My First Rumiko Takahashi Series

Soon approaching her 50th anniversary as a manga artist, Rumiko Takahashi has introduced generations to manga and anime through her stories. Her work spans the breadth of genres, from the hilarious mishaps in Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ to the horrific folktale roots of Mermaid Scar to the heart-wrenching drama of Maison Ikkoku. Below are Anime News Network writers' memories of their first encounter with a Rumiko Takahashi story and the impression it left on them.

I vividly recall the first time I saw the Urusei Yatsura anime. I was sitting in the small hotel room I shared with five other people at a tiny anime convention, watching the closed-circuit TV the convention was running during the event while I ate my humble dinner of cup ramen. Back in those days, conventions were purely fan-run events, and they would play any anime they thought other fans would enjoy. And as I sat slurping on my noodles, excited at the prospect of discovering anime I'd never seen before, a random episode of the Urusei Yatsura TV series began...completely untranslated, in Japanese with zero subtitles.

If you've never seen or read Urusei Yatsura, in a nutshell, it's the story of Ataru Moroboshi, Earth's unluckiest (and horniest) boy, who played a game of tag against aliens to see if they'd invade the Earth or not. He won, but his opponent was the beautiful alien princess Lum, who mistakenly thought Ataru confessed his love for her. So now she lives in his closet and follows him to school every day, much to his chagrin. Not only does she get mad and zap him with her electric powers anytime he tries to hit on a girl other than her, but since Lum is an alien, it can lead to a lot of strange things happening. Ataru usually has to deal with it in some way or another.

And, as is fairly common in Rumiko Takahashi's works, she injected numerous Japanese folklore elements into the story. Lum's alien race is based on the Japanese Oni, often translated as ogres or trolls, which is why they all have horns and wear tiger-striped clothes. Lum's friend from the snowy planet Neptune, Oyuki, is based on the Snow Woman yokai. Even the title, “Urusei Yatsura”, is a Japanese pun.

Combining this humor with these well-known icons of Japanese folktales AND science fiction elements was a unique and fresh twist on the romantic comedy, making Urusei Yatsura incredibly popular in Japan...but a bit of a hard sell in America, as the few anime & manga localizers we had back then feared that fans wouldn't “get” such a distinctly Japanese comedy.

Which is true: Did I “get” any of these references as a young teen, sitting in a hotel room excited to spend my weekend nerding out over anime? No! But its strange uniqueness was what caught my eye. Even without translated subtitles, the characters stood out due to their excellent designs and the stellar performances from their Japanese voice actors. Much of the humor is very physical and slapstick, almost Looney Tunes-esque, which is a universally understood form of humor. And the opening and ending themes are so catchy that, to this day, they are well-loved by anime fans all around the world. So it was no surprise that while I only had a mild semblance of what was even going on in Urusei Yatsura, I was immediately intrigued by it, and wanted to know more about it, which not only led me to fall in love with the series, but helped solidify Rumiko Takahashi as one of my favorite creators of all time.

Thankfully, the series is now much, MUCH easier for fans to acquire than it was for me back in the day. No need to scour mailing lists for folks who could trade you fansub VHS tapes, or special-order the manga from your local comic shop because it was so “niche.” I'm glad that the concept of not licensing a series because it's “too Japanese” is long gone. Fans can now enjoy one of the most influential and well-loved pieces of Takahashi's oeuvre. If you love harem comedies, or just comedy in general when it comes to your anime and manga, many (if not MOST) owe a lot to Urusei Yatsura's influence. Hence, it's fun to look back on this classic and see where some of your favorite modern titles got inspired from.

—Dawn H.

I'm not actually sure if I saw Ranma ½ or Fire Tripper first, but I know which one made the bigger impression on me. That's almost certainly because of a lifelong love of time travel stories; Jean Slaughter Doty's Can I Get There by Candlelight was a formative book for me. And long before there was Inu Yasha or Mao, there was Fire Tripper, the short story and OAV about a high school girl named Suzuko who is flung back through time to the Sengoku Era.

