistic / nostalgic warmth -- I'm gonna take a wild guess that the rebooted eps leaned increasingly into the wacky romance-farce & formula as time went on
@@the_most_ever_company Agreed. My brother theorized the series went downhill once Happōsai is introduced (checking now: episode 33, halfway through season 2). That's about where I tap-out. The tone then shifts from lo-fi warmth to cornball slapstick, and it's mostly the same jokes recycled ad nauseam. I made it through the entire series once, but it was not easy - story, humor, character design and animation quality all take a tailspin past season 2. Then again, Rumiko Takahashi's series always drag on and on.
As a girl, I usually was on Ranma's side of things whenever Akane and he/she had an argument. 90% of the time, Akane get's pissed off because of a misunderstanding, and won't allow Ranma to give an explanation. After being yelled at or insulted, that's when Ranma becomes a name calling jerk, which of course leads to Akane being even more pissed. So I couldn't relate to Akane because she almost never gave Ranma the benefit of the doubt. Even if the situation had nothing to do with them, Akane ALWAYS blames Ranma, without fail. Ranma, only antagonizes Akane when pushed, they don't go out of their way to do it (intentionally). That's why I don't really like her as a character. Sure, it's not like Ranma is a saint, but when the story is told from their POV, as the audience you're supposed to relate to them more. You know that they aren't the cause of the situation. What hurts Akane's case even more is that there are several female leads in the cast that actually gel well with Ranma, even with their faults. I'd wager that Ukyo is probably the best personality wise, but even freaking Shampoo is better. Contrast that to Akane's alt-love interest, Ryoga, who's a funny character, but comes off as creepy as he secretly uses his curse as an advantage for his romantic desires on Akane. All this said, I will agree with Kaiser on Happosai being the worst character in the show. Once he joins, it's like he takes over. Nevermind that he's a pervert (we have many beloved perverted characters in anime), he's just annoying. He's God-mode unbeatable, his life's goal is to ruin every character's lives, and ... oh yeah, he's not just a pervert, he's on that border of being an assaulter. While most of the time he gets punished, it never feel equal to the amount of damage this character does. And he's a main character you have to put up with.
Yeah, agreed on Happosai. I usually tell people to skip anything that focuses on him after his intro because he's just that irritating. It really does feel like the show loses a certain level of sincerity once he's introduced.
My gateway into "real" anime was also Ranma 1/2 through Pokemon, but I never owned the VHS tapes. Instead, I remember reading one of the Pokemon comics, and seeing an ad for the Ranma 1/2 manga in the back of it. I was so intrigued by the premise from the ad that I spent hours on my late 90's internet looking at various web sites and learning as much as I could about Ranma 1/2 from fansites and fanfiction before I was even able to figure out how to watch a single episode.
1st movie has Ukyo appear only as a cameo just like others characters how run after Ranma and not play role like the others how go with Ranma to China to rescue Akane why, Ukyo appear many episodes of the anime it does make up in the second movie.
Love this movie. It’s arguably the best Ranma movie. It makes Ranma look competent, it highlights and advances his and Akane’s relationship, it doesn’t lean too heavily on fanservice, and the villains are oodles of fun, especially Kirin and his one thousand stinging chopsticks.
Yes, while cringe, how they had Shampoo and the Jusenkyo Guide speaking was technically accurate. The entire point was to convey that neither are particularly good at speaking the language everyone else is. (Though I'm sure both dubs mangle the Chinese they have Shampoo speak...) I don't quite get how Mousse is so good at speaking Japanese/English, though...
I was going to comment the same thing; also, growing up in Hawaii, broken English/pidgin is normal so I always roll my eyes when people claim that as racist or offensive for Asian characters (but not if it were a Russian character, etc).
That is exactly how I got into anime. I watched Pokemon on VHS and saw the Ranma trailer. A local video store hade the OAV "Faster Kasumi, Kill Kill" for rent, and so I checked it out, and I was hooked.
Big Trouble in Nekonron China was my earliest introduction to the Ranma 1/2, possibly aired in Cartoon Network Asia twice, or three times in the late 90s, possibly 1997 to 1999 I think. I would forgot about, buried deep into the deeper parts of my mind that until 2003, where I was properly introduce to the TV anime series on AXN.
Everybody thought the unsavory bits were funny, including people who now claim they never did. 🤣 Half the fun of a series like Ranma 1/2 is that everything is taken to absurd lengths.
@@knghtbrd to me it makes fun of what exists in everybody's mind. Everybody has a little kink or is interested in sexuality. We all temper ourselves and live in a society so we won't act upon the desire to jump on a person that is very attractive to our taste. Happosai is somewhat of a metaphore of this sexual pervertedness, his role works because he provides in a playfull way (because he has the look and the behavior of a playfull baby) this and is rightfully punished for that and after releasing this tension, we can focus on something else. Like a character who would represent greed to the point of being obnoxious about it and then being punished for that would make for good gags, I think Happosai is a good character for that. Had he been a hulking monster that would tower above everyone else and intimidate them and harass women he would be the worse character but that is not the case and throughout the serie we see that he can only intimidate his disciples and men whereas women always take him as a non threatening spoiled little character that he is and often they get to manipulate him (the more they know about their femininity the easier it is to manipulate him Shampoo being the best at it (nabiki also very good) and Ranma being a man being the worst at it)
Hell yeah sone Ranma right before newyears! Should be a real treat!!! Never get tired of seeing Saotome and the crazy martial artists in action with Rabbits 'Its Love' playing in the background!
Man. I only ever got into Ranma cus some grand wizard of aloofness okayed at least half the entire manga collection... in my middle school library. We had a whole groupd of ranma fans in 2003?... ish.
Ranma 1/2 is an anime I so dearly wish would be continued/finished. The new version of Urusai Yatsura gives me a little bit of hope. I loved every episode of the TV series (albiet some more than others,) and would love to see it wrapped up. Preferably a LITTLE different than it was in the Manga.
I remember when I was in high school and every single English-dubbed episode of Ranma½ and Case Closed/Detective Conan were illegally uploaded to RUclips. I binged the hell out of them for several months, but then got kinda bored of both them when I hit their respective 100th episode.
This show was imperative in helping me come to one of my life's most vital realizations. While I wasn't sure exactly what I WAS by my senior year of high school, after seeing Ranma and wishing I could be lucky enough to fall into that same cursed pool at Jusenkyo, I knew for a fact that I wasn't anything as simple as straight. Still wish I had Ranma's "curse" tho...
