Ranma ½

The original transagenda anime.

I know what you're thinking.

How could I, the self-proclaimed queer space vixen herself, POSSIBLY have been born in the mid-80s, growing up sheltered and conservative only to later find out I'm a bisexual genderfuck bitch, and then start a Watch List chock full of anime I'd never seen - that I've been working through for over 15 years now - but somehow NOT have sat down to watch one of the most definitive egg-cracking anime series of all time until fucking 2023-2024?

Listen, sometimes it just takes me a while to hit my mark.

Aside from the obvious aforementioned "sheltered and conservative" part, I had a weird aversion to anime growing up. I didn't quite *get* Dragonball, wasn't wooed by the giant robots of Gundam or Voltron, and straight-up wasn't allowed to watch Sailor Moon because I was A Boy and also my mom said their skirts were "too short". I tended to gravitate toward comedy cartoons over action ones, partly because I think I was unintentionally parroting my dad's smug and unimpressed disdain for over-the-top action scenes. As if being aware that performing unrealistic stunts or seeing through special effects somehow proved how much "smarter" he was than the show or whatever. So glad I grew the fuck out of that phase.

Speaking of dads, these might be two of my all-time favorite anime dads. Absolute goobers, the both of them.

But by the time I did finally come around on anime, I was far more interested in darker, more stylized shows, and skipped nearly all of the classics in favor of more obscure artsy stuff instead, like Serial Experiments Lain and Mononoke. This left a gaping hole in my Watch List history that I'm still trying to fill to this day, one show at a time. One day I'll even get around to - mark my words - finally watching Sailor Moon. Take THAT, mom!

Which, in a roundabout way, finally brings me to Ranma ½.

Have you had your daily dose of girl juice today?

I don't remember what prompted me to actually get off my ass and start watching it, but as I mentioned in my Kämpfer review, the fact that Ranma is 160+ episodes long is a big part of why I kept stalling and putting it off. It's also why this (relatively short) review took so long to finish. Given I only watch about two episodes a day, I like to break up longer series by staggering seasons in between other shows to avoid getting burnt out. Still, 7 seasons is a LOT, and probably scrapes the upper limits of how long I'm willing to stick with something before it's too long for me to care, especially for a show that only sticks with one single premise and doesn't evolve much beyond that.

Then again, never underestimate the oldest trick in the book.

Friends had also warned me beforehand that Ranma ½ WAS a product of its time, and that some things hadn't exactly aged well. To be fair, that sort of thing doesn't faze me anymore, as very few things on this planet actually "age well". You quickly learn to accept things for what they must have been during the era they were made in, or you'll never be able to handle anything more controversial than a big budget Disney movie.

That said, what everyone FAILED to prepare me for was just how cartoony this series really is.

This is one of those blessed shows that often forgoes nuance and meaning in favor of random comedy. Sometimes a thing just happens because wouldn't be funny if it did?

For the uninitiated few, Ranma ½ is a series built on a simple premise. A kid (Ranma) and his hard-ass father (Genma) were wandering out in China, training in their Anything-Goes martial arts style, when Ranma fell into a cursed hot spring haunted by the ghost of a girl who drowned there many years ago. The effect of the curse stipulates that any time Ranma is splashed with cold water, he transforms into a girl, and vice-versa with hot water. Likewise, his dad fell into a DIFFERENT cursed spring that turns him into a panda under the same trigger. Not to mention the countless other characters suffering similar fates over the long and winding course of the show's illustrious tenure.

Sneak peek of Untitled Goose Game 2: Peace Was Never An Option.

Fast forward a bit and Ranma and Genma end up in Japan, knocking on the door of Genma's old friend Soun. As it turns out, Genma has been a bit of a moocher all his life, and absent-mindedly promised to pay several people for their hospitality with Ranma's hand in marriage. Soun, already looking for someone to inherit his fighting dojo, is delighted to see them and introduces his daughter and protegé, the tomboy Akane. The rest of the series focuses on Ranma and Akane growing up together as resentfully betrothed powder-keg teenagers, and on getting Ranma into Hilarious Situations due to his curse.

Do you get off casting hexes, assuming forms of either sexes, and oh, are you a boy or a girl?

This is all not to mention that Akane is not the only one Ranma was "promised" betrothal to, and has a few other persistent admirers chasing after him as well. And strong independent Akane gets harrassed by would-be suitors on the daily as well, creating a bizarre labyrinth of interlocking love triangles that often hinge on Akane's disinterest in boys and Ranma's unintentional genderfluidity. Some suitors love Ranma in one gender and want to kill him on sight in the other, naturally leading to a lot of trickery and contrived date setups.

I get why people say this "aged poorly", seeing as "traps" and trans panic are still very real and dangerous issues we face on the daily, but the joy of fictional media is that it allows us to enjoy these sort of casual crossdressing japes without the characters suffering more than a bonk on the head or a goofy heart-eyed chase scene, which makes for a nice escape from reality.

There's also an endless capacity for "sudden boobs" gags that just never get old.

Interspersed among the teenage love story shenanigans (and within them as well) is the show's penchant for comically unique martial arts fighting styles. Traditional kendo and judo obviously apply, but characters often pride themselves on using their own bizarre hyper-specific fighting styles derived from just about any random hobby or concept you can imagine, including but not limited to: tea ceremonies, calligraphy, foie gras, ice skating, and wara ningyo (those Japanese straw dolls that behave similarly to voodoo). Nearly every random side character we encounter seems to practice a different hyperfixation, and Ranma ends up learning their unique style to either mimic or counter it, typically to win a bet involving a hand in marriage or the fate of Soun's dojo.

