English Dub Review: Ranma ½ “I Hate Men!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ranma starts going to Akane’s school, but his tendency to get in fights causes problems, especially when the rain triggers his genderbending.

OUR TAKE

Now that we’ve fully set up the lore of Ranma, his gender fluidity, and his dynamic with Akane, it’s now time to set him loose in a school setting and see what dominos start falling. As with other manga romcoms, including this author’s own later work, Inuyasha, we’re going to start seeing many other contenders for both Ranma and Akane, but because of Ranma’s unique situation, that can sometimes lead to that being the same person. Case in point, the main new addition to the cast for this week: Tatewaki Kuno, who seems to enjoy fighting Akane for a chance to propose, and even does so with male Ranma, only for female Ranma to later handily kick his butt and make him want HER now too. This is part of what can make Ranma ½ so interesting in how it handles Ranma’s need to balance his identities and how they have an impact on people around him. At the same time as he is just trying to get his fight on, he’ll just get some water on him for whatever reason and that will suddenly change the whole game, especially when he has to roll with things and pretend he is a totally new person.

And so begins both Ranma’s love troubles and the troubles of being pursued by people who don’t know he’s actually a guy. That said, this show’s manga and previous adaptations have apparently been pretty helpful in helping transgender viewers understand themselves, and it has been speculated that this new show will do the same. It’s hard for me to fully comment on that as a cis man, but hey, as long as it’s helping someone better learn how to care about and understand themselves, more power to them. It does also seem like, throughout the story, Ranma is pretty consistently referred to as a guy by people who know about his situation and goes by male pronouns, so that’s how I’ll be referring to him moving forward unless I’m talking about the perspective of someone who doesn’t know that, like Kuno for example. From his view, he meets this brash rival to his pursuit of Akane, and then an even more surprising girl who he suddenly madly falls in love with. And time will only tell how he feels about all this if he ever learns the truth, though I expect that won’t be for many episodes down the line.