Ranma was probably one of the first non-televised anime I watched, since the Blockbuster had at least 2 of the 2-episode VHSes in stock at any given time. It was also a series that I didn't like as much as my friends did, but I later realized that it was because (along with some personal stuff) they were approaching it as the saga of a great love story that had some jokes in it. That's... not what it was, and trying to make myself see it in that light did it no favors. When I revisited it on Hulu last year, I came to it as a sitcom about dumb teenagers involving fight scenes, and I enjoyed it a LOT more. At least until Happosai showed up and became a big source of the humor/plots. Since then, I've realized how much of an effect it had on me unconsciously in everything from character threads to what I think constitutes a "cool" opening scene (namely, that part in the "Little Date" opening where Ranma is running while various enemies loom like giants in the background). It's a work that I would still recommend, although usually with caveats.
Ranma 1\2 is still my favorite. Although disagree with your conclusion. The second movie does more about the characters and includes Ukyo. This one is fine I guess but I wouldn't start out with this if you want go get into the anime. 2nd movie or the OVAs should be what you do if you are scared of a long series. The 2008 ova in particular showcases things better and more concise.
Such memories, being a teen in the 90's somehow my small indie movie rental store in my neighborhood had a growing anime section. After the OG Guyver OVAs and Akira I got hooked on Ranma based on its sheer ridiculousness. While the movie is nothing more than a giant episode, thats what i like it about it. Ranma was a sitcom and didn't see "scope" like this until its very last volume so it was both familiar and and extra for a viewer of the TV series. Thank you for this, very happy to see Rumiko Takahashi's older works still getting some love after all this time.
Unless you were buying the Ranma floppies (yes, 32-page traditional comic books) from VIZ, these movies and the OVAs would’ve been your first exposure to Ranma in English. Honestly, if you watch the first 24 episodes, you’re set for these movies and OVAs (outside of Ucchan’s story). This will always be my favorite series and I’m glad that I was able to enjoy it within the right time frame and not have to watch with modern lenses. Also, the Chinese characters speak in broken Japanese in the original dub, so I don’t see the issue with it being in the English dub, as well. But, I also grew up in Hawaii, where speech like this is normal … Also, I love the intro to the movie because it’s a total love-letter/fan service to devoted fans of the series. Thanks for the video!
to me the wildest thing, is that yu guys had to cough 30ish bucks in a vhs to watch these...while all we had to do was turn on open air tv...not even cable lol
@@monkeypunch6284 I made it easier back in the day by splitting the cost with some friends. But there's a reason we gave up around season 4. Who wants to spend money for that on a pair of filler episodes featuring a character that would never show up again?
I was VERY lucky in that my local mom and pop video store had several tapes and a few of the movies. Then a friend of a friend offered to sell me their Ranma 1/2 VHS collection for like 50 bucks,..... it was like 80 tapes. An insane deal since they bought them each new at like 30 bucks a pop. I still have and watch them to this day.
0:31 Honestly, that trailer was my whole headspace in consuming weeb pop culture as a child. The overall feel had its tendrils in everything, from renting Goemon on the N64 from Blockbuster, to the minigames in Pokemon Stadium, to picking out Yu Yu Hakusho at the FYE. I couldn't tell you what it was they all shared aesthetically aside from being inspired by Japanese folklore, but there was something contiguous between them all that anime released after 2003 just doesn't have. Well, with the VERY unusual exception of Kyoukai no Rinne
I was the biggest fan of the manga. So when I started collecting anime in the mid 90's you can only imagine how excited I was for this movie. I enjoyed the silliness and the fights, but the scene that stole it for me was at 25:47 . The film completed shifted after that
Does anyone else find the comment from Takahashi about being "worried about writing a male protagonist" rather strange? I mean, before Ranma 1/2, she'd already written the male protagonists of Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, One Pound Gospel and Mermaid Flesh, and those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. I mean, admittedly, in all of those except maybe UY, the protagonist role had been shared between a male and a female, but it's still not as if she had no practice with writing leading men...
Oh god. My first exposure to Ranma was via an Inuyasha dvd i had in my Middle School days. It had a trailer for the first dvd box set on it. Back then, i couldn’t find those easily, however i had managed to find the vhs boxset of the first 18 episodes at a local Half Price Books. From there, me and various friends would watch those tapes endlessly. Ironically, despite having the Pokémon vhs tapes too, i didn’t see the commercial for the movie until i saw the Ranma tapes. I would find various random Ranma tapes overtime at Resale shops and the like, most of which i still have to this day. However, going back to the show these days is very difficult for me, given that I’ve grown a dislike for most of the characters as i grew up and my tastes changed. Still, those were good times.
As I recall that is a dub thing (even though I like it). In the original while she speaks more fluently as I recall. Should note she's not the only one using the 'I use my name for all pronouns' speak. Azusa, who is definitely Japanese, does as well... of course she's voiced by the same VA so...
No, her Japanese dialog, flow, and intonation are stereotypical of a Chinese person in Japan that didn’t grow up speaking the language… plus she sprinkles in Chinese dialog just as the English dub. Would’ve been a disservice if they didn’t keep her like that in the English dub
I'm lucky the country I grew up on had so much good anime even back in the early 90s. I experienced anime from the 40s up to "new releases" before Toonami was a thing. I watched Astroboy, candy, Heidy, Saint Seiya, Lupín, dragon ball, sailor moon, Sakura card captor, Gundam, many more etc etc. And from them all, Ranma 1/2 was the one that connected the most. Not because it was softcore porn. No that was only funny when the full frontal nudity was televised at 11am and NOBODY getting offended. It was the best due to the identity issues most characters had, not just the cursed one, but most characters displayed the same level of identity crisis that growing teens and insecure adults display. I'm sure you can make it about something shallow and superficial like gender and sexuality, but the show went far beyond that, into the psyche of who you are regardless of who you come across as. Great show.
For me, the Pokemon VHS that had the Ranma movie trailer was "Fashion Flash." It had Ash's Gym Battle with Erika, the episode where Misty catches Psyduck and the one where Brock gets Vulpix.
Ranma 1/2 is one franchise that's very close to my heart. I love its humour and sentimentality. My nickname in the university was P-chan since I'm Peter and get lost easily.
I'm jealous your university knew about anime like this. Most of my school life it was shameful to watch anime. Towards the very end it became acceptable but everyone pretty much just knew the popular sesional shows
@@someuser4166 @SomeUser Nah, we were just three and a half weirdos reading manga xD. The second most influencial to me, of course, is Slayers. I think, it and the Evangelion were the top picks.
also, let’s be honest...we’re talking about the standards and practices of the VA industry from 30-40 years ago; people, in general, were not as enlightened or even aware of such issues, at the time; also consider that every ‘Chinese’ character in the series dresses like an extra from a Shaw Bros. film, and that even today, many Japanese don’t know that much about ‘cultural representation’, and negotiating taboo issues of race and culture, because there aren’t a lot of non-native Japanese there...all that to say that there are going to be many portrayals of race, ethnicity and gender that would be looked upon as objectionable by today’s standards-especially by people from the US/Western Europe in media from the eras you generally cover on this channel...no need to spend so much time on it every time it comes up...
