The Great Ranma Rewatch

I’m...kind of sad to be here. We’re at the end of the Martial Arts Figure Skating arc. But all good things must come to an end, and I remember absolutely loving where this one goes. Will that till be the case? I have no clue, so next paragraph you can join me after I’ve rewatched the episode!

Okay so...that was still good. Definitely good. But...we’ll get into it later.

The episode once again picks off where the last left off, with Ranma making an epic declaration of his official relationship status with Akane and how he won’t let Mikado touch her. This tends Akane into a bit of a tizzy, but Mikado and Azusa laugh. It’s revealed that they’re known as more than just the Golden Pair, an unbeatable skating duo. They also have a reputation for splitting up the couples they fight.

They quickly set up their finisher which is made to do just that: the Goodbye Whirl (called the Break-Up Merry-Go-Round in the sub). It’s an absolutely ridiculous move that I love to death: it involves getting one of their opponents to grab the other, and then Azusa grabs one. Mikado lifts her and both opponents all into the area and twirl around as quickly as it can. The move always ends when one of the people in the relationship betrays the other, ending them flying in a bid to save themselves.

But that isn’t how it works this time around. While Akane is begging Ranma to let go of her, so he can be okay, Ranma refuses, making it clear he’s not going to let go. They hold on so long that Azusa gets busy and breaks contact, sending Ranma and Akane flying.

It looks like Akane’s going to be crashing into the rink wall, but Ranma maneuvers to take the damage instead. Akane cries over his seemingly unconscious form, calling him an idiot, when Ranma opens his eyes. It seems like he’s just fine, but just standing up causes him enough pain to make him start crying.

While all of that was going on, Ryoga managed to escape from his bondage and tries to pull off a cunning plan: dousing Ranma with water before jumping in and taking over as Akane’s partner. It only has one hiccup: he grab the wrong “girl”, and ends up throwing Akane out of the ring while taking Ranma in his cursed form as his partner.

The crowd isn’t happy with this change, even if Mikado is all too happy to fight this version of Ranma. They’re not upset about the substitution though, just that their costumes aren’t up to snuff. Luckily, there’s a whole fashion department waiting in the wings, who sweep in and fit the two for new outfits.

That done, it becomes apparent that Ryoga still doesn’t know how to skate, and so he and Ranma are easily taken into the Goodbye Whirl, and no matter what Ranma/Ryoga shippers tell you they don’t have the same bond that Ranma does with Akane. In no time at all, Ryoga socks Ranma in the face to betray him, and we get to see how the move is supposed to work: Azusa ensures the betrayer is smashed into the ice face-first, while Mikado picks up the “damsel in distress” to romance on the rebound.

Of course, this doesn’t really work well with Ranma, but even worse is that Azusa sees the collar on Ryoga’s neck and realizes that he must be Charlotte. This makes Ranma laugh, but sends Ryoga into terror. After all, Akane’s not far away, and he doesn't want her to know he’s actually her pet pig.

When Mikado tries to actually get back into the fight, Azusa smashes him with a mallet, since she doesn’t want Ryoga hurt now that she knows he’s Charlotte. (What a sentence.) The blow is so powerful that it shatters the ice rink, and sends Mikado out of the match on a stretcher. That means Ranma and Ryoga won...except now Ryoga wants to fight Ranma.

As the ice rink goes truly haywire, with water shooting out as geysers and freezing mid-air, they take the fight outside, ultimately going to a nearby pool. Akane follows, trying to get them to stop and demanding to know why they feel the need to keep fighting each other whenever they can. Akane falls into the pool, and when the fighters realize that she can’t swim, they dive down together to save her...with Ryoga realizing mid-jump that the water will activate his curse.

Akane wakes up later, recovering from nearly drowning, to hear that P-Chan helped pull her out of the water. Oh, and Genma in his panda form was adopted by Azusa as another cute animal named “Oscar” and he actually blushes at being called cute. End of storyline.

Let me try a compliment sandwich with this one. To start with, I just adore the chaos of this episode. Like I said before, the Goodbye Whirl is the kind of awesome, silly wonderfulness I come to Ranma 1/2 for in the first place. I love that we get to see it fail against Ranma and Akane, then succeed with him and Ryoga. The fact the fight quickly dissolves from there into utter nonsense, with the rink exploding and the fight going outdoors, it just feels fun and satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying, the fighting in this and the previous episode is all really well done. This is definitely a romantic comedy series, first and foremost, but I love how when they take the time for a martial arts match it can still feel kinetic and fluid and visually stimulating. The ice skating makes it all the more interesting, and just watching something as simple as Mikado circling the rink after being thrown aside is enjoyable.

It’s also a really funny episode. The conflicts between Ranma and Akane, Ranma and Ryoga, Ranma and Mikado, Mikado and Azusa, they all mix and spin and stir into a beautiful concoction, with both barbs and slapstick aplenty to amuse.

Now...into the less fun bits. To start with, as much as I enjoy the Ranma/Akane content in this episode, which yes I’ll talk a bit more about that later, there’s also a bit too much here in terms of jealousy and possessiveness, especially on Ranma’s part. I know it’s kind of a recurring part of the series, but I really dislike jealousy being framed as romantic, because it’s honestly not a healthy emotion and not a sign of a good relationship.

This next complaint is less solid, but it affects my feelings of the episode anyway. I...seem to have massively mis-remembered this episode? For some reason, I have very vivid memories that, once it becomes more Ranma vs Ryoga and the Golden Pair are out of the picture, that they fought on the broken rink.

Like, I can picture them struggling to stay on top of icy platform, with Ryoga especially trying to avoid falling into the water, and Akane interfering and like...what is going on there? Is that from another episode, and I mixed it up with this storyline? Or did my brain just make that up wholesale in the decade since I last saw this show?

Either way, it kind of sucks because...that felt more epic than what did happen? It’s strange to hold it against the show for failing to match the fake memories I made, but I dunno what to tell you, I can’t help being at least a little sad about this.