Not exactly the most polite way to tell someone to fork off, but effective nonetheless.

You would think a series that thrives on recycling and repurposing the same few gags for an endless slate of random encounters would eventually wear thin and get boring, especially for a full seven seasons, but for all its repetition and memetic contrivances, Ranma just never seems to run out of gas. The show always somehow has another vehicle on hand for pushing Ranma and Akane closer together (or farther apart) in typical teen drama fashion, or another of Genma's innumberable acquaintances and enemies to square off against. And because each type of so-called "martial arts fighting styles" is so radically different, the formula stays pretty consistently entertaining and the characters remain memorable, even if they never return for a rematch.

10/10 character design to turn the King card into a swindling gambler who thrives on hustling and cheating against children.

And that's just the recycled gags. What really stuck out to me was the surprising number of one-off episodes that felt like I was watching an entirely different show. Whether it was about re-telling a classic folk tale like that of the Yuki-Onna, or a giant lonely ghost cat looking for a bride, or Akane's pervy live-in not-grandpa getting it on with a naga spirit, there were a whole slew of misadventures that took a hard left turn into weirdness that I couldn't have seen coming but appreciated nonetheless. As I frequently harp about in other reviews, aimless one-off filler* episodes are often my favorites, plot be damned, and getting completely blindsided by episodes like these in a show that typically centers on its very specific teen romance setup was easily one of my favorite of its many aspects!

*Filler is often a misnomer these days used to mean "episodes that do not advance the main plot", even though its ACTUAL definition is "extra episodes created to fill a season order when there is no more source material left to adapt from". Funny enough, I'm using it here to denote BOTH meanings, as a lot of the episodes I've mentioned were not part of the original manga!

If you had told me before I started the show that this gif was from Ghost Sweeper Mikami, I might have believed you.

Surprisingly, for being such a core aspect of the show, the genderswap angle that made it so famous ultimately takes a back seat in terms of screen time, especially in the later seasons. The misadventures at school, endless barrage of martial arts training and fight sequences, and the eternal will-they-or-won't-they tension of Ranma and Akane always takes center stage over any boy/girl shenanigans. Whether it cracked a million eggs or not, the show itself doesn't really do much to push any so-called trans agenda beyond simply suggesting that gender rigidity is weird and unnecessary - and that we should all be a little more accepting of people who don't apply to it - but that's pretty standard fare for genderswap stories. It's no more or less impactful than movies like Some Like It Hot, or that one episode of The Fairly OddParents.

If I had a dollar for every time some dipshit used this gif I made in an anti-trans tirade post on Tumblr, I'd be fucking rich.

That said, when you're growing up queer (whether you know it, you're closeted, or you're questioning), especially back in the über-conservative 80s and early 90s, and there are no stories for you to relate to, Ranma ½ at least offers a glimpse into that world, and that alone can be enough of a light to pierce that darkness. While on the whole the show often feels like a Straight Eye For The Queer Guy sort of situation, that catharsis is still there, and here in the future we can still appreciate that fact no matter how much time passes. Hell, given the way things are spiraling for queer people here in 2020s America, even something this simple would feel downright radical and progressive in some states. Every young queer looking for a scrap of recognition starts somewhere, and you could do a lot worse than Ranma.

Maybe don't use the show as a reference for how to navigate your budding teen romance years though.

Something else that struck me as funny is that Ranma's gender "curse" can actually be read multiple ways. Being "cursed" with losing your supposed manly manhood is a classic "open your eyes" gateway for MTF trans people, especially in a society like Ranma's that insists there are inherent attributes associated with either gender (i.e. physical strength, emotional aptitude, caring about appearance, etc). But if you read it in reverse, where Ranma is a guy by default, only turning into a girl through outside circumstances, it can also read as an FTM story. It stresses him out to be seen as a girl when he knows he's a guy, and while he would seemingly do anything to be rid of this "curse", he never lets being in Girl Form stop him from being his manly self.

No matter which way society demands to see Ranma, there's a story for trans people anywhere on the spectrum to find themselves, especially early on in their journey. And that absolutely counts for something.

"Yup, when it comes to eating out, being a girl's the only way to go." - actual dialogue from the simply excellent english dub.

At the end of the day though, Ranma ½ remains a lighthearted and fun series for everyone. Clearly it can provide a little gateway into provoking gender thoughts, but it still keeps itself a little too straight for people who are looking to move past the safety of The Closet. The art and animation are lively and very cartoony, and each episode remains self-contained with no linear narrative to pay attention to, making it perfect for Saturday morning madness. It's hard to really compare it to anything other than its fellow 90s anime peers (Samurai Pizza Cats and Sailor Moon come to mind), but it's also very worth checking out if you like wacky rom-com hybrid shows like Ah! My Goddess or a less nudity-laden Girls Bravo. And you can clearly see the lasting influence Ranma has left throughout the years in other genderific anime like Kämpfer, or even cartoons like SheZow and Steven Universe.

It's a classic for a reason, very much worth watching on its own merit, but doubly so if you want to take a look back into the history and context of queerness in media!

In my opinion, it's important that we succeed in achieving some level of representation in the media we consume, but it's even more important that we TRY, regardless of how "good" that representation may actually be.