@@Ubernerd3000 Let's limit that view to Americans and their obsession, most of people even in western Europe aren't offended by a character wearing a mexican hat or a chinese dress. They would be for an African man in a Tarzan "savage" attire because it makes him appear as a "dumb savage" and that's insensitive but as long as it represent a cultural aspect that existed there is really not that huge of a wave of taboos in France or Spain or Swiss or at least latin countries. Anglosaxon countries on the otherhand are getting extrem like england or Ireland that can be true (probably because english langage let them more prone to be influenced by american taboos).
In a similar vein to you, the name "Ranma 1/2" buried itself in my mind and went ignored for nearly a decade until Middle School where we just HAPPENED to have volumes of the manga in our school library. I came out of nostalgic curiosity, stayed for boobies and wound up loving it for the comedy and became a lifelong fan to the point where I've got all but one of the 2-in-1 manga (The final volume still eludes me) and have spent the better part of the last few years doing a Ranma crossover fanfic.
I used to watch Ranma as a little kid in my grandmas house, along with Dr slump, the original dragon ball and other anime. In Mexico anime like these where broadcast normally like cartoons.
Same for me on my first introduction on Ranma. I kind of get that at the time for Viz showing a trailer for one of their titles after you watch an anime from them but it was always odd they chose one of the Ranma films after Pokemon. Although it's not as weird with something like Funimation where they release some of 4KIDS titles on home video and still having Funimation ads for Dragon Ball, Blue Gender, and Yu Yu Hakusho.
Ranma was popular in Mexico 🇲🇽 so I watched it in Spanish. Plus many other anime titles showed on Spanish networks long before the US.. I saw Knights Rayearth, detective conan, dragon ball z and all of sailor moon (uncensored) they kept all that blood and naked bits.. 😳 it was the best 👌
I think you give Akane a little too much credit in the final section of this review; it never felt to me that she was "testing Ranma" to see if he was pursuing her out of love or obligation, but instead more like Akane just tends to give up on Ranma because she can't stop pushing him away between her own insecurity and Ranma's hostility. Also, yes, Ranma is a jerk, but I would hesitate to lay the blame for his and Akane's fights entirely on *his* head, because she is just as likely to tease or mock him first as the other way around.
Also ranma becomesway less arrogant over time and also is a tsundere. Ad he getsway better with inscurities toogiven how he becomes way less nonchalant as ranma chan. Yeah he is insesitiv a jerk buthe really tries ad grws outof his worse stuff too. He isstill a hothead, but akane really is pushing away a lot and later, yeah .She should know tasing her is his flirting, through the cooking :/ fair.
I watched some anime as a kid, like Voltron, before I even knew what anime was. But Ranma was my first real venture into the medium. My first episode was the second one of the Ryoga arc. It was airing at Gen Con, back when it was in Milwaukee and the anime "room" was a single screen between four pillars with sheets draped around it.
"It was a normal day at the Tendo training hall and due to a....misunderstanding, I wound up getting KIDNAPPED!" I mean if KB's doing this, it won't be long before they review Dog of Flanders starring Rober Loggia
I got into Ranma back in 1996, before the pokemon craze but several years into the manga run. My first issue of Ranma--and incidentally my first manga, period--was the first appearance of Ukyo Kuonji, since it was the newest one, and I knew NOTHING about the series besides the fact that it was labeled a "martial arts sex comedy." (yes, Viz actually went there--even anime for shonen wasn't anime for kids back then, especially with Ranma's penchant for comedic nudity). It was a weird place to start, to be honest--in those first two chapters, Ranma never changes into his girl form, and in the next issue, he only changes for one frame, and I missed it completely the first time, and so I had a completely different idea of what the comic was about. Thank Christ I didn't start with the previous storyline, the four chapter arc of absolutely batshit absurdity that was Akane's lethal cookie storyline, where somehow Akane baking terrible cookies leads her and Ranma into the two Kuno's deathtrap house. I'd have checked out immediately. Thankfully, after I read the Ukyo arc, I watched the first season of the anime and fell in love with it. Honestly, it was Akane's B-plot unrequited love for Dr. Tofu that sold me on the show, how it was built up for most of the show before interrupting Ranma and Ryoga's fight and just taking over for a while. In retrospect, it was kind of a troll move to build up Ranma and Ryoga's rivalry (at this point, just a grudge--Ryoga had no interest in Akane yet) and then just shut down the fight without a winner when a non-combatant is "cut" by an errant attack. It was not something I'd seen before, certainly not in the American cartoons I grew up with, not even BTAS. I'd also never seen an animated show "waste" so much screentime on static or quiet moments of characters sitting by a river or sitting down to slowly eat a bag of burgers and toss and retoss the same wrapper until finally making it into the bin--sure, the latter is filler, a bit of flavor added for the anime that didn't appear in the manga, but I still love that scene if only for the sense of verisimilitude. I'm probably the only one, but I wish the series had stayed the course with this aesthetic instead of going goofier with the animation with the next series, but then, let's face it, the manga itself was mostly to blame for that. Takahashi herself lamented those first stories for front-loading the series with too much character development and romance, which, in my opinion, is the wrong lesson to have learned from writing the series, but then, I'm somebody who, on principle, thinks no manga should last more than fifteen or so volumes, or about 3000 pages (I guarantee you One Piece could be told in ten and Naruto in five and Meitantai Conan in two (one volume for his transformation, one for his eventual cure, every other story is filler). Nausicaa manages to tell its story in just over 1100 pages, and it feels epic because Miyazaki knows how to compress his storytelling. Even Maison Ikkoku (15 volumes) and Cross Game (17 volumes) have significant bloat (MI has a lot of repeated story beats, and CG has Adachi's typical baseball bloat, though not as bad as H2 or even Touch). Ranma, at 38 volumes, was published weekly for NINE freaking years, and that's just feels ludicrous to me. I know complaints of decompressed story-telling sound odd coming from somebody who just praised a five minute scene of trash can hoops, but I'd rather watch that than somebody channel their ki or pool the power of the universe for the same amount of time. There's a sweet spot, and 1000+ chapters of stretchy pirate antics is not it.
I could only imagine what your mother would have thought when you were 9 and if you had watched the Viz Media VHS tapes of Ranma 1/2 and the episodes of Ranma and/or Akane being in the bath that first time when Akane found out that Ranma was a BOY and not a GIRL that she thought she knew from her first impressions.
