Ranma 1/2 is a martial arts-romantic comedy manga series written by renowned mangaka Rumiko Takahashi (Also known for other popular mangas such as Urusei Yatsura and Inuyasha), it originally ran from September 1987 to March 1996, and was later on collected into 38 volumes.
The story centers around titular character, young martial artist Ranma Saotome, who is cursed (Along with his father) during a training journey to Jusenkyo, China, turning into a girl whenever he is doused with cold water, thankfully though, he is also able to change back into a boy when hot water is used. Ranma however is not the only cursed individual in this story, in fact, nearly half of the characters have unique transformation curses of their own, which makes up for a very comedic story.
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| Ranma's dad is on the left |
An animated TV series would later on be created by Kitty Films and was aired weekly between April 12, 1989 to September 16 1989 for 18 episodes, before being cancelled due to low ratings. The series was however later on reworked by most of the same staff and was launched in a different time slot, this time running 143 episodes from October 20, 1989 to September 25, 1992.
Kitty Films is an anime production company established in 1972 in Japan, it also opted a record label under "Kitty" or "Kitty Records". Back in 1972 the company was merely a subsidiary of Polydor and Universal Music, producing TV drama soundtracks. It was only in 1981 did the company commence with anime production, achieving major success with their version of Urusei Yatsura (As I mentioned earlier, was also created my Rumiko Takahashi). Over the next two decades, Kitty Films would become known in and outside Japan as the produced of most of the animated versions of Takahashi's manga works, Ranma 1/2 included.
Despite their fame as producer, the actual animation was handled by several independent anime studios, such as Studio Pierrot, Studio Deen and Madhouse.
While it has been awhile since I have watched the anime, I believe the quality of the animation was actually quite decent, with martial arts (Though not a realistic portraya-- oh who cares it's still fantastic! Props to Ms Rumiko Takahashi for creating so many original and amusing fighting styles for this series and its characters!) being one of the series' focus points, it is a pleasant surprise to see that not many still frames are used for its fighting scenes, strikes, blocks, dodges were all still properly animated out, also unlike other animes (And, well, Hanna-Barbera cartoons), the series barely reused any old animations, if not at all, while fighting styles of course have to be repeated throughout the series, they are still presented through different angles and perspectives.
It is not just the fight sequences though that are so energetically animated, the comedic scenes (Though then again more than 90% of this series contains comedy gold) are just as wonderfully animated, with nearly all of the main characters being inhumanly capable fighters, it only makes sense that they wouldn't do normal tasks like normal human beings.
Ranma 1/2 is and always will be a classic anime, it is a unique mixture of action, romance and comedy (And is still known to have the craziest cast of characters, even for an anime). It is just an added bonus that it has pretty decent animation as well, especially when it came out during a time filled with low budget animations (Eg, Reusing animation cycles, still frames for supposedly 'epic' scenes, etc.).
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