OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Still determined to become a boy again, Ranma challenges Cologne for the Phoenix Pill, the means to undo the curse, at a competition on the beach.OUR TAKEWe come to the conclusion of the brief “Ranma stuck as a girl” story arc as he is finally able to procure the Phoenix Pill from Cologne, allowing him to return to boy form. And as should be expected by now, Ranma doesn’t really change or grow that much as a result of all of this, other than the training he got from trying to get the Phoenix Pill paying off physically and allowing him to put Cologne on the ropes. But even that isn’t enough, forcing Akane to resort to making use of Ranma’s fear of cats and Shampoo’s now cursed ability to become a cat to make Ranma mentally become a cat and use techniques learned there to defeat Cologne. So, I suppose it’s a good message in the end to show that Ranma and Akane are still a good team when they work together, proving that even if Cologne or Shampoo or other outside forces try to lure Ranma over to another woman, Akane will always be the one that Ranma is meant to be with. Even if she gets really aggressive and physically violent in the interim. Look, it was the style of writing female love interests in manga at the time, alright?And that’s really all there is to say about this specific episode. It was a fun time at the beach and resolved the slight problem that it started a few episodes ago, but said problem didn’t really have much of an impact on things and is now over and done with. So now, looking to the future of the remainder of this season, let’s look at the OP and ED for hints of what may be to come. It looks like there are a couple more female love interests for Ranma who will appear, one of whom looks kind of familiar to me from what I remember seeing of the original anime, though I don’t really know either of their names. I can only hope their respective gimmicks are at least somewhat interesting and don’t just end up being a repeat of everything going on with Shampoo. We’re officially a third of the way through this second season, and I doubt they’ll be able to adapt all of the remainder of the manga in that time, so hopefully the eight episodes they have left to work with use that time wisely so that this feels like an enjoyable experience at the end of the season.