All I can say is, IT'S ABOUT TIME! I couldn't be any more excited for this. Drama one half was my first true anime that I recall watching outside of DBZ Sailor Moon and Speed Racer. This was before the days of Toonami.
My first exposure to Ranma was not only the trailer from the Pokemon videos but also in print ads from the Pokemon manga( the eletric tale of pikachu). But it's funny how Megumi Hayashibara would go on the voice Musashi/Jessie in the Pokémon anime, talk about odd connections.
Megumi had gotten married around that time and went into a semi-retirement, so, she began to chose roles where she would have less screen time and more time, for herself.
One forgotten influence of Ranma 1/2 was it's fanfiction scene. With literal gender-bending, cross-dressing, and both hyper-masculization & hyper-feminization, toxic relationships, and physical abuse being plot points and character traits (never tackled seriously by the anime/manga), many fan authors filled that gap. Wild to think about heavy LGBTQ themes & relationships in fanworks from the mid-to late 90's and early 2000's.
*What a TREAT this IS for **#Ranma** fans !!!! **#KaiserBeamz** is such an amazing writer and media analyst, I'm so jealous of this man's brain!* 🤯 *Sharing this!*
Ranma is the first anime I've seen (though it didn't make me an anime fan, at least not yet, as I was still young at that time) and I've definitely have watched this. This was enjoyable; it's my most favorite Ranma movie.
Heck, even the US cartoon "Pinky and the Brain" made a ranma 1/2 spoof called "Brinky 1/2" in their comic series, so I think kids were the prime demographic in the west for this series. Also, Ranma was so popular it was shown during prime time in Germany back then
The way he edited the video makes you think the series unsavory bits are just master roshi -esque shenanigans but the real uncomfy with the franchise is how much you see 15 year old Ranmas tits. I still can’t tell if it was just 80s humor or political commentary on how girls are exploited.
probably commentary too, given how its ranma whois not a girl, gets to learn about that. I would gues it intentionalranma gets the brunt of it. I mean still a bit much, but i can see the social commentary of that. And most of the time he isnt innocent either. Or exploits himself.
I don't remember what my first exposure to Ranma 1/2 was, but I never watched a single episode of the anime. I was a manga only fan. I didn't read all of the manga, but I did read most of it, mainly because most of my manga reading was done through the library since I didn't have the money to buy a lot of manga. Maybe the library was where I first discovered it. That was how I found a lot of the manga I read as a kid.
Ranma 1/2 was one of those things that ended up as a nostalgic artifact in the back of my brain before I ever actually got into anime. I remember there was an ad for it at the tail end of a pokemon VHS I used to own (the one with the hypno and vulpix episodes) and something about the narration in it (plus ti coming at the end meaning it was only communicated to me in the surreal moments I was too lazy or tired to get up and switch tapes) meant that I instantly recognized it, seeing it later. EDIT: Well damn I didn't know that that cultural artifact was going to be the introduction to the whole damn video.
Seeing Ranma again brings back memories. I used to watch an episode of both Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura daily and liked to imagine they're both set in the same universe haha
@@shoknifeman2mikado135 And around the Nerima ward too! Takahashi said Furinkan is set near Nerima, and in UY Ataru's father mentions Nerima being nearby Tomobiki
Those first 18 episodes (that got cancelled) are best of the series - so warm, soulful and relaxing. Blockbuster had a couple of dubbed volumes and it's still one of my favorite dubs (Ranma and Slayers being the best I've seen).
Eh, some of the episodes got boring... Namely all the filler around Dr. Tofu.
And that random extra Ryoga episode where that rich couple adopts P-chan.
Ranma vs the butlers was cool, though.
@@Davethe3rd To each their own. For me the later episodes were boring. It felt like the same few gags over and over. During first season everything felt fresh. The Dr Tofu stuff was more interesting than another transforming character or obstacle race.
I never really got much further than the first 18 episodes, which I recall quite fondly from the old days in the early 2000's finding them on VHS as a young teenager. Absolutely magical stuff for me back then ! Did the tone shift quite drastically following those first 18 episodes? I remember they had a somewhat stop-and-go yet well-timed comedic pacing intermixed with a strange sort of calm, easygoing impressionistic / nostalgic warmth -- I'm gonna take a wild guess that the rebooted eps leaned increasingly into the wacky romance-farce & formula as time went on
@@the_most_ever_company Agreed. My brother theorized the series went downhill once Happōsai is introduced (checking now: episode 33, halfway through season 2). That's about where I tap-out.
The tone then shifts from lo-fi warmth to cornball slapstick, and it's mostly the same jokes recycled ad nauseam. I made it through the entire series once, but it was not easy - story, humor, character design and animation quality all take a tailspin past season 2. Then again, Rumiko Takahashi's series always drag on and on.
I watched ranma over a 6 month period, and the show never got dull. But spiting up long shows is really the only way to watch shows like ranma.
As a girl, I usually was on Ranma's side of things whenever Akane and he/she had an argument. 90% of the time, Akane get's pissed off because of a misunderstanding, and won't allow Ranma to give an explanation. After being yelled at or insulted, that's when Ranma becomes a name calling jerk, which of course leads to Akane being even more pissed. So I couldn't relate to Akane because she almost never gave Ranma the benefit of the doubt. Even if the situation had nothing to do with them, Akane ALWAYS blames Ranma, without fail. Ranma, only antagonizes Akane when pushed, they don't go out of their way to do it (intentionally). That's why I don't really like her as a character. Sure, it's not like Ranma is a saint, but when the story is told from their POV, as the audience you're supposed to relate to them more. You know that they aren't the cause of the situation. What hurts Akane's case even more is that there are several female leads in the cast that actually gel well with Ranma, even with their faults. I'd wager that Ukyo is probably the best personality wise, but even freaking Shampoo is better. Contrast that to Akane's alt-love interest, Ryoga, who's a funny character, but comes off as creepy as he secretly uses his curse as an advantage for his romantic desires on Akane.
All this said, I will agree with Kaiser on Happosai being the worst character in the show. Once he joins, it's like he takes over. Nevermind that he's a pervert (we have many beloved perverted characters in anime), he's just annoying. He's God-mode unbeatable, his life's goal is to ruin every character's lives, and ... oh yeah, he's not just a pervert, he's on that border of being an assaulter. While most of the time he gets punished, it never feel equal to the amount of damage this character does. And he's a main character you have to put up with.
Just call Ranma a he, even as a girl he still sees himself as boy.
Yeah, agreed on Happosai. I usually tell people to skip anything that focuses on him after his intro because he's just that irritating. It really does feel like the show loses a certain level of sincerity once he's introduced.
Who else remembers a commercial for this playing at the end of their Pokemon VHS tapes?
Just thought about that with the thumbnail
Same here!!
