Click on a character for information on him or her.
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Click on a character for information on him or her.
The main character in the series is Ranma Saotome, who is an excellent martial artist among
other things. After falling in a Cursed Spring in China, every time he touches cold water, he
becomes a girl! When he touches hot water, he changes back into his guy form. This leads to many
funny and ackward situations, as many different people from Ranma's past track him down and
attempt to maim, kill, and marry him. When Ranma is a girl, he is referred to as Ranma-Chan, and
while he is a boy he is called Ranma-Kun.
Ranma also has a fear of cats. When he was young, his father decided to put him through a new
and highly advanced form of training known as Cat-Fu. What his dad failed to realize was the
fact that the training was not recommended because it was known to cause severe psychological
trauma. At any rate, it involved leaving Ranma in a pit of starving cats, while he was wrapped
in fish sausage for quite a while.
To top things off, his father Genma has arranged him to be married to a girl
named Akane Tendo, so that they may carry on the Anything Goes School Of
Martial Arts.
Ranma's father, Genma, has a similar curse. He fell into cursed spring of
drowned panda, "...very tragic story of panda who drown in spring two thousand year ago. Now
anyone who fall in spring take body of a panda..."
Genma, and his friend Soun Tendo, had arranged for Ranma
to be married to one of Soun's daughters, in order to carry on the Anything
Goes Martial Arts Training Hall. Ranma ends up being engaged to
Akane, mostly by Akane's sisters' choice.
Akane Tendo is Ranma's fiance, although it wasn't exactly her choice. Like
many characters in the series, she is pretty good at martial arts, because she gets a lot of
practice. The reason I say that is because everyday that she went to school, she had to fight
off practically every guy in the school just to get to class. Eventually all of the guys in her
school gave it up and accepted her engagement to Ranma.
As for her relationship with Ranma, they never seem to be getting along,
although they do have feelings for eachother. Akane seems to be constantly injuring
Ranma, by hitting him on purpose, out of anger, and sometimes even by
accident. Their quarrels are often caused by eachother's stubbornness, or a simple sarcastic
comment.
She also has a pet pig named P-Chan; more on "the pig" later.
Nabiki Tendo is Akane's sister, age 17. She is one of the coolest characters,
because she can get money out of almost anyone, especially Ranma or
Kuno. I would consider her an accomplished extortionist, at the least. One
example of this is when she took pictures of Ranma (girl form) and
Akane, and sold them to Kuno. Not only did she do that,
she didn't let Kuno see the pictures until he bought her spaghetti and ice
cream! She even auctioned off time with Ranma to Ukyou,
Shampoo, and Kodachi!
Kasumi Tendo, the oldest of the sisters, is the most normal one of them all. When she was young,
her mother died, and she basically took over her mother's duties in the Tendo home. She can cook
and clean, and she would never take advantage of anyone, unlike certain other people.
Doctor Tofu has one heck of a crush on her, and whevever she is around, he
acts really silly.
Soun Tendo is their father, but they don't really give much information on him. He runs the
Anything Goes Martial Arts Training Hall. He and Genma have arranged for
Ranma to be married to one of his daughters, in order to carry on the
training hall. He also cries a lot.
Tatewaki Kuno has a crush on both Ranma-Chan and Akane, and he is Furinkan High School's biggest hentai (pervert) as well. He still doesn't know about Ranma's curse even though he should. He is a major rival of Ranma in his male form too, because Nabiki told him that The Pig-Tailed Girl's body and soul both belonged to Ranma.
Kodachi is just as odd, and she is in love with Ranma. She has many hidden weapons which she always seems to carry around, although it's hard to tell where she keeps them. Some such weapons include huge wooden mallets, spiked batons, even her trademark Black Roses, complete with paralysing powder.
Happosai can only be described as a perverted old man. He used to train Soun
and Genma when they were young, and is quite a good martial artist. One of
the cool things about him is his common use of bombs. Quite often they appear out of nowhere and
are sometimes bigger than him, but isn't that to be expected when comparing them to someone who
is that small?
He has a affinity for women's underwear and bathing suits, which he will steal whenever he gets
the chance, even if the woman who owns them is currently wearing them! This puts him in a great
number of situations with people chasing him, (usually Ranma-Chan,) and
often causes him to be kicked to who knows where.
Cologne is the fiesty old grandmother of Shampoo. She is very wise in her old age and is constantly plotting for Shampoo and Ranma to get married. She calls Ranma "Son-In-Law" when she talks to him. She also runs the Cat Cafe with her Grand-daughter, Shampoo.
My favorite character is Ryoga Hibiki, also known as "The Eternal Lost Boy". This
nickname comes from Ryoga's lack of direction sense. No matter where he is going, he won't get
there directly. Ryoga is an absent minded boy who seems to always be lost. He is also one of the
funniest characters in the series. Aside from that, Ryoga is also a good martial artist, (you
guessed it!) and he has a crush on Akane.
Ryoga also has the same curse that Ranma has, except that he turns into a
pig when doused with cold water. He got the curse when he was following Ranma
(in an attempt to kill him), and got knocked into one of the cursed springs. After many bad
experiences like almost being cooked, or being trapped in a herd of animals, Ryoga has always
carried an umbrella wherever he goes to prevent himself from turning into a pig.
Now he is Akane's pet pig and he even sleeps in her bed! She has named him
P-Chan. Ranma is absolutely furious about this, but cannot tell
Akane about Ryoga's secret because of a promise he made to him.
