Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Rumiko Rundown
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14784 |
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We actually had our first experience with Ranma 1/2 --but didn't know about it-- thru the Japanese video game Hard Battle. Before Ranma 1/2 even reached our shores, a friend got this Hong Kong SNES bootlegging contraption that goes on the SNES top slot, put the SNES cartridge on it, and there's a slot for a 3.5" floppy to copy and play games domestic and foreign.
One of the games in a floppy was this Japanese fighting game called Hard Battle, and since it's easier to play fighting games in foreign language (this is before the proliferation of the WWW), we played that more. I remember getting good with this guy with an umbrella. It wasn't till a few years later when Viz started releasing we found out what exactly we were playing. 
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I remember a MegaCD game that had you platforming your way to the fights, with animated cutscenes with the original voices. Unfortunately, there was no way to import it back then without a lot of expensive equipment.
Also, think I saw an RPG for SNES, but don't know whether any brave fan tried hacking an English .ROM translation for it, as they did with the Sailor Moon RPG. 
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1566 |
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Answering Mike's questions, spoilers and all:
Yes, Inuyasha and Kagome eventually find all the pieces of that jewel. Actually, they find all but one piece at a pretty steady rate, and then it takes them like fifteen volumes to get the last one. You could just feel the editor breathing down Takahashi's neck and going "could you stretch it out a little longer please?" as she came up with yet another plot device to keep our heroes from getting that last stupid piece. Eventually they found out it was in another dimension or something, but in the end true love conquers all. It just takes a really long time to do it. In answer to your other question, Ryouga is the best Ranma character. He's an excellent twist on most "rival" characters in that you can make a very strong case for him being a better person than the hero. And I love the running gag of his terrible sense of direction, which allows Takahashi to just shove him into a story whenever she feels like it (so many Ranma stories are improved by Ryouga just coincidentally wandering into the plot at just the right moment, shouting, "RANMA, FIGHT ME!" without any idea of what's going on, and thus tipping over the situation over into total chaos.) Plus he turns into the mathematically determined Cutest Mascot Ever. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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Ranma 1/2 was one of my gateway anime, and was THE Gateway manga for me.
Rumiko Takahashi's run from 1980-1987 was amazing both Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku are excellent and its hard to imagine how dedicated she was with a schedule that insane. Even someone like Hiromu Arakawa doesn't write the secondary manga project she takes on. As for the racism, I consider it to be like Apu, sure you can complain about how Apu runs a convenience store, has a ton of children, and has his Hindu beliefs be the brunt of jokes but it makes sense when you look at the wider cast of the Simpsons. Its hard to find fault with the tour guide when Genma is written as a deranged moron whose at fault for a lot of the problems Ranma has, Nabiki is completely obsessed with money, and Ryoga cant find a lot that is right next to his house. |
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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One thing I thought was interesting about Ranma 1/2 that I haven't heard about in a while is the amount of teenaged female frontal nudity on display in the show. Maybe old-timers have gotten used to it by now, but I remember when I first saw it as a kid I got all bug-eyed, since I hadn't yet seen female nudity in an anime and wasn't expecting it from what sounded like a light-hearted martial arts comedy. It makes me wonder if the younger generation of anime fans are surprised by it either, and I also wonder if it goes to show a cultural difference in the times, considering Ranma was a daytime TV show aimed at kids and written by a woman (my understanding has been that back in the 80's and some of the 90's that sort of nudity wasn't uncommon and didn't have such a large social/sexual stigma as it does nowadays).
I also wanted to chime in regarding Ranma's international popularity, because I remember watching it on daytime cable TV when I had a chance to visit Mexico City back in the mid-90's. Not just that, but I remember vendors in the streets selling children's toys/masks of characters from Ranma and Dragon Ball too, so at the time it seemed to me that Ranma might have already been popular in some Spanish-speaking countries. I also wanted to mention that I loved and own Viz's editor's choice release of the Maison Ikkoku manga, and I also have a copy of the Lum "Perfect" Collection, which I think is great too, especially to get a sense for Rumiko Takahashi's rough storytelling and comic style before she became a real manga powerhouse. And regarding One Pound Gospel, I absolutely loved the first 2 or 3 volumes, but then the last volume or so was a letdown --- apparently the series was on hiatus off and on (over a 20 year time frame I think?) and it shows, both in the art (which later on is less detailed and warm-feeling compared to her earlier work) and in the actual setting (the story starts with characters in the 80's, so all they had were landline telephones --- but then suddenly in the last chapters people are using cellphones, which for me felt pretty incongruous). I also didn't like Kosaku's last boxing match, because the opponent seemed like a somewhat annoying pretty-boy with a fairly dull personality, which didn't really make for much of an entertaining finale (actually, the ending overall seemed kind of rushed). |
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Maidenoftheredhand
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And yet as a woman I was never ever offended by the nudity in Ranma 1/2. You certainly saw more but it never felt exploitative or objectifying like the fanservice in a lot of today's anime. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2867 |
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yeah,the nudity in ranma made sense a lot of times, my favorite one was when ranma took off her shirt after training just because, since it was in the earlier episodes he had a very noyish mentality and did not even think it would be weird for a female to take off her shirt to cool off after training.
another thing I liked about the ryouga/ranma dynamic was that they kept on one upping ech other, unliek most shounen series in which the rival become cannon fodder/pointless fighters ryouga and ranma would alternate places in which one was the stronger. |
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rankothefiremage
 Posts: 517 Location: Michigan |
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Fairly sure the first part of my handle gives it away but i'm a huge ranma, fan and i love Takahashi's work in general it along with Eva acted as my gate way from just watching "japanese cartoons" to watching anime.