But Fire Tripper is much more than just a prototype for Takahashi's later time travel series. It's very much its own piece, and its time travel mechanics are far more involved than “falls down well” or “walks down old shopping street.” Suzuko's ability to travel through time is directly related to fires, not just the sort safely used for cooking, but huge conflagrations. When the story opens, she has vague memories of being in a house fire as a little girl, although no one else seems to remember it, and she gets her answers when a gas explosion envelops her and the little boy next door while out walking. The next thing Suzuko knows, she's in the Warring States period, being attacked. She's rescued by a young man around her age named Shukumaru, but the little boy she was with before the flames, Shuhei, is nowhere to be seen.

Or so she thinks; Suzuko discovers Shuhei's shirt in Shukumaru's home, and that and the presence of his little sister Suzu begin to raise some questions. These are complicated by the feelings Suzuko and Shukumaru are developing for each other; she quickly figures out that she and Suzu are the same person and that the house fire she recalls is from when she was Suzu in the past. It's a very romance-oriented story in many ways, because Suzuko is struggling with what she believes are her growing feelings for her own older brother, who isn't aware that they're siblings and keeps firmly declaring his intention of marrying her. While it's not too hard to figure out the truths of the piece, the more important aspect is how Takahashi writes them. Suzuko's emotions are the true drivers of the story, and the time travel and its many complications are the window dressing—still important (and a lot of fun). Still, they wouldn't matter without Suzuko's feelings.

The anime is only about fifty minutes long, and it's a close adaptation of the short story, as far as I can remember. It stands out to me as largely unlike any other Takahashi works I've read or watched since then, tapping into a sensibility that she's reworked since then, but never with quite the same staying power in my mind. I probably would have kept reading and watching her work even without Fire Tripper, but I'm still glad it was near the start of my experience.

—Rebecca Silverman

As someone who was a tween back in the mid-aughts, I'd first encountered the works of Rumiko Takahashi in two places: on TV and my local library. I'd caught the occasional episode of InuYasha on Adult Swim, but stumbling upon the stack of Ranma ½ volumes that lived next to my library's YA section was life-changing. It was my first inkling that maybe comics could be different from the cape capers I'd read before. Though I sometimes wonder how I'd perceive Ranma if I were any older. For example, I know countless people who'd experienced Neon Genesis Evangelion in their teens, but I didn't sit down with the series until I was in my mid-twenties.

About a year and change after I'd seen Evangelion through to The End, a new edition of Maison Ikkoku slid into my mailbox. It was the first of Takahashi's works I'd encountered as an adult, and I don't know how I would've processed it if I was any younger—an odd inverse to my experience with Ranma. At the time, I struggled to sort out my personal baggage while trying to survive a terrible call center job...and it was December of 2020. Like everyone else, I did my best to focus on the small pleasures in life, and in this case, it was reading.

Maison Ikkoku felt relatable and grounded in a moment where I was emotionally drifting. In addition to ample application of her razor-sharp humor, Takahashi subtly peels back the layers of Kyoko and Godai's relationship as they become closer. Kyoko is trying to move forward after the death of her husband, but she's not in a place where she feels she can. Meanwhile, Godai falls head over heels for Kyoko right away, but comes to realize that he might not be emotionally mature enough for her. These circumstances create a wonderful springboard for comedy and drama, but at its base level, the relationship between these two is incredibly relatable.

Through Kyoko and Godai, Takahashi shines a spotlight on the baggage we carry with us into any relationship. With some of the items in our bags, we need to sort through them on our own terms. However, perhaps other items are best carried in a shared bag. It's all about how we navigate the interpersonal Tetris of our lives. After all, everyone you're bound to meet has lived a life or two before meeting you—just as Kyoko lived a life before she met Godai.

Maison Ikkoku is a hilarious, touching, and relatable romp that I probably wouldn't have fully grasped in my teenage years. However, this little love story rings true to me today as a person who has lived a few lives and has a bit of baggage myself. Heck, I've probably lived a life since I flicked open the first volume.

—Coop Bicknell

I watched Cloverfield with my son earlier this week and had to pause it in the midst of all its extra-terrestrial carnage to explain the concept of "recording over" a pre-existing videotape. This is working knowledge we took for granted as a matter of course in 2008. My first exposure to Ranma ½ works under similar circumstances. It is not only one of my early entry points into anime as a whole, but it is a time capsule grounded in a version of youth that no longer exists.

