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© 2001 Viz Communications
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Ranma
1/2 Volume 17
By: Rumiko
Takahashi
Review
by: Jack
Razumich
From:
Viz Communications
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This volume is the latest in a long line of graphic novels.
For those of you who don’t know the story, here it is in a
nutshell: Ranma Saotome is a young martial artist training
to take over his family’s martial arts system, the Anything-Goes
System of Martial Arts. He goes on a training mission with
his father, Genma, to the cursed training grounds of Jusenkyo
in China. The thing that’s cursed about Jusenkyo is that it’s
covered in springs, each of which has it’s own “very tragic
legend.” What makes the legend tragic is that someone (or
something) has managed to drown themselves in each of the
various springs, and if you fall into one of the springs,
you take the form of whatever fell into the spring.
Anyway, in case you didn’t see it coming, Ranma falls into
a spring, specifically the Spring of Drowned Girl. Being splashed
with cold water turns him into a girl, and hot water will
turn him back into a guy, hence the title (1/2 of the time
he’s a man, 1/2 of the time he’s a girl). This causes serious
(but usually comical) problems between Ranma and his fiancee,
Akane, who was betrothed to him (neither of the two had any
say in the matter) so that the Anything-Goes Style was guaranteed
an heir.
Ranma actually lucks out. It seems like half of the characters
in the series managed to fall into the springs. Ranma’s father
turns into a Giant Panda when he gets wet. An extremely near-sighted
martial artist named Mousse fell into the Spring of Drowned
Duck. Ryoga, a poor boy who gets lost in his own back yard,
turns into a little black pig. Ironically, Ryoga’s pig form
is adopted by Akane and given the name of “P-Chan.” Believe
it or not, she never finds out they’re one and the same.
A Chinese Amazon with the hots for Ranma named Shampoo falls
into the Spring of Drowned Cat, which is hilarious because
the only thing that Ranma’s afraid of is, well, cats. And,
most amusingly, a man named Pantyhose Taro falls into the
Spring of Yeti That Drowned While Riding Ox and Carrying Stork
and Eel (don’t ask).
Just not falling into the springs doesn’t mean that you don’t
have an interesting gimmick, however. Tatewaki Kuno is a kendo
(the Japanese equivalent of fencing) swordsman with major
feelings for both Akane and girl-type Ranma (he never figures
out that they’re one and the same). Kuno’s sister, Kodachi,
a master of Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics, has equally
strong feelings for boy-type Ranma, but wants girl-type dead
(apparently stupidity runs in the family). Ukyo Kuonji, Ranma’s
“cute” fiancee, is a master okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) chef,
and has somehow created a fighting style around this. She
and Ranma grew up together, but Ranma didn’t find out that
she was a girl until they were both sixteen (he actually thought
that she had fallen in the same spring that he had until she
rather violently pointed out otherwise).
And of course there’s Happosai, perverted master of the martial
arts and Founding Member of the Anything-Goes School...
Now, down to the review. This volume contains five (that’s
right, five) complete stories that give you a generally good
feel for how the series is written. In the first story, Kuno
masters a new technique involving, of all things, watermelons.
See, Kuno goes to the legendary swordsman training grounds
of Watermelon Island, an island inhabited by nothing but watermelons.
The training there is so rigorous that most swordsmen who
attempt it come back with amnesia. To make a long story short,
Kuno loses his memory (or at least all of the rational parts
of it; he still thinks that Akane and girl-type Ranma are
in love with him) but learns a powerful new technique that
he uses to beat Ranma with for about four pages. Ranma, being
the main character, eventually wins the rematch and Kuno gets
his memory back, but you’ll have to read the story to find
out how.
The second story, and my favorite out of this volume, involves
Ranma’s “cute” fiancee Ukyo.
The focus of this story, like most of them featuring Ukyo,
involves her career as an okonomiyaki chef. Ten years earlier,
Ukyo (who grew up with Ranma) stole a secret recipe from her
father that told how to make the perfect okonomiyaki sauce.
Ranma, who was watching the cooking, wanted to taste it immediately,
but Ukyo said that it had to age first, but that Ranma could
be the first one to try it. However, glutton that he was,
Ranma couldn’t wait, and he up-ended the jar with the sauce
in it when he tried to do a taste test. Panicking, he quickly
tried to reproduce the sauce, with the predictable results.
Ten years later, when Ukyo tries the sauce, it makes her violently
ill, forcing Ranma to try and make amends, comical though
his efforts may be.
The last three stories are, more or less, fill-ins. Two of
these feature Master Happosai, and one features Hikaru “Voodoo
Spike” Gosunkugi.
The first Happosai story picks up not long after the last
time we saw him, which was when he was being dropped into
the Sea of Japan by Pantyhose Taro. Happosai has made it to
a remote fishing village, and is causing trouble so that someone
will come and take him home. Mr. Tendo and Ranma’s father,
with Ranma in tow, show up to deal with the menace, but the
villagers are none too happy when they discover the connection...
The second Happosai story involves an ancient “obedience pill”
that a master gives to his ungrateful student to teach him
humility. Happosai gives it to Ranma out of revenge. Unfortunately,
the pill creates an incredible magnetic attraction between
the two bodies, and, with the size difference between the
two, things don’t work out quite the way the instructions
say they should.
The Gosunkugi story, which is wedged in between the two Happosai
stories, involves Gosunkugi buying magic paper dolls from
a traveling magical item salesman (a recurring theme in the
book) that make the wearer do whatever is written on the doll.
He buys them to a) get revenge on Ranma (naturally), and b)
try and make Akane fall in love with him (also naturally).
Of, course, things don’t go that smoothly, and the dolls all
get wasted in a variety of bungled (but EXTREMELY funny) attempts
to one-up Ranma.
Ranma 1/2 was one of the first manga series that I
ever read, and it’s always been one of my favorites. Takahashi
never seems to run out of jokes or gimmicks, and they’re always
funny, no matter how many times you read them. While starting
out with Volume 17 may not be the best place to begin, it’s
definitely a series that you should be reading if you’ve ever
been interested in laughing.
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