I definitely did.
Hell yes!
I did!
I discovered Ranma 1/2 7/6 years ago on youtube.
My gateway into "real" anime was also Ranma 1/2 through Pokemon, but I never owned the VHS tapes. Instead, I remember reading one of the Pokemon comics, and seeing an ad for the Ranma 1/2 manga in the back of it. I was so intrigued by the premise from the ad that I spent hours on my late 90's internet looking at various web sites and learning as much as I could about Ranma 1/2 from fansites and fanfiction before I was even able to figure out how to watch a single episode.
Personally prefer the second movie better, only because it has Ukyo in it as well. But the 1st movie is still a lot of fun
1st movie has Ukyo appear only as a cameo just like others characters how run after Ranma and not play role like the others how go with Ranma to China to rescue Akane why, Ukyo appear many episodes of the anime it does make up in the second movie.
I really love Sarah Strange as the voice of male Ranma in the dub
Love this movie. It’s arguably the best Ranma movie. It makes Ranma look competent, it highlights and advances his and Akane’s relationship, it doesn’t lean too heavily on fanservice, and the villains are oodles of fun, especially Kirin and his one thousand stinging chopsticks.
The second movie was definitely an improvement.
My first exposure to Ranma was watching it after school in Mexico on Canal 5. Good stuff.
Canal 5 era lo maximo en los 90's
@@dnightwalker eso si lo era.
17:30 I think the idea was that Shampoo wasn't the greatest at her second language.
Yes, while cringe, how they had Shampoo and the Jusenkyo Guide speaking was technically accurate.
The entire point was to convey that neither are particularly good at speaking the language everyone else is. (Though I'm sure both dubs mangle the Chinese they have Shampoo speak...)
I don't quite get how Mousse is so good at speaking Japanese/English, though...
In Japanese they often have the voice actors of characters from mainland China speak in thick accents to show Japanese isn’t their native language.
I was going to comment the same thing; also, growing up in Hawaii, broken English/pidgin is normal so I always roll my eyes when people claim that as racist or offensive for Asian characters (but not if it were a Russian character, etc).
These old Canadian voice actors of Ocean dubs were so damn good
Probably the only Japanese cartoon I’ll watch in English… and maybe Cowboy Bebop.
At 2:36 they broke my watch.
The blues brothers reference
That is exactly how I got into anime. I watched Pokemon on VHS and saw the Ranma trailer. A local video store hade the OAV "Faster Kasumi, Kill Kill" for rent, and so I checked it out, and I was hooked.
Big Trouble in Nekonron China was my earliest introduction to the Ranma 1/2, possibly aired in Cartoon Network Asia twice, or three times in the late 90s, possibly 1997 to 1999 I think.
I would forgot about, buried deep into the deeper parts of my mind that until 2003, where I was properly introduce to the TV anime series on AXN.
I started with the Manga back in the 1989 before enjoying the anime. I loved both, unsavory bits and all.
Everybody thought the unsavory bits were funny, including people who now claim they never did. 🤣 Half the fun of a series like Ranma 1/2 is that everything is taken to absurd lengths.
@@knghtbrd to me it makes fun of what exists in everybody's mind.
Everybody has a little kink or is interested in sexuality. We all temper ourselves and live in a society so we won't act upon the desire to jump on a person that is very attractive to our taste.
Happosai is somewhat of a metaphore of this sexual pervertedness, his role works because he provides in a playfull way (because he has the look and the behavior of a playfull baby) this and is rightfully punished for that and after releasing this tension, we can focus on something else.
Like a character who would represent greed to the point of being obnoxious about it and then being punished for that would make for good gags, I think Happosai is a good character for that.
Had he been a hulking monster that would tower above everyone else and intimidate them and harass women he would be the worse character but that is not the case and throughout the serie we see that he can only intimidate his disciples and men whereas women always take him as a non threatening spoiled little character that he is and often they get to manipulate him (the more they know about their femininity the easier it is to manipulate him Shampoo being the best at it (nabiki also very good) and Ranma being a man being the worst at it)
I love this anime.
Is it weird that my intro to Ranma (at least in concept alone) came from a Robot Chicken scetch?
Admit it, we all saw the end of that pokemon vhs along with that Kimba trailer
Hell yeah sone Ranma right before newyears! Should be a real treat!!! Never get tired of seeing Saotome and the crazy martial artists in action with Rabbits 'Its Love' playing in the background!
Man. I only ever got into Ranma cus some grand wizard of aloofness okayed at least half the entire manga collection... in my middle school library. We had a whole groupd of ranma fans in 2003?... ish.
Great! prase the aloof wizard.
But who remembers the anime dog of Flanders trailer on the pokemon vhs?
I do.
My exposure to ranma was visiting family in Mexico, I would always catch ranma, saylor moon dbz, dorimon, and saint seya.
Nice touch to use the Viz VHS trailer narration as your synopsis.
'Ranma, won't you come rescue me?!'
I think Takahashi had the most fun making Ranma 1/2
Last year I actually picked up the entire series, Movies, and OVA on Blu-ray. Worth the purchase.
Ranma 1/2 is an anime I so dearly wish would be continued/finished. The new version of Urusai Yatsura gives me a little bit of hope. I loved every episode of the TV series (albiet some more than others,) and would love to see it wrapped up. Preferably a LITTLE different than it was in the Manga.
Now that that's done now do Sailor Moon R the Movie
I remember the trailer I was never sure if it was connected to Ramna
I remember when I was in high school and every single English-dubbed episode of Ranma½ and Case Closed/Detective Conan were illegally uploaded to RUclips. I binged the hell out of them for several months, but then got kinda bored of both them when I hit their respective 100th episode.
This show was imperative in helping me come to one of my life's most vital realizations. While I wasn't sure exactly what I WAS by my senior year of high school, after seeing Ranma and wishing I could be lucky enough to fall into that same cursed pool at Jusenkyo, I knew for a fact that I wasn't anything as simple as straight. Still wish I had Ranma's "curse" tho...
Ranma was probably one of the first non-televised anime I watched, since the Blockbuster had at least 2 of the 2-episode VHSes in stock at any given time. It was also a series that I didn't like as much as my friends did, but I later realized that it was because (along with some personal stuff) they were approaching it as the saga of a great love story that had some jokes in it. That's... not what it was, and trying to make myself see it in that light did it no favors. When I revisited it on Hulu last year, I came to it as a sitcom about dumb teenagers involving fight scenes, and I enjoyed it a LOT more. At least until Happosai showed up and became a big source of the humor/plots. Since then, I've realized how much of an effect it had on me unconsciously in everything from character threads to what I think constitutes a "cool" opening scene (namely, that part in the "Little Date" opening where Ranma is running while various enemies loom like giants in the background). It's a work that I would still recommend, although usually with caveats.