Okay, done with that stuff, back to what I like. Yes, there’s some tasty content here for my Ranma/Akane loving heart, and I ate it up. It was also nice seeing Ranma actually take damage from someone else’s move. He tends to be so much better than a lot of his opponents that they never really stand a chance of hurting him, but the Goodbye Whirl really came close to downing him.

Before we leave this storyline behind, it’s time to give a little Character Spotlight to the other half of the Golden Pair, Azusa Shiratori! Her Japanese voice actress is Naoko Matsui, and...the only other role I really recognize on her page is Monet from One Piece, but she’s been in a lot of stuff. In English, she’s played by Cathy Weseluck, who is also Shampoo. So check out Shampoo’s spotlight to see what other roles she’s done.

They both play Azusa pretty similarly, high-pitched and cutesy, but I think Cathy might actually play it up a little too much? But maybe that’s just because it’s the language of the two that I actually speak.

I was never a huge fan of Azusa to start with, just because she’s a bit...much. The combination of her high-pitched voice, third-person speak, repetitious dialogue, and extreme cutesiness is all just a lot. It’s just the type of thing that would grate on my nerves in too high doses, and the series tends to use a lot of Azusa when she does appear.

But, so far at least, I’m liking her more on this watchthrough. I still find her whole “naming things French people names and taking them” thing not especially funny, but I love the way she clashes with Mikado. They fight together wonderfully, but she has no problems kicking his ass or making him look like an idiot when she wants to. They’re a great double act.

Which is why it’s kind of odd that, while Mikado only has a few small appearances after this episode, Azusa will be getting more than that. They’re anime-only, but it seems she was popular, with fans, writers, or both, enough to get more screentime. I do wish she’d gotten a single-person move the way Mikado did, but that’s just one more complaint on how the show treats women to put on the stack.

So, this episode sadly didn’t quite live up to my memories of it. That said, it was still a fun mix of fighting and humor, so it’s definitely going to be in my top ten. But where exactly...hmm... I think it comes close to getting into the Top 5, but isn’t quite good enough to beat Shampoo’s introductory episode, sitting right below it and above the episode all about Akane’s haircut. That puts our current ranking at:

Episode 26: Close Call! The Dance of Death... On Ice!

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 25: The Abduction of P-Chan

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 27: P-Chan Explodes! The Icy Fountain of Love!

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

Sorry for the mini-delay, my horrible sleep schedule crashed and I’ve been a zombie recently. But I’m back and ready to watch more Ranma 1/2, especially since we’re in the middle of one of my favorite arcs in the series. Just based on the title, I definitely remember some of what’s about to happen, but just how far this episode will delve I can’t recall. Will it continue to be wonderful? I sure hope so!

Yes! This episode exceeded my expectations! It starts off right where the last one left off, with Ranma challenging Mikado Sanzenin to a fight due to being kissed without his consent. Sadly, the fight is on ice and Ranma is still absolute trash at ice-skating. This leads to Mikado being a bit overconfident, which makes him surprised when he gets a hint at how strong and fast Ranma really is.

Mikado brings out his signature solo move: The Dance of Death. This basically means he spins really fast, using the force of the spin to keep his opponent close to him while he puppels them with blows. It’s clearly doing a number on Ranma, while Akane is off on the side, counting the hits. But when Ranma exits the attack, the ending number being 518, it’s revealed that she wasn’t counting how often Ranma was being hit.

She was counting how often he was hitting Mikado. Ranma’s a little rough, sure, but Mikado is out cold from being hit over five-hundred times. While Ranma goes home, narrowly victorious, Azusa and all of the guys who she and Mikado were beating up earlier go and draw on the unconscious Mikado.

Back at the Tendo house, everyone learns from Ryoga why Ranma was angry enough to hit the guy so many times, but Akane’s sisters don’t take it seriously. According to them, because it was a guy, it didn’t count. Which like...make up your minds, Kasumi and Nabiki. Do you consider Ranma a guy, or don’t you? And either way, it doesn’t matter if they’re the same gender, it does ‘count’ and it can still mess someone up.

Later on, Ranma is in the dojo sulking. He feels like no one understands why it bothers him so much, and wow this scene does a great job at capturing that strange...I don’t want to say ‘helplessness’, but that anxiety that comes from feeling something that no one around you is validating. And Ranma has every right to be upset! He was basically sexually assaulted!

Akane shows up, and she at least isn’t trying to make Ranma feel like he shouldn’t be upset over it. Instead, she says that he isn’t as used to having to fend off guys trying to kiss him when he looks ‘like a girl’, not in the way she does, so it’s understandable that Mikado was able to do what he did. This leads to some cute shenanigans where Ranma tries to pull that on Akane, and there’s a lot of hinting and backing off, almost leading to them kissing.

This is kind of ruined when they realize both their families are watching, either excited that they’re finally going to kiss or annoyed that it’s taken them this long. So they don’t kiss. From there, we cut to Mikado finally coming to, covered in doodles, and to Azusa wishing goodnight, and then good morning, to her many stolen treasures.

We cut from then to the day of the fight, and Ryoga is planning on storming in and being Akane’s partner instead of Ranma. Only issue there: Ranma was waiting for him with a bucket of water. Ryoga messes up his dodge and is stuck in pig form, chained to a trophy as the prize for the match.

Before the fight starts, Ranma goes into the changing room and learns from Mikado that he’s one girl away from kissing 1000 girls, and he plans on making Akane that lucky 1000th during the match. Against her will. Because he’s a creep. Most of the crowd is there for the Golden Pair, but Ranma and Akane look pretty good too in their outfits.

The fight immediately looks bad for them, however, as Ranma continues to look like a fool on the ice. Still, they’re able to counter Mikado and Azusa’s opening attack, and when the creep almost kisses Akane, Ranma is able to stop it from happening. He ends the episode by declaring to everyone that Akane’s his fiance, and if Mikado lays a hand on her Ranma will kill him. Hearing that just makes Mikado swear to break them up during the fight.

So...yeah. This episode was utterly amazing. The humor was strong, the fight choreography is fantastic, the character work is strong...I kind of have a hard time finding stuff to talk about?