Viz Media released the first two episodes of Ranma ½ on VHS tape* in 1993, but I wouldn't see it until approximately 1999. It was around this time that I was invited to a sleepover by a friend from dance class (at 13, I was still under the impression that I could do popular-girl things like move my body in an intentionally choreographed manner), where she regaled us with her anime tape collection. This is actually how I saw the first episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion—at a middle school sleepover. Until this point, my anime fixation had been limited to Sailor Moon and other magical girl shows I browsed on Hitoshi Doi's website†. Newly invigorated by the variety of shows I saw, I was ready to expand my horizons.

The following weekend, I asked my mom to take me to Hollywood Video§ to browse their middle-floor animation section. I usually stuck to perimeter shelves where the store displayed new releases or ventured into Horror to see if Scanners' striking box art would finally convince me to rent it. Hollywood Video's anime catalog included around 10 tapes, mostly graphically violent OAVs that I was not going to be able to fleece my parents to rent for me. Among the Angel Cops and Genocybers was Ranma ½ in its brightly colored box. A comical panda was front and center. The back copy mentioned martial arts hijinks and silly gender-swapping. This one would probably pass muster.

I can't say with complete certainty that Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo were my first exposure to animated breasts, but it's a close race. I had certainly seen Barbie-style nudity in out-of-context Sailor Moon clips from yet-unlocalized seasons, but the first episode of Ranma ½ was upfront with nipples‡. While that wouldn't have been enough to keep puberty-burdened me on board, the initial cast introduction was enough to light a fire in me. I fixated on Ranma ½ and began what I did best: read absolutely everything about it on the internet. I quickly became a fan of Nabiki, Kuno, Ryoga, and the overall cast's dub performance. Myriam Sirois' version of Akane still holds up 30 years later, and it's unfortunate we didn't get more characters from her.

Alas, I couldn't afford to buy the tapes for myself. At the time, a VHS tape with two anime episodes cost US$35 and I was only earning $3 an hour‖ babysitting for my neighbors. I'd seek out subtitled episodes via illicit means¶ to watch on RealPlayer❦ to get a better sense of the characters I liked (who, up until that point, I only had impressions of based on fansite profile pages). I was eventually able to continue my Ranma ½ obsession by opening up a subscription box at my local Things From Another World☜ comic book shop and buying the floppiesꜝ. I remember the shop owner patiently explaining Happosai to my mom to make sure she was comfortable with me reading comic books that featured an old man stealing panties.

One of my major life stages is inextricably linked to Ranma ½. It's a bit daunting to confront how much of the context around it is seemingly lost to the ether, but Ranma ½ is still here, whether it's the manga, the original anime adaptation, or the new shiny version streaming on Netflix.

—Lynzee Loveridge

*A VHS (Video Home System) tape was a standard form of home video release from 1977 to 2003. It consisted of a magnetic tape video recording on a large cassette, which was then placed into a VCR (videocassette recorder) and played on a home television set.

†Hitoshi Doi is a former Japanese baseball player and an otaku. He built a personal website in 1994 dedicated to his favorite anime series with extensive information. Much of the series information pages were dedicated to magical girl shows from the late '80s and '90s.

§Hollywood Video, and its major competitor, Blockbuster Video, were video rental stores. Prior to the advent of streaming video, individuals would rent a videotape (and later, video games, DVDs, and Blu-rays) from a rental store for 24 to 72 hours. This was seen as more financially viable, as a rental often costs US$2-5. Brick-and-mortar video rental died a slow death as Redboxᵃ kiosks, VOD, and streaming proliferated the market.

‡Nipples are apparent on male and female mammals. The nipple and areola serve as erogenous zones in humans and, in certain cases, can deliver milk to offspring.

‖This was child exploitation. Even in 2000, the minimum wage in my home state was $6.50 an hour. The only one getting fleeced was me.

¶ I was mostly downloading fansubs and scanslations at this time via IRC², which I taught myself how to use when I was about 12.