Note - late 1999 early 2000 era time interested people. -G |
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taster of pork
 Posts: 594 Location: My House |
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I watched a few episodes of Ranma back when I was first getting into anime in the nineties. Everyone was obsessed with it, but I was the only one who wasn't. I might give it another try, one of these days. The only series from Rumiko that hooked me in right away was Inuyasha.
Last edited by taster of pork on Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14784 |
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T'was done more for comedic fun rather than the star of the show. Though later seasons progressively suffered the "Knocker-jima" effect.
I like the purple-nurples the girls give Ranma-chan when she gets out of hand. Because ya don't do that to a girl. To a boy, yes.
To this day, fans are still arguing who's stronger.
Ranma 1/2 is a slow-starter. As I mentioned before: It wasn't till late S1 - early S2 that our anime-oblivious dorm hall happened to catch on it and started asking to watch the beginning episodes. It's due to initial low ratings was why the J-broadcaster had to move up the popular Shampoo episodes out of order and why they re-branded the series to Ranma 1/2 Nettouhen. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6872 Location: Kazune City |
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Anton Chigurh
 Posts: 257 Location: Guam |
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This is going to dovetail hard into Ranma territory since it's the only series of Takahashi I am very familiar with.
I first found out about RANMA 1/2 from my cousin's secondhand account, way back in 1998 when I still lived in Colombia. He told me of a show that had people turn into animals when water fell on them, and that they also fought a lot. I found that interesting, but figured that, since my cousin had a different cable provider than my family did I would never see said show. Oh well. Fast forward to 1999 and I'm watching TV, waiting for MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH to start at 11:00 p.m. - it was a foreign channel. Once the time arrived, instead of that show's opening, a gong rang and a very peppy, cheerful song started playing. My mind's going all WTF, where's the show I'm supposed to watch, what's with this thing I'm actually watching? I'm not underselling the shock this gave me, by the way. I REALLY looked forward to MKR for whatever reason - certainly not its raw quality, but I'm deviating now. Despite this I stay tuned, and slowly realized THIS was the show my cousin told me about. And once that episode ended I decided to tune again the next day. And the next. And the next. I cannot overstate how massive an impression the show left on me. After years of DBZ and SAINT SEIYA and others, action anime became defined for me as two insanely powered individuals sorting out their differences in the bloodiest, most graphically visceral techniques that could appear in these supposed children's shows. RANMA's careful combination of high school rom-com shenanigans with martial arts that kept topping one another in how ludicrous - and ludicrously fun - they were was, to say the least, a revelation. RANMA 1/2 easily sold me on a perennially disoriented, but earnest and loyal teenager and a girl hopelessly in love and with a tenuous grasp of the language - although this never came up in the Spanish dub - as veritable no-nonsense badasses in combat. And of all characters I liked Ranma the most. Every time someone would stump him with new, insane fighting techniques, he'd either fight his way around them or develop his own. At the same time he was pretty full of himself (he often claimed never to have lost a match, a very suspect claim as the series goes on) and his callousness could actually hurt those around him when he didn't think before speaking. Whether by accident or design -from what I've read, mostly the former -, Takahashi made him an engaging lead. As an addendum, when I've found myself under rather hard circumstances - boot camp, aboard a ship for days - I have started to sing both the opening and ending themes for Ranma in Spanish. Maybe it's a coping mechanism, a way to briefly return to a time when an anime could blow me away with the right combo of characterization and quirk alone. And they're pretty catchy tunes too! I saw a video in YouTube of someone beating the SNES game with Ranma only using the Hi-Ryu-Shoten-Ha. I didn't know that could be done, but I guess the game really wasn't that well made. I still like the music for the Jusenkyo stage though. For what it matters, I beat the game with Gosunkugi in the hardest setting, an achievement that makes me prouder than it should. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1820 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Re: the use of "Alone Again (Naturally)" in Maison Ikkoku. IIRC Kitty Records (one of the show's main sponsors) wanted to promote the song since it had the Japanese rights. Unfortunately it proved to be unpopular with the audience, hence only being used one time. Mind you, I'm going on nearly twenty year old recollections of the MI FAQ.
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enurtsol
Posts: 14784 |
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That's how I remember it as well. Guess any purist out there would want it back since that's how it was originally, even if it's for commercial promotion. 
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4093 |
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Ranma 1/2: One of the first anime series of which I've ever heard {early 90s?}, still haven't seen it or read it or even looked at it {Honestly: Does girl Ranma and boy Ranma have different hair colors? That's cheating, you know, like if Clark Kent was a blonde}.
Seen the UY OVAs and most of the movies, seen the first thirty episodes of Masion Ikkoku, saw more episodes of Inyuasha than I'd care to count but I don't have any interest in Ranma and it's right there so I can watch it anytime. I could watch it, I could like it or maybe even love the individual episodes but there is one thing preventing me from trying: Rumiko Takahashi because, well, see above paragraph. One bitten, twice shy and I've already been bitten three times. I'm not falling for it again. I'm sure she has plenty of positives but brevity and conclusions will never be a part of it. |
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