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’m just a bit of a Ranma/Akane shipper, so this episode was like candy to me. The bond they share throughout the episode is so freaking adorable, I just adore it. Especially in the middle, when they came close to kissing, and Ranma basically does admit that he likes her. They’re so awkward and adorable...love ‘em.

What I don’t love as much, as I talked about a little in the recap, is Akane’s sisters’ position on the whole kissing thing. Like, first, it’s kind of homophobic? Like, the idea that same-sex kisses don’t count as kisses? And it’s so freaking strange that they’re the ones who insist on treating Ranma as a girl when he’s in his cursed form, but for some reason in this one instance they take the opposite stance?

Not a fan. But I do like that, at the very least, it once again allows Akane’s genuine respect for Ranma’s issues to shine through, just in comparison.

Other than that...most of my comments relate to a certain skating martial artist, so let’s get to that Character Spotlight!

That’s right, I am breaking up the Golden Pair! We can cover Azusa next week, but today belongs to our dear Mr. Mikado Sanzenin. Starting off with his voice actors, the English Dub gave him Iann James Corlett. Does that name sound familiar? It should, because he also voices Dr. Tofu, so I don’t really have to go over his performances. In Japanese, he’s played by Kazuhiko Inoue, who most would know as Kars from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or as Kakashi in Naruto. They both play the character well, leaning more heavily into his suave and cool-guy persona, only to play it for comedy when that mask breaks and he lashes out in anger.

I absolutely love/hate this guy. He is a perfect villain for a small arc like this, and honestly ranks among my favorite antagonists from Ranma 1/2, period. He’s a bit like Kuno, in a few ways, but they have remarkably different auras. They’re both girl-chasers who act fancy and serious but also work well as props for silly comedy. They are both fighting Ranma for Akane’s affection...though maybe that isn’t the best word, in Mikado’s case.

After all, while Kuno does love Akane, and wants to be with her...Mikado just sees her as another pretty girl to be kissed. He’s sinister and repugnant in a way that Kuno isn’t, the kind of misogynistic asshole who enjoys using women and throwing them away. He likes ‘stealing’ kisses, which like...dude that’s sexual assault.

There are other differences as well, but it’s better to just focus on Mikado. His fights look good, his enmity for Ranma is well-earned, and he’s someone you just want to see Ranma beat the crap out of. His partnering with Azusa is also great, especially for comedy. She’s this silly character who clashes with his attempts to be serious, and is easily able to bring out the side he’d prefer pretty girls not see.

The last thing I can think of to talk about with him is that, well...there was a scene in this episode where, pre-match, he put on make-up, only to wipe it all off and then say he looks better without it. Then, before Ranma comes in, he starts putting on eye shadow again, only to wipe it off. Like...is that just supposed to be a joke about him using a feminine product? Is it about him being unmanly? Or is it a vanity thing? I dunno, it’s...odd. Especially since it’s supposed to be a joke, I think, which puts it a bit close to homophobia for my taste. But hey, maybe I’m missing something obvious. Let’s move on to the rankings!

If you couldn’t tell, I love this episode. So much, in fact, that it’s done the impossible: it has claimed the top spot! That’s right, Episode 7, Ryoga’s introductory episode, held onto the number one spot tightly for nearly twenty episodes, but it has been dethroned!

Episode 26: Close Call! The Dance of Death... On Ice!

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 25: The Abduction of P-Chan

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

Y’all, it has finally COME. The arc I have been wanting to rewatch for ages. One of my favorite arcs in the series. It’s time for figure skating, I’m pretty sure I remember this arc very well, and I look forward to seeing if I still love it as much as I used to.

Oh, but before I do that, I just want to go over something. I already talked about this during Season 1, but some of you might be confused why I’ve waited so long to cover this arc. It’s because the original broadcast order and the production order are different, and Hulu has things in the production order. I wanted to cover the series by broadcast date, so even though this takes place right before the original Shampoo arc, we’re not watching it until, well, now. But anyway, that done, let’s watch the episode!

I am not disappointed.

The episode starts at an ice-skating rink, where Akane is there with a few unnamed friends who want her to join the skating club, because she’s genuinely that good. However, she brought P-Chan with her and left him on the ice. Before she can get back to our transformed lost boy, someone else finds him and takes him away, calling him ‘Charlotte’.

From there, we cut to a ramen shop where Ranma is getting grilled by his friends Hiroshi and Daisuke, who want to date ‘the other Ranma’. That request goes as well as you can expect (though I do have to wonder, since it’s unclear if they think the ‘other Ranma’ is Ranma’s girlfriend or his sister, and they both want to date her, if this would be an actual polycule), but just as Ranma starts walking away, insulting Akane because his friends brought her up, she appears, looking upset.

Ranma immediately regrets that and starts backpedaling, only to realize she doesn’t care about that, she wants his help finding her pet. Luckily, that won’t be too hard, because the thief enters the same shop they’re in, carrying Ryoga around with her. Akane tries taking him back, but the girl resists.

That’s when someone shows up to help Akane, a tall attractive young man who acts like the ultimate pretty boy romance option. He apologizes, explaining his friend has a bad habit of taking things she finds cute and naming them. That just sets the girl off though, whining more and more about the matter until she challenges Akane to a figure skating match.

It’s then that we learn who these two are: Mikado Sanzenin and Azusa Shiratore from Kolholtz High School. Together, they’re a figure skating duo known as the Golden Pair, and they’ve won 950 matches with no losses. Despite this, Akane is ready to fight.

Mikado starts putting the moves on her, causing Ranma to flick some food at him. The figure skater takes that as a challenge, so it’ll be a doubles match of Ranma and Akane versus Mikado and Azusa, and it’ll be in one week.

That night at dinner, Ranma and Ryoga argue over who gets to skate with Akane, each bragging over what they can do...the only issue there is that neither can actually skate at all. Akane starts helping Ranma after he goes into the bathroom and activates his and Ryoga’s curses, since he feels like failing so badly at skating looks worse when he’s masculine.