Ranma 1\2 is still my favorite. Although disagree with your conclusion. The second movie does more about the characters and includes Ukyo. This one is fine I guess but I wouldn't start out with this if you want go get into the anime. 2nd movie or the OVAs should be what you do if you are scared of a long series. The 2008 ova in particular showcases things better and more concise.
Such memories, being a teen in the 90's somehow my small indie movie rental store in my neighborhood had a growing anime section. After the OG Guyver OVAs and Akira I got hooked on Ranma based on its sheer ridiculousness. While the movie is nothing more than a giant episode, thats what i like it about it. Ranma was a sitcom and didn't see "scope" like this until its very last volume so it was both familiar and and extra for a viewer of the TV series.
Thank you for this, very happy to see Rumiko Takahashi's older works still getting some love after all this time.
Have you heard of the short anime series called Kaiba? It was made in 2008.
This video was released on my birthday.
I wonder how much pokemon viz VHS tapes helped with ranma sales?
So THAT's where that 4chan banner comes from!
My first exposure was finding the vcr tapes at family video in late jr high or high school.
Unless you were buying the Ranma floppies (yes, 32-page traditional comic books) from VIZ, these movies and the OVAs would’ve been your first exposure to Ranma in English.
Honestly, if you watch the first 24 episodes, you’re set for these movies and OVAs (outside of Ucchan’s story).
This will always be my favorite series and I’m glad that I was able to enjoy it within the right time frame and not have to watch with modern lenses.
Also, the Chinese characters speak in broken Japanese in the original dub, so I don’t see the issue with it being in the English dub, as well. But, I also grew up in Hawaii, where speech like this is normal …
Also, I love the intro to the movie because it’s a total love-letter/fan service to devoted fans of the series.
Thanks for the video!
1:08: I didn't just dead ahh seen Tom Kenny's name in the credits XD.
Different Tom Kenney I'm afraid. Just one of the many executives at 4kids
www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=12110
to me the wildest thing, is that yu guys had to cough 30ish bucks in a vhs to watch these...while all we had to do was turn on open air tv...not even cable lol
And you only got 2 episodes per tape at that time!
@@shoknifeman2mikado135 just two !?. Bruh that's a rip off
@@monkeypunch6284 I made it easier back in the day by splitting the cost with some friends. But there's a reason we gave up around season 4. Who wants to spend money for that on a pair of filler episodes featuring a character that would never show up again?
I was VERY lucky in that my local mom and pop video store had several tapes and a few of the movies. Then a friend of a friend offered to sell me their Ranma 1/2 VHS collection for like 50 bucks,..... it was like 80 tapes. An insane deal since they bought them each new at like 30 bucks a pop. I still have and watch them to this day.
0:31 Honestly, that trailer was my whole headspace in consuming weeb pop culture as a child. The overall feel had its tendrils in everything, from renting Goemon on the N64 from Blockbuster, to the minigames in Pokemon Stadium, to picking out Yu Yu Hakusho at the FYE. I couldn't tell you what it was they all shared aesthetically aside from being inspired by Japanese folklore, but there was something contiguous between them all that anime released after 2003 just doesn't have. Well, with the VERY unusual exception of Kyoukai no Rinne
I was the biggest fan of the manga. So when I started collecting anime in the mid 90's you can only imagine how excited I was for this movie. I enjoyed the silliness and the fights, but the scene that stole it for me was at 25:47 . The film completed shifted after that
Also, I haven't really watched Ranma since 2012 but I remember finding happosai and Kuno hilarious. Especially his "what a haul! What a haul!"
The second movie was the best one.
Does anyone else find the comment from Takahashi about being "worried about writing a male protagonist" rather strange? I mean, before Ranma 1/2, she'd already written the male protagonists of Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, One Pound Gospel and Mermaid Flesh, and those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. I mean, admittedly, in all of those except maybe UY, the protagonist role had been shared between a male and a female, but it's still not as if she had no practice with writing leading men...
Probably gonna be a while until I get to make this reference with the proper Ranma 1/2 work so I'll use it here *ahem* "Ranma mamma mia!"
Oh god. My first exposure to Ranma was via an Inuyasha dvd i had in my Middle School days. It had a trailer for the first dvd box set on it. Back then, i couldn’t find those easily, however i had managed to find the vhs boxset of the first 18 episodes at a local Half Price Books. From there, me and various friends would watch those tapes endlessly. Ironically, despite having the Pokémon vhs tapes too, i didn’t see the commercial for the movie until i saw the Ranma tapes. I would find various random Ranma tapes overtime at Resale shops and the like, most of which i still have to this day. However, going back to the show these days is very difficult for me, given that I’ve grown a dislike for most of the characters as i grew up and my tastes changed. Still, those were good times.
Isn't Shampoo supposed to speak with broken Japanese/English since Chinese is her primary language and she isn't fluent in Japanase/English?
As I recall that is a dub thing (even though I like it). In the original while she speaks more fluently as I recall.
Should note she's not the only one using the 'I use my name for all pronouns' speak. Azusa, who is definitely Japanese, does as well... of course she's voiced by the same VA so...
No, her Japanese dialog, flow, and intonation are stereotypical of a Chinese person in Japan that didn’t grow up speaking the language… plus she sprinkles in Chinese dialog just as the English dub.
Would’ve been a disservice if they didn’t keep her like that in the English dub
Ah, Ranma 1/2, the series that introduced me to my favorite anime director/character Atsuko Nakajima and Tomomi Mochizuki, respectively.
I'm lucky the country I grew up on had so much good anime even back in the early 90s.
I experienced anime from the 40s up to "new releases" before Toonami was a thing.
I watched Astroboy, candy, Heidy, Saint Seiya, Lupín, dragon ball, sailor moon, Sakura card captor, Gundam, many more etc etc.
And from them all, Ranma 1/2 was the one that connected the most.
Not because it was softcore porn. No that was only funny when the full frontal nudity was televised at 11am and NOBODY getting offended.
It was the best due to the identity issues most characters had, not just the cursed one, but most characters displayed the same level of identity crisis that growing teens and insecure adults display.
I'm sure you can make it about something shallow and superficial like gender and sexuality, but the show went far beyond that, into the psyche of who you are regardless of who you come across as.
Great show.
For me, the Pokemon VHS that had the Ranma movie trailer was "Fashion Flash." It had Ash's Gym Battle with Erika, the episode where Misty catches Psyduck and the one where Brock gets Vulpix.
I remember that trailer from the end of Pokemon VHS tapes! I also seem to remember other stuff from those too...
