Series Premiere – Ranma ½

She’s a girl who hates boys, he’s a boy who turned into a girl, can I be more obvious?

He is a warrior and she is also a warrior, what else can I say?

Oh, hello. If the murderous lyrics of a hit Canadian pop-punk song from 2002 didn’t clue you in, I’m pretty sure I now qualify as the “old man” of anime, with over two decades of fandom under my belt. belt. and Ranma ½ It was this series that sent me down this terrible path.

but! The series I’m going to talk about here, there are two episodes Netflix? That’s not Ranma ½ Grew up with me. Not your mother’s Ranma ½one might say. It’s just that I shouldn’t have said that, and I’m sorry that I did.

It seems unfathomable to me that some fans don’t know the basic premise, but if you’re among them, let’s get started: A few years ago, Genma Saotome and Soun Tendo agreed to marry their children to The martial arts school that ensures anything is possible will continue for generations to come. But when Genma and his 16-year-old son Ranma were supposed to arrive, a panda and a teenage girl showed up instead. It turns out that a few weeks ago, Ranma and Genma fell into the water while training at some cursed springs in China. A gifted female version of myself. Hot water brings them back.

In the middle of this is poor Akane Tendo, Soun’s youngest daughter. She is a victim of her own beauty and she hates boys with a passion. Her older sisters Nabiki and Kasumi insist that they are a perfect match since Ranma is half girl. Never mind that Ranma was rude, vain, and saw her naked. Never mind that Akane felt like he was being cheated on and didn’t tell her what happened until she saw his penis. They have been rejected and are now engaged.

Their troubles become more complicated when Ranma enters Akane and Nashu’s school, Furinkan High School. He learns that Akane has to fight dozens of boys every day because Tatewaki Kuno, the village idiot, has declared that anyone who wins a battle with her has the right to ask her out. Of course, Kuno isn’t happy about her engagement to Ranma, and the two boys get into a fight. It was just Ranma accidentally triggering his transformation by jumping out of a second story window, not realizing there was a pool of water below him. He flees the school to avoid detection, with Cuno in hot pursuit.

But here’s the thing: Cuno is stupid. Really, really stupid. However, he couldn’t blame him for not intuitively realizing that the boy he was fighting with and the girl without pants he met outside school were the same person. Ranma, on the other hand, probably should have figured it out when Nabiki handed him a letter addressed to “the girl with the pigtails,” inviting “her” to meet at school. Instead, he’s caught off guard when Kuno hands him a bouquet of roses instead of fighting him.

although map Choosing to set the series in the 1980s – after all, this is one of those stories where the advent of mobile phones would drastically change the paradigm – they updated the visual style. Yes, that does mean we don’t get to see nipples, or in a weird case, Ranma’s ass crack. I’m a little confused by the change in style. It’s a more faithful entertainment Rumiko TakahashiThe character art in the new anime is more expressive than in the old anime, where the characters tended to appear more stoic. However, for some reason they also added more cartoony backgrounds and comic-like sound effects flying across the screen, which adds nothing but making the visuals busier.

I also know that the first two episodes of the old series were shot-for-shot, almost line-by-line, and aside from the updated art style, the first episode is an almost exact recreation of the original. This is mostly because the old first episode stayed true to Takahashi’s manga; if anything, some of the great comedic timing from the old series has been lost. Newcomers won’t notice, and even most old fans won’t notice, but there are some little touches that I missed, like when Akane picked up the table and knocked Genma off his feet, and Genma quickly moved out of the way.

But then, episode two really proves that this new version has its own charm. Kuno walks into the closet in his uniform and emerges seconds later in a hakama when a classmate asks him if he’s Superman, a completely new joke that’s delightfully unexpected. On the other hand, this episode introduces a new character played by the legendary voice actor Guan Zhihe Who is only responsible for narrating what is happening. Boy, do I get tired of animations going out of their way to tell me what’s happening on the screen, as if I had the audio description turned on. Whether this character actually adds anything beyond commenting on the obvious remains to be seen.

The first two episodes don’t offer much to think about in this regard, but for better or worse, Ranma ½ It is a series with serious gender issues. This is a watershed series, not only for anime and manga fans in general, but for those who come to understand themselves through exposure to stories that understand what it means to be a boy and a girl in a more fluid way. Not that it’s a particularly advanced idea, it’s just… well, I’ll talk about it when we get there.

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Ranma ½ Currently streaming on Netflix.