❦RealPlayer media player program had proprietary file types *.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb that were very compressed, allowing users to share minutes-long videos for sub-10 megabytes. In the era of dial-up internet, a four megabyte file would take over 30 minutes to download. I watched the Akane haircut episode via a RealMedia file.

☜Things From Another World is a comic book chain founded by Dark Horse Comics president Mike Richardson out of Milwaukee, Ore. The location in my hometown, which had briefly rebranded as Pegasus Books, no longer exists. After being able to order comics from their website for years, it became more or less defunct (outside of giving its three remaining store locations) this year.

ꜝFloppies were an early manga release format mirroring American comic book issues. They included flopped art to switch Japanese comics to a left-to-right reading format. Color insert artwork from Japanese manga magazines was often repurposed for the issue covers.

ᵃRedbox kiosks were automated DVD, Blu-ray, and game rental kiosks that were often placed in grocery store, pharmacy, and convenience store entryways. Much like putting a Starbucks inside a Safeway, their placement and cheap price could attract a spontaneous customer purchase. They are also no longer part of the media landscape.

²IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system where a "room" would be referred to as a "channel." Groups would set up servers that hosted files. If you were granted access to channels, you could then access the server to download manga chapters, fansub episodes, etc.

Horror isn't exactly the first genre that comes to mind when considering Rumiko Takahashi's lengthy manga career. While InuYasha indeed features violent moments and supernatural monsters, Takahashi's works generally inspire hilarity rather than blood-dripping dread. Her short Mermaid Saga (two to four volumes, depending on the edition) bucks her normal trend of romantic comedy and high-spirited hijinks. Takahashi's Mermaid Saga is a creepy, melancholy, and deeply unsettling work.

My first experience with Takahashi's stories as animation wasn't from Ranma ½, like many of my similarly aged U.S. contemporaries; in the UK, we were lucky to find imported issues of the Viz Comics. Instead, we had to make do with whatever PAL VHS “video nasties” local label Manga Video saw fit to pack the shelves of dingy video rental stores with. Next to grubby-fingerprinted copies of Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend and Fist of the North Star sat a small collection of Rumic World tapes, each a 45-55 minute OVA adapting one Rumiko Takahashi short story. These were a mixed bag—everything from proto-InuYasha Sengoku-era time travel tale Fire Tripper, to sci-fi comedy Maris the Wondergirl, and the atmospheric horror Laughing Target.

Mermaid Forest was always my favorite though, and the only Rumic World title to gain the coveted BBFC 18-rating, presumably for its plentiful horrific, bloody violence. Even now, decades later, some of those scenes remain seared into my subconscious. Adapted from Mermaid Saga's third story, Studio Pastel's 1987 Mermaid Forest OVA isn't the beginning of the story, but it successfully introduces 500-year-old, eternally youthful, immortal wanderer Yuta and his much younger, also immortal, travelling companion Mana. Yuta's far more mature and level-headed, while Mana is both naïve and short-tempered. Both are survivors of mermaid flesh ingestion. Adapting the Yao Bikuni legend (a wandering nun made immortal by eating mermaid flesh), Takahashi embellishes the concept. Only the rare chosen few achieve true immortality from eating the flesh of a mermaid—most other unfortunates degenerate into “lost souls”; mindless, mutated beasts, screaming in pain and suffering.

Throughout Mermaid Saga's centuries-spanning narrative, first Yuta, then also later Mana, wander Japan, encountering others obsessed with obtaining immortality from mermaid flesh, many of whom meet tragic ends. While almost the entire saga was adapted for TV in 2003, the original OVA version of Mermaid Forest remains the most visceral and uncensored. There's graphic body horror, nudity, intense violence, and cruelty unsuitable for TV broadcast. Yuta and Mana repeatedly die brutal deaths, only to be resurrected later. Yuta bemoans his lot, proclaiming, “I'm not the sun! Why do I have to rise again every day?”. Like many works of fiction exploring immortality, Mermaid Sagadelves into the dark side of eternal life. While Yuta searches desperately to find a way to grow old and die naturally, he takes comfort in the innocent Mana's company.