The Golden Pair return, with Azusa snatching P-Chan to put a new collar on him, one only she can unlock, and Mikado now trying to flirt with Ranma. It’s revealed that they’re both masters of Martial Arts Figure Skating, and that’s what the match really is, as they train by defeating a hundred opponents in just nine seconds. Things get worse when he actually steals a kiss from Ranma, causing Ranma to go use hot water to turn himself back and enter the ice rink ready to fight. He punches the ice so hard that he leaves an enormous crack in it, and he claims it’s the first time in his life he’s been really mad.

That’s where the episode leaves us! But wow, I still feel like a lot happened in this one. There’s a heck of a lot for me to cover, but let’s just start with, well, all the Ranma/Akane. I’m sorry! I can’t help myself!! There was just so much of it! Whether it be Ranma worrying about making Akane mad from another “she’s not cute” kind of thing and being ready to take it back, to how annoyed he gets from Mikado flirting with her, to how after being kissed by Mikado one of the first things he worries about is that it was in front of Akane.

It was adorable!

I also think it’s remarkable how this story is just carried by the personalities of its characters. This isn’t some plot that happens to have the Golden Pair in it. The conflict is driven by Azusa’s strange kleptomania and my Mikado’s predatory behavior. Compared to some other storylines I can think of, this approach makes this one feel much more focused, as well as emphasizing the antagonists of the arc.

I’m going to give each of them their own Character Spotlight in coming weeks, but I did want to say here that I think it’s really interesting how Mikado is frequently animated to make his possessive behavior clear just through visuals, like how he holds Ranma’s arms while carrying him, to keep him from resisting his advances.

The comedy felt strong in this episode, as did the action. I wasn’t laughing the whole time or anything, but I was entertained throughout, and that’s not something I can say for a lot of episodes, sadly. It’s a strong start to this arc, and it just gets better from here...or at least that’s what the opinions I formed in high school tell me, from across the vast distance of time.

Instead of doing a Character Spotlight, I’m going to FINALLY talk about Season 2’s Opening! Since, for some reason, this is the first episode to have it...when due to broadcast order versus production order a lot of places don’t even have it in Season 1!

This song is called “Little Date”, performed by the band Ribbon. It’s a very cute little song, with elements of lighter and sillier moments but also of more emotional ones. I like it a lot more than the first opening’s song, and while I’m not sure if it’s my favorite opening, it’s one of the ones I love going back to listen to the most.

The visuals are...okay. The first half is pretty meh, a combination of original art, images from the manga, and overall less animated stuff. It’s also kind of infamous for showing Ranma’s cursed form topless, right at the start. The second half is better, and I especially love Shampoo’s introduction. The way she and the music fit together is really good, and the fact it’s at the bubbliest part of the song works really well.

On the whole, even with some more lackluster visuals, I’d still put it above the first seasons’s OP.

If it isn’t obvious, I’m very happy to be starting the Martial Arts Figure Skating Arc. I don’t know how popular it is in the larger Ranma fandom, but I know I’ve always been a big fan of it, and this time around it’s still good, at least so far. Honestly? I’m actually going to put this as the second best episode so far, I liked it that much.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 25: The Abduction of P-Chan

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

I cannot believe it’s here. Welcome back to the Ranma Rewatch, and it’s time to finish the Phoenix Pill story arc with this episode. I think. I’m pretty sure. I...do not remember this episode at all, really. Like I said last week, most of what I can recall is from the mockery of a YouTuber I used to follow. But I am unshackled from his opinion! I watch this episode with new eyes! Let us see what sights I shall witness!

...

I should have listened.

I wasn’t prepared for this.

So, here’s the plot. They’re on a snowy mountain. Why? No clue, I guess they just wanted to go skiing. Ranma isn’t skiing, Cologne shows up, they start to fight a little, and she reveals that there’s some competition going on, and the winner gets a date with Shampoo and if Ranma wins he gets the Phoenix Pill.

Everyone gets made because of the date with Shampoo part, even though...like, it’s really obvious that he’s just doing it for the pill. There’s a lot of forced conflict over that, and it ends up being just Cologne vs Ranma. It looks like he’s winning, she offers to make this all about their duel. If he wins, he gets the pill, if she loses, he has to marry Shampoo.

When Ranma accepts those terms, she immediately starts wiping the floor with him, and nothing he does makes a difference. In the end, the only way to win is to get Shampoo’s help. She turns into her cat form, which terrifies Ranma until he starts using Cat-Fu. That is actually able to kick Cologne’s butt, and eventually she gives up and hands over the pill. Ranma turns back to his uncursed state, happy to be cured, but he did it in a women’s bath so he looks like a pervert. THE END.

I’m...going to start by talking about the few things I liked here. I think having Cat-Fu being the way to defeat Cologne is a pretty cool idea, especially since it was that story that began this arc. Little bit of a full-circle thing.

There was a decent smattering of cute Akane stuff, and I like that she once again is the one who can immediately calm down the raging Cat Ranma. Not only that, but the Shampoo stuff wasn’t bad. The episode showed off her more scheming side, as she was happy to use Cologne’s plan as a way to steal Ranma’s affections and get a date from him, but in the end she was also happy to work against that plan just to help Ranma out. Plus, Ranma purposefully playing on her love for him was a pretty classic Ranma thing to do.

That’s all my niceness.

This was, by my estimation, one of the biggest drops in animation quality I’ve ever seen. That episode of Gurren Lagann where everyone is super off model? That looks like that show at its best compared to this episode. There’s just...so little animation, and what we do have is frequently full of errors. It’s an action-heavy episode, too, and none of it looks good.

It was bad-funny at first, but after a while...it just became hard to watch. So much reused animation, so many errors, so much still shots. I am not an animation person! I normally don’t care about any of this! But is actively made watching this more difficult.

It’s also just...an underwhelming way to end the arc. They’re just randomly in the mountains, no reason why. Cologne bets everything on a fight against Ranma, he finds a way to win, here’s the pill. Some of the ideas could have worked, I think, if given proper backing. But there’s just nothing here.

Not only that, but wow the dub was bad here. Not only was this a case where, because I preferred Cologne’s Japanese actress and she was in it a lot it was better, but also because the translation for the dub was terrible. There’s one line change that is so baffling, it turns a kind of okay line into something incomprehensible. I was looking forward to my watch on the sub, if only so I could figure out what had just happened.

