Any Japanese anime fans among the Teeming Millions?
I found, on one anime video, a character named Ranma, a teenage boy who turns into a sexy teenage girlwhen he is splashed with cold water. The prologue footage on one of the videos says that in “Desperately Seeking Shampoo” (a girl Ranma loves), some other (pre-teen!) girl turns busty in about a minute, bursting out of her dress!
Am I accurate here??
Hey, I know it seems sexist, but that would be quite a sight to see…!
The cartoon series Ranma 1/2 (“Ranma and a half”?) was shown until recently on Mexican television… as a children’s show. It bordered on pornographic.
That’s one of the best Animes ever. For a mere $30 you could prbably buy two episodes. If you just want it as a comic it’s about $15 for a graphic novel.
Try www,j-po.com to get this anime. I think they have it.
If you like Ranma 1/2 , you’ll love “Urusei Yatsura”, an even funnier example of what makes Japan laugh.Try the TV episodes, first.
We have met the enemy, and He is Us.–Walt Kelly
Dammit!
I meam www.j-pop.com
you can get graphic novels here, too.
For “Urusei Yatsura” try the firm, AnimEigo. The funky spelling is correct.
We have met the enemy, and He is Us.–Walt Kelly
So how does he turn back into a boy? Get splashed with water again, or dry off?
Try looking through the commercial webpages at the Anime Web Turnpike:
http://www.anipike.com/
Hope that helps.
– Sylence
“The problem with reality is the lack of background music.” – Anon
MissTangerine asks:
He gets splashed with hot water, IIRC.
Incidentally, I believe that his grandfather turns into a giant panda when splashed with cold water. Not nearly, I concede, so interesting a transformation 
El Mariachi Loco asks about the derivation of the name. I have been told that it is because Ranma spends half his time as a teenaged boy, and half as a teenaged girl (Ranma 1/2, get it?)
I saw the episode “Desperately Seeking Shampoo” on video, and don’t remember the…ahh…rapid development of one of the characters. I suppose that I could have gotten hold of a version edited down to PG-13, however.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
A Ranma fan here. (Well, it’s no longer my favourite series, but eh.) This will probably get long…
I’m not sure who this instantly busty girl doug’s talking about might be, though I suspect it might be Ukyo (who maskarades as a boy.) with her … bindings being busted. Like Akatsukami though, I don’t remember anything like that happening in Desparately Seeking Shampoo.
Ranma doesn’t love Shampoo (who, BTW, turns into a cat). She loves him, he’d rather just avoid her (one less fiancee would be a good thing for the poor fellow… Part of the premise is that there are 4 women pursuing him, only 2 of which (Ukyo and Akane) he even remotely likes (well, that’s how I see it. YMMV).)
And, finally, the panda’s his father, not his grandfather, though, Genma does look kinda old to have a teenaged son…
Sorry for being so longwinded…
‘They couldn’t hit an Elephant from this dist…!’
Last words of General John Sedgwick
I like Ranma 1/2 also. I have a few of the Viz novels. I wouldn’t say they border on pronography. The Japanese are very casual about showing naked people as long as you dont show the pubic area (odd I know but if you look through manga with nude characters, you will never see the pubic areas). In all of my books there is often some nudity of the characters but nothing I would call pornographic, or nearly so. The nudity is a sideline to the story.
I have only seen the show once but I thought it was funny. The author of the series also has written several others. One of them is Urusei Yatsura. I have actually seen that series and I thought it was odd yet funny.
Time was I stood where thou dost now
And view’d the dead as thou dost me
Ere long you’ll lie as low as I
And others stand and gaze at thee
Thanks…I kinda thought Ranma should be delighted at his own metamorphosis, because it’s like having a secret identity; though I still don’t know why, at one point, his father poured a bucket of water on him (Ranma, now female, yells “What did you do that for??!” at him). Hey, I thought Ranma loved Smapoo rather than Akane–it was Shampoo’s wizened great-grandmother who kept calling Ranma “son-in-law!”
As for the busty girl, it’s a pity, unless her skeletal structure also developed enough to support such instantly huge up-front assets.
Well, from what little I know about this particular character and series, Ranma had been brought up by his father to be a “man among men.” The best martial artist, the most masculine guy possible. Even so much as to take him from his home, mother and friends at a very young age to achieve this goal.
Being transformed into a girl every time he so-much-as gets wet would tend to screw things royaly. In his mind, being half-female (e.g. weak, unmanly, perverted [in the case that it isn’t his natural form]) is the ultimate failure in the training. (Even though he does concede it has some benefits.)
Sterling’s pretty much got it right. Ranma was raised as a ‘Manly-Man[tm]’ by his old man (Genma, if you’re interested), and thus it’s horrific for him that he turns into a girl. (Of course, the threat of Hara Kiri if he’s not the manliest of men, as promised to his mother by his idiot of a father (Genma’s idea, not Nodoka(Ranma’s Mother)'s), doesn’t help.)
And as to Shampoo, yes, her Great-Grandmother calls Ranma ‘Son in Law’ and Shampoo calls him Fiance, but that’s simply because in their tradition, if a man beats a woman in a fight (as Ranma did with Shampoo a long time back), the two are betrothed. It doesn’t matter that Ranma was already engaged to Akane and Ukyo, he is, as far as Shampoo and her family are concerned, her Fiance. He doesn’t recognise it, nor does Ukyo, or Akane’s family, but, hey, they don’t respect the eachother’s respective promises from Genma, either.
In other words, all the basic premises of the series revolve around the fact that Genma is a selfish, stupid idiot.
‘They couldn’t hit an Elephant from this dist…!’
Last words of General John Sedgwick