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Synopsis - Ranma 1/2
Tendo Soun receives a postcard from China indicating that his old friend,
Saotome Genma, is returning from a training trip with his son, Ranma, to marry
one of Soun's daughters to carry on the tradition of the
Anything-Goes-School-of-Martial-Arts.
When Ranma arrives, Soun faints in shock when it's revealed to him that
Ranma is actually a girl. Here's the catch, though: Ranma's not really a girl,
but a boy with a Chinese curse, triggered by cold water while hot water
reverses the effect.
Ranma is then given a choice of Soun's three daughters: sweet and demure
Kasumi, money-grubbing Nabiki, or cute but violent Akane. Kasumi and Nabiki
immediately pick Akane for Ranma, since "Akane hates boys, but Ranma's
only half a boy." Akane doesn't like Ranma because he beat her at martial
arts (he was a girl at the time), and Ranma doesn't like Akane because she's
violent and "uncute." Ranma makes the crack that he's better built
as a girl than Akane is, and Akane thanks him by crushing him with the dining
table. A healthy start to a beautiful relationship. And this is only the
beginning ...
Review
I love this thing. This was one of the first anime titles I saw, and it's
still one of my all time favorites.
Ranma 1/2 is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, anime or otherwise.
The scripting is great, a laugh a minute, and the situations posed to Ranma
and the gang defy all senses of propriety, sanity, or gravity. The characters
are all hilarious (and cute too), and help make the series more than just
another teenage sitcom. There is no middle ground in Ranma 1/2, which helps
create the simply BIZARRE conflicts between the characters. Beverly Hills,
90210 has nothing on Ranma 1/2 when it comes to complex relationships. Love
triangles? Heck, try love three-dimensional parallelipideds strewn with
secants, diagonals, and singularities.
The martial arts in Ranma 1/2 is also very good. Not very realistic, of
course, but the fight scenes well executed enough that even a non-martial arts
fan can get caught up in the action (kinda like what Jackie Chan does for
martial arts on the silver screen). Of course, it doesn't hurt either that the
animation is generally pretty good, especially for a TV series (the OAV series
has even better animation). "Romantic" scenes are done well, too,
never taking itself too seriously lest it turn into a soap opera.
Soundtrack is done well. Not too complex, not too fancy, but just what the
scene needs to pack that extra punch. Of course, the OAV themes put out by
Doco (the quintet consisting of the voice actresses for onna-Ranma, Shampoo,
Kasumi, Nabiki, and Akane) are in my opinion at least as good as anything else
out there.
Dubbing...well, the Japanese version is probably better, but who cares?
Ranma 1/2 has some of the best dubbing I've ever heard. All the actors really
put effort into their parts, and the voice matches are done amazingly well. In
fact, I actually prefer some of the U.S. voices to the Japanese voices (Kuno
and Nabiki).
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