Hey, why not, the arc is done, let’s talk about Cologne. Neither of her voice actresses are incredibly well known, but at least her Japanese voice actress, Miyoko Aso, has also been Pinako Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist and Shoga from Inuyasha. (She also passed away in 2018, after living quite a long life. Rest in peace.) The english voice actress, Elan Ross Gibson, is also fairly unknown, with her biggest work being as Baba in one of the Dragon Ball Z dubs.

As I mentioned before, they do play the character differently. They’re both going for “wizened old woman”, but Gibson’s Cologne is a lot more...toothless? She mostly sounds tired and bored. Aso gave the character a lot more life, more energy, and it’s that performance that’s working much better for me so far.

As a character, Cologne is...okay. She’s a very old Amazon warrior, the first character to appear who is, flat out, far stronger than Ranma. She serves as both an obstacle, what with the whole pressure point scenario, and a mentor, teaching him his signature move. There’s a sense that as much as she is trying to get one particular thing for him, namely marrying Shampoo, she’s also interested in seeing how he’ll develop, she’s impressed by his potential to grow stronger.

That said, she’s not even close to being among my favorite characters. She’s useful for dispensing exposition or teaching techniques, but her plots to get Ranma to marry Shampoo just...feel kind of boring to me. That’s genuinely all I have to say about her, at least for now. But who knows? Maybe one day my tune will change with this rewatch.

Y’all, I think it’s obvious, but I didn’t like this episode. I have no hesitation saying it was worse that Dr. Tofu’s mom’s episode. But the real question is: is it worse than the clip show? One was basically nothing, the other the active presence of bad. How you weigh one versus the other is a matter of personal preference, but for me, I’m going to say this episode was worse. At the very least, the season 1 finale had the animation from good episodes to show us.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Episode 24: Cool Runnings! The Race of the Snowmen

*yawn* Wow, I finally got some good sleep. Back to the Ranma Rewatch, then. Hey there, long time no see, going to try and get back on track. This week we’re still in the middle of the season 2’s opening story arc, and another main character shall be introduced to us. Will I like him better than I did ten years ago? Only way to find out is to look at the next paragraph, from when I’ve watched the episode.

This episode raised my hopes and then gently lowered them a little, but on the whole I’m happier than I thought I would have been.

The story starts with Akane taking Ranma to see Dr. Tofu, under the assumption that as someone with lots of experience with Chinese medicine, he’d be able to fix what Cologne did to Ranma. Sadly, the technique used is something only a master could do, far outside of his wheelhouse. However, there is one thing he could do.

To counteract the Full Body Cat Tongue, Tofu hits a different pressure point in Ranma, one named after old men from Tokyo. Why? Because apparently they’re well known for being able to stand even the most scalding heat in their baths, and this technique gives the user that same ability. Sure enough, it let’s Ranma return to his uncursed state, but there’s a catch. Kasumi calls, turning Dr. Tofu into a bumbler before he can give the warning, so Ranma and Akane just head to school.

After class, Akane harangues Ranma into taking her out for food, which their classmates immediately notice has a lot of romantic energy to it. Then Shampoo and Cologne appear, amazed that Ranma somehow found a way around the elderly amazon’s strategy, but Cologne seems sure anyway that this won’t be an issue.

But wait! Out of nowhere, someone new appears. His name is Mousse, and he’s a man from the amazon village who has been in love with Shampoo since they were kids. He has terrible eyesight, so bad that he frequently mistakes people for the love of his life, and after a series of confusions he learns that Shampoo is dead set on marrying Ranma.

Mousse attacks Ranma, and challenges him to a manly duel for Shampoo. But she refuses that, so instead makes the duel over Akane for seemingly no reason, which Ranma agrees to. Oh, and he’s known for using ‘dark magic’ which is in practice more sleight of hand and weapon-based techniques.

That evening, Akane is doing what she frequently does when pissed off, namely training in the dojo. Ranma shows up, clearly aware he really stepped in it and wanting to make amends by making it clear there’s no way he’s going to lose to Mousse.

But Akane makes it clear that isn’t why she’s mad. The reason she’s upset is that she doesn’t belong to Ranma, and she won’t belong to Mousse. She’s her own person, and this duel doesn’t respect that. Hell, if he loses that’s fine with her, she’ll just beat up Mousse herself. The entire family shows up, interpreting this as kind of a romantic confession to Ranma.

The next morning, it Dr. Tofu calls and gives the warning he’d meant to tell them earlier: the technique he used is a one-use, so if Ranma gets splashed, he’s stuck again. Akane only finds this out after Ranma takes a dip in the pond while sparring with his dad, and they all freak out over what he’s going to do. Why none of them think to just tell Mousse that Ranma has a Jusenkyo curse, I have no clue.

Someone, Cologne probably, turned the match into a huge spectacle, with food carts and seating around the arena and everything, there’s a huge crowd. Ranma’s late, but that’s only because he made a disguise to hide his cursed body. He clowns around a little at first, having prepared a bunch of lame magic tricks, but then ‘does a trick’ by ‘turning into a girl’, giving him an excuse for how he looks.

Mousse buys it, but he’s angry that Ranma’s not taking it seriously. He takes of his...robe? Tunic? Whatever, either way he’s buff as hell under there, and an attack from his barbed footwear ruins the front of Ranma’s stage assistant outfit, bearing his boobies to everyone. This causes a bunch of men in the audience to storm the fighting area so they can sexually assault Ranma and then I paused Hulu and stared at my computer screen for three full minutes before continuing the episode.

*sigh* Anyway, the Kuno siblings show up, interfere with the fight, Mousse gets deadly series, then Akane reminds Ranma he can use his new technique in battle, which he does to win. Then a bunch of his admirers crowd Ranma, and Akane is annoyed. Done.

Let me get into the stuff I found really interesting with this episode, to start with.

