English Dub Review: Ranma ½ “Hot Competition”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kodachi and Ranma face off in a battle of ribbons.

OUR TAKE

And that wraps up this show’s first two parter, with Ranma taking Akane’s place in the ribbon battle and handily defeating Kodachi, along with a ton of swapping between his two forms. There’s not a ton to focus on or cover in terms of character that we haven’t already from last time, although there are plenty of new aspects to the big joke about Ranma and how he balances his whole condition. In the competition, Ranma decides to go by his regular name instead of an alias. Normally, one might get concerned that people would find out he and his female self are the same person, since…that’s exactly the case. But instead, all the spectators who are even aware of guy Ranma just assume there are simply two people named Ranma Saotome, with the most speculation going toward maybe them being siblings or something. And honestly that’s fine, sometimes it’s easier to just let people connect the dots their own way than to explain that you’re actually a guy who can switch between two genders when different temperatures of water are splashed on you. Like having to explain that alone is just going to cause a lot more problems than it solves.

And yeah, now that we’re seven episodes in, let’s tally up the love interest count for Ranma and Akane. Akane has Tatewaki and Ryoga, Ranma has Kodachi and…also Tatewaki, though just in girl form. And of course all of these are unwanted advances, even more so with Tatewaki and Kodachi who are almost creepily persistent, even when the object of their affections is literally screaming at them that they don’t want to date them. Maybe that’s why stories like this haven’t aged super well, but it could also be why some like Ranma have also maintained a following for so long. And as previously discussed, we are by no means done adding love interests to either side of this love octahedron, especially as Ranma and Akane become closer to each other. But yeah, a little over half a dozen episodes in and I can say that this has been a pretty fun show, possibly even more so for people who watched either of the previous adaptations. So hopefully we’ll keep getting more fun episodes, especially ones with great animation like this one did.