Like most Takahashi stories, there's little to no romantic development between the two leads. The little romantic tension that exists is negated by Yuta's world-weariness and Mana's youthful naivety. Instead, it's the peripheral characters whose stories are most emotionally resonant. Mermaid Forest in particular features a particularly twisted twin sibling relationship, and a tragically thwarted romance that culminates in searing flames and sacrifice. It's a pitch-black gothic horror full of unforgettable moments and a brutally ironic final twist. I wish the OVA version were available on anything other than VHS tape, but at least the later 2003 TV series DVD version is more readily available, even if it's a slightly more watered-down version.

—Kevin Cormack

Let's be honest here, nothing I say is going to shock anybody who grew up during the early to mid-2000s. Imagine yourself as a young child, staying up late catching his really mature-looking fantasy anime airing on Adult Swim. Most of the stuff I had watched was within the realm of science fiction, like Digimon or Gundam or Cowboy Bebop. I never actually sat down and watched a true fantasy story before until I saw a faithful encounter between a spunky high school girl and a sharp-tongued dog boy clad in red. My first Rumiko Takahashi anime was also one of my first fantasy anime InuYasha. Having revisited the series, it's not surprising that this show stood out to so many people at the time.

Rumiko Takahashi has always enjoyed writing characters that are lovably hostile towards each other. While you do still start to see the patterns in their writing after checking out a lot of their other shows, Takahashi does a rather commendable job balancing between conflicting characters and insightful character study. I'm sure everybody remembers InuYasha and Kagome's constant bickering, and I do feel as though the anime goes just a smidge too far with a lot of things that feel more like products of the time. I'm not sure if more of these scenes were added in the anime adaptation of the original manga. Still, these two do spend a lot of time fighting each other, the humor can get very repetitive the longer the show airs, some characters are way too accepting of the nonsensical circumstances that they are placed in and some of that humor definitely felt dated even back when I watched this show as a kid such as all of the sexual harassment with Miroku's character.

But when you push past that, it's not surprising that I found myself glued to the screen whenever I could. I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan of the franchise, like many of my friends, but there's just something about this world and the tragedy inherent in many of its aspects that keeps me coming back. The overall setup was straightforward, with the team hunting down a bunch of the jewel shards, but even without them, the world on its own just felt inherently dangerous. I love all of the different creature designs and how the villains had this deceptive nature to them. You get the sense that this past fantasy world we keep returning to is slowly getting corrupt and cynical as time goes on. The shards are only exacerbating the situation, both in their destructive power and in how they divide people. Even if we didn't get to find out the story of every new character or creature that got introduced, I still wanted to learn about them.

Naraku was a fantastic villain who had this sense of presence throughout the entire show. He embodies this sense of corrupt greed, showcasing the worst of both humans and demons. I loved every episode that highlighted Sesshomaru slowly learning a bit more about humanity and what it means to be a decent person, plus there's the tragic love triangle between InuYasha, Kagome, and Kikyo. The latter doesn't feel typical. I was drawn into the tragedy of InuYasha and Kikyo's manipulated downfall and felt sorry because that relationship could have worked out. That's what made the drama so enjoyable. Despite the lore and backstory, much of the drama stemmed from inherently personal reasons between characters. I wanted to see how many people would get their happy ending, even though I know that a good chunk of them wouldn't.

Not to mention, some things were just very cool and left an imprint on my brain to this day. The Tetsusaiga was one of my favorite swords when I was a kid, and the animation is still surprisingly solid over twenty years later. This was also the show that first showcased a lot of Canadian voice talent beyond the early Dragon Ball dub. So many years later, and I don't think there's been a fantasy story quite like InuYasha, which might explain why it's still held in such high regard to this day. It is not a perfect series, but I feel like it is a fantastic time capsule for people like me who got exposed to the show for the first time. I'll always have a fondness for the show in my heart, and I'll always find myself thinking about it every time I tell my dog to sit.

—Bolts

Thanks to Viz Media for their support in bringing the Rumiko Takahashi weekend to life. Please check out their Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Mermaid Saga, Maison Ikkoku, and InuYasha manga offerings here!