Ranma 1/2 is one franchise that's very close to my heart. I love its humour and sentimentality. My nickname in the university was P-chan since I'm Peter and get lost easily.
I'm jealous your university knew about anime like this. Most of my school life it was shameful to watch anime. Towards the very end it became acceptable but everyone pretty much just knew the popular sesional shows
@@someuser4166 @SomeUser Nah, we were just three and a half weirdos reading manga xD.
The second most influencial to me, of course, is Slayers. I think, it and the Evangelion were the top picks.
Haha ryouga is great , fun nickname
Lol honestly, even if the VA is of Asian decent or not, a VA is a VA, the woman that voiced Shampoo is an amazing person
also, let’s be honest...we’re talking about the standards and practices of the VA industry from 30-40 years ago; people, in general, were not as enlightened or even aware of such issues, at the time; also consider that every ‘Chinese’ character in the series dresses like an extra from a Shaw Bros. film, and that even today, many Japanese don’t know that much about ‘cultural representation’, and negotiating taboo issues of race and culture, because there aren’t a lot of non-native Japanese there...all that to say that there are going to be many portrayals of race, ethnicity and gender that would be looked upon as objectionable by today’s standards-especially by people from the US/Western Europe in media from the eras you generally cover on this channel...no need to spend so much time on it every time it comes up...
@@Ubernerd3000 Let's limit that view to Americans and their obsession, most of people even in western Europe aren't offended by a character wearing a mexican hat or a chinese dress. They would be for an African man in a Tarzan "savage" attire because it makes him appear as a "dumb savage" and that's insensitive but as long as it represent a cultural aspect that existed there is really not that huge of a wave of taboos in France or Spain or Swiss or at least latin countries. Anglosaxon countries on the otherhand are getting extrem like england or Ireland that can be true (probably because english langage let them more prone to be influenced by american taboos).
I can't wait for you to discuss the 2nd movie or the Ovas! The animation to both was so awesome and hilarious, it still gives me joy 25+ years later!!
They also made an ova in 2012 about happosai putting a sleeping curse on akane
Though it did get a English dub for the TV series I never saw a single English dubbed episode.
Thanks
I discovered Ranma while searching on youtube for animes to watch and i found a playlist with all the episodes dubbed in pt-br
In a similar vein to you, the name "Ranma 1/2" buried itself in my mind and went ignored for nearly a decade until Middle School where we just HAPPENED to have volumes of the manga in our school library. I came out of nostalgic curiosity, stayed for boobies and wound up loving it for the comedy and became a lifelong fan to the point where I've got all but one of the 2-in-1 manga (The final volume still eludes me) and have spent the better part of the last few years doing a Ranma crossover fanfic.
I used to watch Ranma as a little kid in my grandmas house, along with Dr slump, the original dragon ball and other anime. In Mexico anime like these where broadcast normally like cartoons.
My first exposure to that 'Ranma' trailer was on the DVD release of 'Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture' as well as the 'Darkstalkers' OVA.
10:19 wtf the first season got worse ratings than the rest? The first ones by far the best.
Correction sir. Ranma 1/2 is not a 143 episode anime. Its a 161 episode anime with (technically) 3 movies, and 11 oavs.
The second series was 143 episodes. The first was 18. Combine both, and you have 161 episodes
Same for me on my first introduction on Ranma. I kind of get that at the time for Viz showing a trailer for one of their titles after you watch an anime from them but it was always odd they chose one of the Ranma films after Pokemon. Although it's not as weird with something like Funimation where they release some of 4KIDS titles on home video and still having Funimation ads for Dragon Ball, Blue Gender, and Yu Yu Hakusho.
Ranma was popular in Mexico 🇲🇽 so I watched it in Spanish. Plus many other anime titles showed on Spanish networks long before the US.. I saw Knights Rayearth, detective conan, dragon ball z and all of sailor moon (uncensored) they kept all that blood and naked bits.. 😳 it was the best 👌
This is the anime that solidified my love for the medium. Pity this movie isnt that great, but at least the second one is good!
Has anyone Watched the Abridged Movie from The Schmuckers
Abridge = mid
Akane is personally my favorite female character Rumiko Takahashi created. It goes her, Kyoko, Lum, and then Kagome.
Man, time flies when your a 90's kid. Also, Sad that Ash and Pikachu are leaving Pokémon.
It was time
I really really need to watch this anime, great video!
I think you give Akane a little too much credit in the final section of this review; it never felt to me that she was "testing Ranma" to see if he was pursuing her out of love or obligation, but instead more like Akane just tends to give up on Ranma because she can't stop pushing him away between her own insecurity and Ranma's hostility. Also, yes, Ranma is a jerk, but I would hesitate to lay the blame for his and Akane's fights entirely on *his* head, because she is just as likely to tease or mock him first as the other way around.
Also ranma becomesway less arrogant over time and also is a tsundere. Ad he getsway better with inscurities toogiven how he becomes way less nonchalant as ranma chan.
Yeah he is insesitiv a jerk buthe really tries ad grws outof his worse stuff too. He isstill a hothead,
but akane really is pushing away a lot and later, yeah .She should know tasing her is his flirting, through the cooking :/ fair.
Hell yeah i love ranma 1/2 ive watched it so many times in spanish and im glad you finally got to talking about it
Amazing job on this video.
This was the first Ranma thingy I ever saw
Latino America dub es #1
Siempre
(aunque en esta película le cambiaron las voces a casi todo el elenco)
@@mafeuk Si, pero me refiero a la serie.
Those Red Pokemon VHS Tapes of the indigo league from the late 90's.👊
I watched some anime as a kid, like Voltron, before I even knew what anime was. But Ranma was my first real venture into the medium. My first episode was the second one of the Ryoga arc. It was airing at Gen Con, back when it was in Milwaukee and the anime "room" was a single screen between four pillars with sheets draped around it.
Damn. Now you got me wanting to find my old Ranma OSTs.
"It was a normal day at the Tendo training hall and due to a....misunderstanding, I wound up getting KIDNAPPED!"
I mean if KB's doing this, it won't be long before they review Dog of Flanders starring Rober Loggia
I too remember seeing this at the end of all those Viz Video/Pioneer Pokemon VHS
Maison Ikkoku' From Viz Video. Because Home Is Where The Heart Is.'
I got into Ranma back in 1996, before the pokemon craze but several years into the manga run. My first issue of Ranma--and incidentally my first manga, period--was the first appearance of Ukyo Kuonji, since it was the newest one, and I knew NOTHING about the series besides the fact that it was labeled a "martial arts sex comedy." (yes, Viz actually went there--even anime for shonen wasn't anime for kids back then, especially with Ranma's penchant for comedic nudity). It was a weird place to start, to be honest--in those first two chapters, Ranma never changes into his girl form, and in the next issue, he only changes for one frame, and I missed it completely the first time, and so I had a completely different idea of what the comic was about. Thank Christ I didn't start with the previous storyline, the four chapter arc of absolutely batshit absurdity that was Akane's lethal cookie storyline, where somehow Akane baking terrible cookies leads her and Ranma into the two Kuno's deathtrap house. I'd have checked out immediately.