The first half was honestly just really enjoyable. Akane and Ranma had a really good chemistry going on, it reminded me a lot of the episode where Shampoo first showed up. There was a casual closeness to them, still tempered with occasional arguments, that was just cute.

I also liked that they thought to try asking Dr. Tofu for help, since his expertise has helped so often in the past. Making it clear this was a problem he could only barely help out with, and only one time, sold how Cologne and what she’s done to Ranma isn’t something that’s going to be solved easily.

What was a bit odd in that scene was we actually got to see the curse take effect, as Ranma’s torso changed, something I’m fairly sure we’ve never gotten that much detail on. It’s usually either off-screen or a cutaway. But I like we saw it with the curse turning him back to his uncursed form, since it emphasized this was Ranma regaining the body that felt right to him.

I’ve talked about this before, but I also couldn’t help noticing throughout this episode the weird dichotomy in who uses Ranma’s preferred pronouns and who doesn’t. Akane, Shampoo, and Cologne all call Ranma ‘he’ even when he’s in a feminine form, but Akane’s siblings call him ‘she’ instead.

The dojo scene was also a treat for me. I just kind of love how it put the focus on how this whole arrangement devalues Akane. Both the engagement from their parents and the terms of this duel take away her say in what she does with her life, and she isn’t having it. It almost sounded like she was comforting Ranma, taking a burden off his shoulders, when she told him he didn’t have to stress over the fight because she’d be fine either way. I am here for Akane stressing her independence and making it clear that no matter what happens in the fight, she is her own person.

That was a lot of nice stuff, but sadly the second half of the episode didn’t really carry it through. It wasn’t terrible, but the fight wasn’t really anything special, and the whole bit with the guys storming Ranma...yeah. Didn’t care for that. But hey! It’s finally time to do another Character Spotlight!

Unlike Cologne, who I am still holding off on doing a Spotlight for since I don’t feel like we’ve gotten to really see enough of her yet, this one episode basically gave us most of what we need to know about Mousse, so let’s just do it.

In terms of voice acting, his English performer is Brad Swaile. He’s done quite a few things, but he’s most well known for being the voice of Light in Death Note, which is quite a funny comparison. Both characters have huge egos, that’s to be sure, but Light is usually taken seriously, while at least in the dub Mousse is basically just a joke the entire time. Swaile plays him very comedically, which does fit the generally goofy tone of his character.

It is in contrast, however, to his original Japanese voice actor, Toshihiko Seki. Like a lot of the seiyuu, he has done a million things, but of particular note are his roles as Legato Bluesummers from Trigun, another anime I love quite a bit, and as the Japanese Dub actor for the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who. Honestly, finding out the Japanese dub castings is a treat every time I do a Spotlight. But anyway, Seki largely plays Mousse more seriously, as a confident warrior, only going for comedy with how over-the-top some of his attacks get, considering how silly they are. I’m going to tentatively say this is another performance I think works than the dub, which is fairly rare for me as far as anime go.

So, who exactly is Mousse? Well, like I said before, Mousse is Shampoo’s childhood friend, and the first member of their tribe we’ve met who is a guy. His character motivation is literally just that he wants to be with Shampoo, and will beat up/kill Ranma to get her. Pretty simple.

What makes him silly is the combination of his terrible eyesight, a fairly common trope that now that I think about it is kinda ableist, and how he fights. He’s a master of hidden weapons, but more often than not the items he’s fighting with are silly things, like a toilet or a yoyo. Combined with his high self-confidence, and Mousse is fairly Kuno-like, only quite a bit sillier.

Only enough though, he’s more similar to Kodachi than to Tatewaki. Why? Well, because he’s deadly. Of all of Ranma’s primary rivals/reoccurring antagonists, Mousse is easily the one most ready to kill, not unlike Shampoo. When he gets serious, he trades in the silly weapons for genuinely dangerous weapons. He started choking Ranma with his bare hands in their first encounter, then tried doing it again with rope not long afterwards. Ryoga might talk a lot about killing Ranma, but Mousse has done a lot more to actually attempt that.

All of that said, I’m pretty ambivalent on Mousse. I don’t hate him, but of all of Ranma’s primary rivals, he’s easily the most boring. He doesn’t have the je ne sais quoi of Ryoga or the pompous elitism of Kuno, he’s just a deadly joke character who’s obsessed with Shampoo. Maybe my opinions will change over the course of the rewatch, but for right now I’m still pretty meh on him.

But you know what I’m not meh on? This episode! Even with the weaker second half, the first ten minutes or so were good enough that I’m overall pretty sunny on it. Listen, I’m an easy mark, give me some Ranma/Akane fuel and some decent drama, and I’m happy. I’ll put this in the top half of episodes so far between the ending of the fight between Ranma and Kodachi and the climax to Shampoo’s introductory arc.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 23: Enter Mousse! The Fist of the White Swan

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

Sorry about taking a week off, y’all, I just had a rough go of it. Still sort of am, but I’m back anyway. We’re still in the middle of the arc that introduces Shampoo’s relative Cologne into the cast, and last time Ranma was hit with something that made changing back nigh impossible, forcing him to be stuck in his cursed form. This week should, from what I recall, be how Ranma learns the technique that will become his signature move. Other than that, I think there’s a festival? We’ll see, next paragraph.

Hey, I was right! There was a festival! Though, that’s not where the episode starts off. It begins where it left off, with the realization that Cologne had done something to Ranma that made it so that his skin was so sensitive to heat. He tries to overcome that by jumping into some water that I will assume is warm or hot, but the pain is so much that he passes out immediately, then wakes up being tended to by Kasumi and Nabiki, who dressed Ranma up in some of Nabiki’s lingerie.

He’s annoyed that they did that, but they’re of the opinion that Ranma should lighten up about the fact his body is stuck in a way he doesn’t want it and embrace acting like a girl. I do not like that. He goes on a walk, and is immediately attacked by Kuno, first as an actual attack and then with romance when he sees it’s his ‘pig-tailed girl’. Akane comes in to help, however.