Asuza is Ranma 1/2's kleptomaniac. Thinking of her, I am reminded of Tasslehoff (from those
Dragonlance novels) because she has a habit of "finding" things. Whenever she sees
something she likes, she takes it and names it (usually a French name). From what I hear, the
only thing that she hasn't managed to keep after taking it was P-Chan, who
she named Charlotte. Of course, with Ryoga's direction sense, he wouldn't
have been able to stick around if he had wanted to.
This theft of Akane's pet drags Akane into a skating
match with Asuza and Mikado (which became known as the Charlotte Cup) but
oddly enough, it was Ranma and Ryoga who ended up
winning the match. This strange development is detailed below.
Originally, Akane was going to skate with Ranma for the
match, but Ryoga had different plans. Just before the match began,
Ryoga killed the lights, dumped cold water on Ranma,
and pushed who he assumed was Ranma off into the sidelines. However, when
the lights came back on, Ryoga realized that he was holding
Ranma! There was no time to fix the mistake, so the two of them were forced
to skate together.
Mikado is Asuza's skating partner, and he has some strange quirks as well. Often called a molestor, Mikado tries to kiss every girl he meets. When the Charlotte Cup came about, he kissed Ranma-Chan while she was skating, and then told Ranma that he planned to kiss Akane during the match, making her the 1000th girl that he had kissed. Ranma was furious about being kissed, so he took his anger out on Mikado, spinning around him and hitting him 500 times! Mikado was senseless and paralyzed after the attack, and people in the skating rink drew all over his face with felt markers.
My second favorite character is Shampoo. She talks with very poor grammar, because she comes
from an Amazon tribe in China. When Ranma and Shampoo met, he defeated her
in battle and she was forced (by tribal law) to give Ranma the "Kiss
of Death". The tribal law she was following basically says that if an outsider defeats a
tribe member, she must do one of two things: if the outsider is a male, she must marry that man;
if the outsider is a female, she must give that woman the "Kiss of Death" and kill the
outsider!
Shampoo ends up following Ranma to Jusenkyo, (the place in China with the
cursed springs) and she inevitably falls into "Cursed Spring of Drowned Cat". Of course,
now when she gets wet, she becomes a cat. Don't forget that Ranma has a fear
of cats.
Afterwards, she follows Ranma back to Japan, and he ends up defeating her
while in his male form, which forces her to marry (or at least try to marry) him. Eventually, she
finds out how Ranma can transform, and decides not to try to kill him
anymore because she is in love with him.
Mousse is another character who has fallen into one of the cursed springs. When he touches cold
water, he becomes a duck (and a funny looking duck, too). He is also a martial artist, and he
specializes in hidden weapons. When a fight presents itself, his arms open and a huge arsenal of
deadly weapons flings out for convenient use. What's surprising, is that these weapons aren't
noticeable, even under a normal shirt.
One of Mousse's funniest characteristics is his vision. He is more or less as blind as a bat!
Quite often he can be caught talking to inanimate objects (statues, paintings...), thinking that
he is looking at a normal person. And like the other characters, he is attracted to someone
else in the series: Shampoo.
Next in the cavalcade of characters is Ukyou. When Ranma was a small boy,
he and Ukyou would play fight in front of her Father's okonomiyaki cart. For those of you who
don't know what okonomiyaki is, it is more or less a Japanese pancake. At this time,
Ranma thought Ukyou was a boy, and she has been mistaken for one on a few
occasions (hard to believe with the way she looks now, eh?). When Ranma won
(he always did) he would get a free okonomiyaki. Anyways, it ended up that
Genma promised Ukyou's father that Ranma would marry
his daughter, on the condition that he recieve the okonomiyaki cart as a dowry, even though
Ranma was already promised to marry one of Soun's
daughters. When Genma left with Ranma, he left Ukyou
with her father.
Ukyou eventually decided to be totally uncute and boylike, and even went to an all boys school.
She didn't want to be married to Ranma, until one day when he told her that
she was cute. At that time on she decided she wanted to be married to Ranma
and persued a relationship with him. Her worst enemy is Shampoo, and it is
almost impossible for the two of them to be together without fighting. Ukyou gets along with
Akane though, even though she is engaged to the same guy as she is.
Tsubasa is in love with her, and he declared his love to her when she was
dressed as a boy (and he was dressed as a girl). She gave Tsubasa a
picture of Ranma-Chan, (so he wouldn't think she was weird,) and told him
that she was engaged. Tsubasa didn't give up, and eventually Ukyou told
him that she was a girl. Tsubasa said he didn't care, because he was actually a cross-dresser
and already knew about Ukyou. As you can see, Ranma ½ is absolutely, 100 NOT NORMAL!!!
:-)
Tsubasa dresses like a girl, but is really a guy. He also goes to an all girls school, and is in love with Ukyou. Of course, Ukyou does object to it. At first when Tsubasa saw Ukyou, she was dressed as a boy, but he knew that she was really a girl. When she found out that Tsubasa was in love with her, she told him she was engaged and gave him a picture of Ranma-Chan, (she was dressed as a boy at the time,) but he continued his pursuit, so she told him that she was really a girl, dressed as a guy, but then Tsubasa showed her that he was a crossdresser too and that it didn't matter.
Dr. Tofu is the Tendo family's doctor. He is mostly a normal doctor, except that he studies martial arts and has a major crush on Kasumi. As soon as he sees Kasumi enter the room, his glasses glaze over and he starts mixing everything up. When it gets really bad, he ends up running all over the streets of Tokyo with Betty (his skeleton) on his back!
Ranma ½ videos and OAV's are easily available (although expensive) through Viz Video in Canada and the United States. As for other countries, I have absolutely no idea where to get the tapes. By the way, the videos from Viz are completely dubbed (the voices are in english) and uncut.
I think this is the one of the coolest Ranma pics I've seen, so I've put it here.