Thankfully, after I read the Ukyo arc, I watched the first season of the anime and fell in love with it. Honestly, it was Akane's B-plot unrequited love for Dr. Tofu that sold me on the show, how it was built up for most of the show before interrupting Ranma and Ryoga's fight and just taking over for a while. In retrospect, it was kind of a troll move to build up Ranma and Ryoga's rivalry (at this point, just a grudge--Ryoga had no interest in Akane yet) and then just shut down the fight without a winner when a non-combatant is "cut" by an errant attack. It was not something I'd seen before, certainly not in the American cartoons I grew up with, not even BTAS. I'd also never seen an animated show "waste" so much screentime on static or quiet moments of characters sitting by a river or sitting down to slowly eat a bag of burgers and toss and retoss the same wrapper until finally making it into the bin--sure, the latter is filler, a bit of flavor added for the anime that didn't appear in the manga, but I still love that scene if only for the sense of verisimilitude. I'm probably the only one, but I wish the series had stayed the course with this aesthetic instead of going goofier with the animation with the next series, but then, let's face it, the manga itself was mostly to blame for that. Takahashi herself lamented those first stories for front-loading the series with too much character development and romance, which, in my opinion, is the wrong lesson to have learned from writing the series, but then, I'm somebody who, on principle, thinks no manga should last more than fifteen or so volumes, or about 3000 pages (I guarantee you One Piece could be told in ten and Naruto in five and Meitantai Conan in two (one volume for his transformation, one for his eventual cure, every other story is filler). Nausicaa manages to tell its story in just over 1100 pages, and it feels epic because Miyazaki knows how to compress his storytelling. Even Maison Ikkoku (15 volumes) and Cross Game (17 volumes) have significant bloat (MI has a lot of repeated story beats, and CG has Adachi's typical baseball bloat, though not as bad as H2 or even Touch). Ranma, at 38 volumes, was published weekly for NINE freaking years, and that's just feels ludicrous to me. I know complaints of decompressed story-telling sound odd coming from somebody who just praised a five minute scene of trash can hoops, but I'd rather watch that than somebody channel their ki or pool the power of the universe for the same amount of time. There's a sweet spot, and 1000+ chapters of stretchy pirate antics is not it.
Me too. I discovered Ranma before Pokemon, we must be a rare breed among americans.
I could only imagine what your mother would have thought when you were 9 and if you had watched the Viz Media VHS tapes of Ranma 1/2 and the episodes of Ranma and/or Akane being in the bath that first time when Akane found out that Ranma was a BOY and not a GIRL that she thought she knew from her first impressions.
All I can say is, IT'S ABOUT TIME!
I couldn't be any more excited for this. Drama one half was my first true anime that I recall watching outside of DBZ Sailor Moon and Speed Racer. This was before the days of Toonami.
My first exposure to Ranma was not only the trailer from the Pokemon videos but also in print ads from the Pokemon manga( the eletric tale of pikachu). But it's funny how Megumi Hayashibara would go on the voice Musashi/Jessie in the Pokémon anime, talk about odd connections.
Megumi had gotten married around that time and went into a semi-retirement, so, she began to chose roles where she would have less screen time and more time, for herself.
One forgotten influence of Ranma 1/2 was it's fanfiction scene. With literal gender-bending, cross-dressing, and both hyper-masculization & hyper-feminization, toxic relationships, and physical abuse being plot points and character traits (never tackled seriously by the anime/manga), many fan authors filled that gap. Wild to think about heavy LGBTQ themes & relationships in fanworks from the mid-to late 90's and early 2000's.
It was inspired for the graphic novel Scott pilgrim.
Nice to see Ranma featured.
*What a TREAT this IS for **#Ranma** fans !!!! **#KaiserBeamz** is such an amazing writer and media analyst, I'm so jealous of this man's brain!* 🤯 *Sharing this!*
glad to see you got to ranma finely. :)
Kudos on using the Movie Trailer's Narration at the start there!😆
One of my earlier exposures to anime!
Ranma is the first anime I've seen (though it didn't make me an anime fan, at least not yet, as I was still young at that time) and I've definitely have watched this. This was enjoyable; it's my most favorite Ranma movie.
God the tune from those vhs still immediately comes to mind. I love the damn toon! I always wanted a Ranma crossover with Inuyasha!
Psychic Surprise was the one I had!
Heck, even the US cartoon "Pinky and the Brain" made a ranma 1/2 spoof called "Brinky 1/2" in their comic series, so I think kids were the prime demographic in the west for this series.
Also, Ranma was so popular it was shown during prime time in Germany back then
It was parody in robot chicken in one episode.
The way he edited the video makes you think the series unsavory bits are just master roshi -esque shenanigans but the real uncomfy with the franchise is how much you see 15 year old Ranmas tits. I still can’t tell if it was just 80s humor or political commentary on how girls are exploited.
probably commentary too, given how its ranma whois not a girl, gets to learn about that. I would gues it intentionalranma gets the brunt of it.
I mean still a bit much, but i can see the social commentary of that. And most of the time he isnt innocent either. Or exploits himself.
Can you do yugioh 1998 review
I don't remember what my first exposure to Ranma 1/2 was, but I never watched a single episode of the anime. I was a manga only fan. I didn't read all of the manga, but I did read most of it, mainly because most of my manga reading was done through the library since I didn't have the money to buy a lot of manga. Maybe the library was where I first discovered it. That was how I found a lot of the manga I read as a kid.
read the entire manga, it is far superior to the anime
Ranma 1/2 was one of those things that ended up as a nostalgic artifact in the back of my brain before I ever actually got into anime. I remember there was an ad for it at the tail end of a pokemon VHS I used to own (the one with the hypno and vulpix episodes) and something about the narration in it (plus ti coming at the end meaning it was only communicated to me in the surreal moments I was too lazy or tired to get up and switch tapes) meant that I instantly recognized it, seeing it later.
EDIT: Well damn I didn't know that that cultural artifact was going to be the introduction to the whole damn video.
Seeing Ranma again brings back memories. I used to watch an episode of both Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura daily and liked to imagine they're both set in the same universe haha
Well, they WERE both set in fictional suburbs of Tokyo
@@shoknifeman2mikado135 And around the Nerima ward too! Takahashi said Furinkan is set near Nerima, and in UY Ataru's father mentions Nerima being nearby Tomobiki