Shampoo shows up, wanting to help Ranma. She says there is a way for him to be able to get rid of what Cologne did to him, and that way is the Phoenix Pill. It gives whoever takes it incredible heat resistance, and Cologne has one with her. When Akane asks why Shampoo is helping, she says it’s because she prefers Ranma’s uncursed state, and basically calls Akane a perverted lesbian for being okay with Ranma as he is.

Heading to the ramen restaurant that Cologne owns, Ranma finds she is waiting for him, openly carrying the pill he needs around her neck, but he’ll have to take it from her by force. He tries, and fails, a lot. Then he sees the cafe is hiring, and uses that as a way to try and get more opportunities to get the pill.

That doesn’t really work either, though Ranma’s presence as a cute waiter does make the place more popular with men. Eventually, Cologne shows Ranma a secret technique of the Amazons, one that would certainly help him get the pill: titular Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire technique. It’s basically a hand-to-hand move that involves moving the hands so quickly they can pull out chestnuts from a fire without burning the hands.

Ranma tries learning it with his father’s help later, but it doesn’t seem to be working, even when Cologne stops by to show him it again. The fact Genma can’t do it either is a bit of a factor too, of course. The others suggest Ranma go to the fair to relax, and Akane goes with him. He quickly starts having fun, to Akane’s relief, but then she sees a kid being scammed by a stall out of getting a fish.

She tries to help, but she can’t win the game either. Ranma jumps in, and handily manages to scoop up fish using a net that’s basically nonexistent. The stall-owner, not wanting to actually have to give away a prize, demands Ranma do it again with piranhas, but he realizes he can do it: all that time with Cologne has enhanced his speed, and what he’d need to do to catch the piranhas is basically the Kachū Tenshin Amaguriken (which just sounds cooler than the translation), and he does it.

Now confident, Ranma goes to find Cologne, only to fall into a trapdoor. She sends illusions based on characters from Journey to the West after him, but he manages to chase her out of there and into an enormous public path area. She heads out onto the water, but Ranma uses a stick he stole from a monkey pretending to be the Monkey King to get out on the water. He does manage to use the technique and take what he thinks is the pill, only for Cologne to realize, just before he falls into hot water, that it’s a fake since she was afraid he might master the ability. The episode ends with him vowing to get the real one, and turn back to normal.

So, a lot happened, except also not a lot did. The big thing, obviously, was Ranma learning the Kachū Tenshin Amaguriken, which will be basically his staple move. It works well for him, despite the silly name. Ranma’s always been fast, so giving him a technique built on speed just fits him. This is also basically the first time in the series he’s had to train and level up to face a tougher foe, so that’s neat.

Not as neat is all the misgendering. I know, to a lot of folks, all the stuff about other people wishing Ranma would just act ‘like a girl’ is either fun or harmless, but that’s not the case for me. Like I’ve said before, Ranma’s situation with his curse reads a lot to me like someone as a trans man, as he tries over and over again to insist to everyone that he is, in fact, a man regardless of what he looks like. There have been small moments of the Tendo sisters trying to get him to dress femininely before, but actually putting him in women’s clothes in his sleep just feels really wrong to me.

The front half of the episode was also pretty filler-y, not a lot happened, and the fluff wasn’t even particularly enjoyable. There were also a lot of coloring errors for a few characters hair, namely Shampoo and Ranma’s, as well as quite a few shots were some of them looked off-model, so it wasn’t particularly pleasing to the eyes, on the whole.

All of that said, I did enjoy a lot of the Akane stuff with this episode. Despite griping here and there, something about her being happy that Ranma, who has been run ragged, is able to enjoy himself at the festival, and about her trying to help that kid win a fish, it’s just cute. There were also just a lot of small moments between Ranma and Akane I liked peppered throughout.

This wasn’t really a bad episode, but it wasn’t a particularly good one either. It was a step on the path towards Ranma getting cured of his new ailment, as well as the story of how he learned his signature move. This episode was near the bottom for me, right between the first episode of the series and the third.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 22: Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?

*checks watch* Oh, hey, it’s time for more Ranma 1/2! Hope things are going well for you, person reading this. I’m...fairly sure I know what’s coming? I just don’t really remember exactly how it happens. Will I like it? Will I not? We’ll have to see, next paragraph, after I’ve seen the episode again.

That was...not what I was expecting? This storyline is both moving much faster and much slower than I remember, if that makes any sense. How? Well, let me recap it a bit first.

The episode starts with someone flying into the city on birds. More specifically, a bunch of small birds supporting a larger bird who doesn’t seem to fly, and the person is riding on that bird. It’s weird. She arrives in a construction zone, an old woman with a walking stick taller than she is, and she says something about looking for her son-in-law. Actually, she says it a lot. A steel girder almost falls on her head, but she hits it with her stick in mid-air, shattering the metal into dust, before running off.

It cut from that to Ryoga attacking Ranma. Why? Well, Ryoga doesn’t really need a reason, but this time he does. Namely, the whole Ranma kissing Akane thing from the last episode. Of course, Ranma was in cat-mode at the time and doesn’t remember it at all, no matter how much Ryoga tells him it’s real. After Ryoga gets splashed with cold water, Ranma is then attacked by Sasuke and Kuno for the same reason, and combined with piglet-form Ryoga’s help, Ranma actually gets kinda beat up in the process.

Heading back to the home, he realizes that Akane’s probably mad if it is true, and we see her in the dojo, but she isn’t really working out the way she usually does when she’s mad. If anything, Akane seems conflicted. Ranma shows up to talk about it with her, and immediately apologizes. Akane asks if he remembers doing it, and he admits he doesn’t. Then, Akane wonders, did it not matter? Would Ranma have kissed anyone, and it just happened to be her?

Not understanding what is going on, Ranma stumbles over answering too long, until Akane starts actually getting riled up, calling him a flirt. That pisses Ranma off, so they get into an argument. There’s also a scene where their dads are playing shogi, and they wonder about that pink cat Shampoo sent them, especially since it’s unlikely she knew about Ranma’s fear of felines.

The answer to that comes as Ranma goes to take a nice, hot bath to clean off after the fights he’s had. The cat jumps in with him, and before he can freak out about his greatest fear being in the room, Shampoo emerges from the bath right where the cat had been, and she’s very naked. Yep, the cat was her that whole time!

