Meet Akane Tendo, the youngest of the Tendo girls. Quite unlike the other Tendo girls, Nabiki and Kasumi, Akane is extremely tom-boyish in nature. She is not concerned with boys and prefers to practice her martial arts than most feminine activities. Its not she doesn't want to learn these things, its just she is no good at them. Her cooking has been known to make people terminally ill (usually Ranma).
Despite her tomsish nature, she has been constantly hounded by boys since she hit adolecence. Almost every guy in the school thinks that she is the most gorgeous girl there. Because she is hounded by many boys, she has pretty much lost interest in them. In fact, when she first met Ranma, she absolutely HATED boys.
This girl has a flash-fire temper that flares whenever Ranma throws even the weakest insult her way. When this happens, Akane calls upon her ability to summon a large mallet from an extra-dimensional void in order to nail Ranma with it. Most of the time this ends in Ranma getting his head smashed or getting knocked into some cold water, but he does sometimes escape her wrath before any serious injury occurs.
This is not to say that Akane does not have a soft, sweet side to her. Though she DOES clobber Ranma a great deal, it is obvious she has some feeling for him, but she has a hard time expressing it, given her stubborn and tom-boyish nature. To top it off, whenever she gets even close to showing it, someone or something interupts her.