After three straight orders where Robert promoted my shipping from "ground" to "second day", I decided I'd fool him this time by choosing "second day" myself and paying for it.

Bob fooled me, however; he promoted it to overnight.

This can't go on. Next time I think I'll say "Don't promote my shipping" in the comment box. I pay for what I get, or at least I want to. Partly that's my Calvinist upbringing, and partly it's something I feel I should do as a reviewer in order to maintain my independence.

Regardless, I am grateful.

Ah, well. So now I have the thinpaks for seasons 1 and 3 of Ranma 1/2. The second season is five DVDs, and I had finished up through the fourth, which also ends a story arc. Rather than continuing forward, I think I'm going to rewind and watch the first season.

Seems the "seasons" aren't quite all equal. The first season is 18 eps on 4 DVDs. Apparently that came out in 1989. I gather that originally only 18 eps were financed, but it ended up being so popular that they renewed it and continued producing it until 1992, yielding a total of 161 eps. (Then, over the next four years, an 11-ep OVA trickled out. There were also two movies.)

So strictly speaking the "first season" was 18 eps, and the "second season" was another 143.

Given that originally the 18 eps were intended to be a complete series, it'll be interesting to see how they wrap it up, or if they even try.

UPDATE:

First meeting. Akane's father was expecting a man and a boy, not a panda and a shapely girl.

What are those?

UPDATE: Ranma just after falling into the nyanneechuan, the cursed spring of the drowned girl:

WHAT ARE THOSE?

Lum may have been the first tsundere in anime, but it's becoming clear that Akane is the perfected version.

UPDATE: Chance meeting of lovers:

Nothing I've ever seen or read has given me any hint about how ecchi this series is. I wonder why everything omits that?

UPDATE: OK, in the first series it's established that when it comes to rain it doesn't take damned much at all to cause a change.

And Ranma gains notoreity on his first day at school by fighting at least even against the school bully, a pretentious kendo freak named Kuno.

Seeing the gauntlet that Akane has to go through every morning, it's hardly any wonder she's come to hates boys. On the other hand, she's amazingly good. She goes through that mob like an angry buzz-saw -- which, as it turns out, is pretty much the truth.

Yet another trope created here, which I also ran into in Gunbuster: there's a rumor that the prettiest girl in the school will date any guy who can beat her in hand-to-hand combat. It's doubtful that Akane really is willing to do so, but that's why she gets greeted every morning with a group of guys anxious to beat the heck out of her.

UPDATE: The oldest sister is Kasumi, and she's pretty much a non-entity as far as the series has gone that I've seen. It might well be the first part I've ever heard the Queen of Tears do where she doesn't actually get angsty and start sobbing. (But you never know; it's a long series.)

The middle sister is named Nabiki, and in the part of the second series I watched she was wallpaper, pretty much. She didn't appear much, didn't speak much, and didn't make any difference at all. It was mostly that Takahashi used her to make sardonic comments about silly situations.

In the beginning of the first series, however, Nabiki is making a pretty big difference -- and she's evil. She's the one that let everyone at school know that Akane and Ranma are engaged, for instance. She's also in the same class as Kuno, and seems to be egging him on.

Not a very nice thing for her to be doing to her sister and her house-guest, but I think she's doing it to try to get them closer together, by making them face adversity together. Whatever else he might be (e.g. a flaming asshole) Kuno definitely is adversity.

The interesting dynamic between Ranma and Akane is already developing as of ep 3. First, Ranma seems to be virtually the only guy around that isn't throwing himself at her. Second, Ranma seems to be the only guy around who can beat her at martial arts.

Their first fight, with Ranma in girl form, was a convincing victory by Ranma, but Akane wasn't really going all out, and Ranma hardly fought at all. Akane has in mind a real match between the two, and I'm looking forward to it.

Ranma told her he could really fight all out against a girl. Akane then said, but you could if we were both girls, right? and threatened him with a bucket of water and an evil grin on her face. I wonder whether such a match will eventually happen, and which mode Ranma will be in?

I think that there's a level on which Akane feels a bit sorry for Ranma. His curse really is a pretty big burden. And yet he's bearing up under it pretty well.

UPDATE: Nabiki really is evil.

I can't figure out what she's thinking.

UPDATE: AND... today's pinup, below the fold.

It's the best I could do with a video source this old. Viz has did a surprisingly nice job on the video transfer, though.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 02:00 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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