In a case of Ultimate Bad Timing, Akane comes to take a bath herself and sees Ranma in the bath with a naked Shampoo. We cut directly from that to Ranma practicing what to tell Akane later. Namely, that he won’t apologize or back down, instead being firm on the fact that it wasn’t what it looked like and he did nothing wrong. And we wonder why Ranma has relationship problems.

Akane appears, and she seems fine...before knocking Ranma into a pond. Not long after the water changes him into his cursed form, the old lady from the beginning appears, and Ranma has a very hard time fighting her. She won’t explain who she is or why she’s fighting him, then disappears. That felt...a bit pointless, honestly.

Later, Shampoo comes by the house again, with food. It seems she has moved to Japan officially, and lives and works at a nearby ramen shop. As everyone’s eating the food, the old woman shows up again, taking a place at the table to eat. It’s revealed that she is Shampoo’s great-grandmother, named Cologne, and she’s there to make sure that Shampoo and Ranma get married. Soun fires back about the engagement Ranma already has to Akane, but Shampoo seems to think she has a good argument for why she should be the one to take Ranma’s hand.

She takes him into the bathroom and uses cold water to turn back into a cat, and it’s revealed exactly what happened. Heading back to China, she was shamed for failing to either kill or marry Ranma, and thus had to train with Cologne. They did that at Jusenkyo, for some reason, and Shampoo fell into the Spring of Drowned Cats. So, apparently the curse is Ranma’s fault, and thus he has to marry her. He rightfully points out that’s utter nonsense, but Cologne doesn’t care.

They fight for a bit, with Cologne showing off one of those moves where it looks like there are a bunch of her but only one is real. Ranma uses food and Cologne’s hunger to figure out the real one, but that doesn’t really matter. She’s a bit impressed by him, but still knows he’s far too inexperienced to ever really stand a chance against her. Then she hits him with her stick, and says something about how he’ll be begging to marry Shampoo in a few days.

Why is that? Well, it seems she did something quite diabolical. She apparently hit a pressure point that has caused Ranma to be incredibly sensitive to water. Even cold water feels boiling hot, but it still activates his curse. To turn back to his preferred form, he’d need to use hot water, but with how sensitive his skin is, hot water would be torture to endure. Thus, he can’t turn back into his uncursed state unless he does exactly what Cologne tells him.

Let me start with the stuff I like about this episode. First off, this is a really interesting way to build a story arc that’s very different from the ones that came before. All the story arcs in season one were pretty typical for anime. Each event led directly to the next, it all felt like single stories that just took multiple episodes to tell.

But if you didn’t know the last episode was part of a story arc, you wouldn’t guess that to be the case. It felt like a single-stand alone episode. And it kind of was. Only two things really carried over: Shampoo the Cat being mailed to them, and Ranma kissing Akane at the end of the episode. In fact, when I saw Ryoga and Ranma fighting, it took me a second to realize what they were talking about, because I didn’t think that event from last episode would be carried over.

I really like how it was done, though. The show made it pretty clear that Akane was feeling some feelings about the whole thing, but Ranma was too caught up in the idea that she’d just be plain angry about it to miss what she was really telling him. She wanted him to tell her that actually it did mean something that in his cat-state, he still sought her out and was affectionate towards her. She didn’t want it to be meaningless. That’s really cute, and the miscommunication there was less annoying than it sometimes is and more adorable. Free relationship tip: learning how to properly communicate to your partner is really important!

The concept of finally introducing a character who is actually a better fighter than Ranma is good. Cologne isn’t Ryoga or Shampoo or Kuno. He can’t just beat her in a cool fight, she’s far more experienced and skilled, something that from here will kind of drive the entire arc. The fact that Shampoo ended up with a cursed form that Ranma finds so terrifying is also interesting. She’s kind of scary to him anyway, this unrelenting force who won’t leave him alone no matter what he does, so making her cursed form that but to the tenth degree is pretty neat.

Last good thing: I really love how nonchalant Kasumi is with Shampoo. Like, to her it’s just like, “Oh, Shampoo! You’re back, that’s lovely, do you want to stay for a meal?” Either Kasumi doesn’t understand the complex romance plot going on, or she does and finds it not reason to stop being a good host.

What didn’t I care for? Well, like I said at the start, it feels like this arc is moving too fast and too slow at the same time. In one episode, this story resolves the Akane/Ranma kiss from last episode, the mystery of the pink cat, introduces a new focal player in the story, and curses Ranma with something he’ll have to fix. That’s a lot to happen, and I was really shocked the pressure point thing happened in this episode too.

But at the same time...I really found my interest waning in the back half of this episode. The Cologne fight just isn’t super gripping, to me anyway, especially when the technique she uses just feels very bland. There’s a good five or so minutes, about a quarter of the runtime of the episode, that I was just bored in.

I also like reintroducing Shampoo, only three episodes after she left, was a bit of a mistake, especially when she’s basically a main character from here on out. I know she was very popular, but even then giving the audience some time away from her let’s them miss her, if that makes any sense.

There was originally going to be a Cologne based Character Spotlight, but then I decided not to because we still haven’t seen a lot from her, and also I’m very tired and my birthday was Monday please stop bullying me

So, yeah, if you couldn’t tell I’m kind of meh on this episode. It’s not bad. It’s not great. I enjoyed the first half quite a bit, but the back half was a little more of a struggle. It was in fact a big enough dip that I’m putting this episode fourth from the bottom, just above the P-Chan introduction episode.

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’  

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 15: Enter Shampoo, the Gung-Ho Girl! I Put My Life in Your Hands

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 19: Clash of the Delivery Girls! The Martial Arts Takeout Race

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 17: I Love You, Ranma! Please Don’t Say Goodbye

Episode 20: You Really Do Hate Cats!

Episode 16: Shampoo's Revenge! The Shiatsu Technique That Steals Heart and Soul

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 21: This Ol' Gal's the Leader of the Amazon Tribe!

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Episode 14: Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan

Episode 18: I Am a Man! Ranma's Going Back to China!?