English Dub Review: Ranma ½ “It’s Fast or It’s Free”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ranma, Akane, and Shampoo compete in a noodle delivery race, while Kuno believes that Ranma and Akane are actually competing for him.

OUR TAKE

We’re back with another fun filled episode of Ranma, this time bringing back Kuno for the first time since the season started! If you don’t remember, Kuno started out having just a crush on Akane, but then met girl Ranma and gained a crush on him too, though not being able to comprehend that this new crush is actually the same guy he loathes for being betrothed to his first crush. And now it seems he’s having further delusions of both Akane and girl Ranma being in love with him too, making his own mental love triangle and then going to Akane and Ranma’s house to tell them that he’ll have to choose between one of them. As you may have noticed from watching the series thus far, they both hate his guts rather adamantly and would rather avoid him all together if possible. This becomes rather difficult when both Ranma and Akane, as well as Shampoo, end up competing in a race across town while carrying noodles that ends at Kuno’s house and must feed him those noodles in order to win. So what ends up occurring is two women (and a man who physically is cursed to become a woman) feeding noodles to a guy they hate who thinks they want to date him.

Basically standard fair for a Ranma episode, with romantic entanglements, delusional or otherwise, made into rapid fire jokes across the entire run time, made all the more noticeable with Shampoo in the mix. Shampoo is an interesting case here since, unlike Kuno, she is aware that Ranma can become a woman, but this doesn’t deter her from constantly trying to get him to go on a date with her or get engaged, whereas Kuno simply cannot comprehend the idea that Ranma is the girl who likes equally to Akane, despite the fact that they look exactly alike and he doesn’t seem to know this girl’s name. And then there’s Ranma and Akane who just continue to bicker and get jealous at each other despite the fact they both clearly like each other very much by this point. It’s almost as if this series had found a solid formula by this point in the story and were fine just doing stuff with that for a good long while. And we’ll see that formula continue yet in the remaining five or so episodes of this season!