You ever watch pro wrestling? Come on, admit it; you have, and you found it more entertaining than you thought it should be.

Pro wrestling is all about melodrama and spectacle. It isn't a sport; the competition is fixed. Before the wrestlers go into the ring, they've already agreed who's going to win, and usually what the finishing move will be. Some of the more spectacular finishing moves, like the Victory Roll, really aren't possible unless the loser cooperates.

When I was in high school, I got hooked on Portland Wrestling. It ran on Saturday nights on channel 12. My favorite was Dutch Savage. (Can you believe that he has a Wikipedia page?)

There are fads that come and go. For a while one popular thing that would happen occasionally was where the wrestlers would up the stakes on some match. The canonical example of that was the hair match, so called because the loser promised to let the winner shave his head. And it happened, too; I saw it happen a couple of times.

One thing I've seen at least three times now in Ranma 1/2 is hair matches, cases where people up the stakes. They're not gambling their scalps, however. Almost always the wager involves romantic attachments. "If I win, you promise to date me/marry me." "If I win, you promise not to date Akane any more." And so on.

The theory, I guess, is that it adds tension to the match. If Ranma loses an ordinary match with someone, then at most what he risks is bruises and contusions. But if he's made a hair wager on the match, then with more on the line it's supposed to make the audience more engaged.

And if it only happened once or twice, probably it would. But it seems to be the norm for all the big contests. Moreover, it usually gives outsiders incentives to cheat and to try to affect the outcome. Ranma fighting Mousse, and Mousse demands that if Ranma loses that he'll never date Shampoo. Ranma doesn't want to date Shampoo, but Shampoo wants him, so she starts giving Mousse boobytrapped weapons to use in the fight.

Ranma fighting Kodachi, with the double wager that if Ranma loses he'll date Kodachi and he'll leave Akane alone. Not that anything had yet happened with Akane, mind, but that gave Ryoga incentive to try to louse up Ranma during the match.

I'm getting tired of it. It's starting to get stale, and the reason is that these matches are fixed, too. If Ranma wagers his ability to spend time with Akane, then we know he'll win, because if he lost the series would be over. The series, ultimately, is about the romance between Ranma and Akane, so while that may not develop very fast (if at all), we know it's not going to get ashcanned.

And so if they include such a bet, it begins to feel like they're insulting my intelligence. If there's nothing on the line, then I don't know if Ranma will win it. But if the stakes are large then I do know he'll be victorious. So ironically it is only those contests where there are no such stakes where I feel dramatic tension.

In the second series, Ranma's final battle with Mousse involved a different kind of "hair match". That's the one where Mousse threatened to drench Akane in cursed turn-into-a-duck water.

That one did managed to get me on edge, not to mention thinking murderous thoughts about Mousse. (You saw a mild expression of that.) But if they do damsel-in-distress stories on a routine basis, that's going to get really old, too. Not to mention that Akane ain't no damsel-in-distress; she should be able to take care of herself in most situations.

Remember the TV series "Beauty and the Beast"? Not as popular, I think, and not as good. I never watched it, but I've been told some things about it. It's a love story between a good looking woman named Catherine and a beast-man named Vincent, and if you believe those names, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Anyway, the series involves a lot of damsel-in-distress situations. Which is weird, because Catherine is supposed to be a black-belt. I'm told that their dramatic solution was "one too many attackers". No matter what her skill level, if she's capable of handling N attackers, then she'll be taken on by N+1, and lose. Then Vincent shows up and rescues her.

That's another thing I fear might start happening here. That's not the Akane I've already gotten to know and love.

It's their responsibility as writers and directors to make sure the series doesn't get stale. But even in successful series they don't always succeed. And it's more of a hazard for continuing series which run a long time.

Another way this series could get stale is "Here comes a new challenger". Seen a lot of that so far, and I know we haven't seen all of it yet. There are going to be more cursed people who either have grudges against Ranma (or his father, or against Akane's dad, or who knows what) or who think they're engaged to Ranma (or Akane) and that's going to get old, too. Fact is, it already is getting old even before I finish watching the first series and catch up to where I was.

Some of the new characters have been assets. I really like Cologne, and I don't really mind having Shampoo around. But some of them have been a total loss. If Kodachi were run over by a truck, I'd never miss her. And when I think of Mousse, my feelings can best be summarized as "duck dinner".

A long series can avoid becoming stale. They pulled it off in Card Captor Sakura, which was fascinating for its entire length. Ranma 1/2 is considered a classic; I wonder if they managed to avoid staleness in this one?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:57 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 754 words, total size 6 kb.

1 Well I've gotten through the first disk myself.  The humor quotient is ok, though the series is quite uneven.  Every time it starts to spin up into insanity, it bogs down in angst.  It's good, a hell of a lot better than anything I watched this season, but not as great as its reputation.

At least not yet.  And I only ordered the first series.  I'm wondering how my opinion will develop due to watching it in order?

Posted by: ubu at April 04, 2008 07:09 PM (Hy4RP)

2 Ranma is considered a classic the same way as Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku - and Dragonball and Yamato (Star Blazers).  If you're a serious anime fan, you are expected to have watched some of it, but no-one expects you to watch all of it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 04, 2008 07:37 PM (PiXy!)

3 Ubu, the angst peaks on the second DVD and goes down from there. I saw essentially none in the part of the second series I watched.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 04, 2008 07:41 PM (+rSRq)

4 Longtime pro-wrestling fan here, though I've pretty much stopped watching the past few years.  I used to work at the local arena as a member of the load-in/-out crew, and worked four or five WWF shows (including one TV taping).  As a result, I've met a lot of the '80s-era WWF stars.  Hulk Hogan was a jerk, by the way.  King Kong Bundy was a very funny guy, and the Iron Sheik seemed to be smarter than your average wrestler.

I agree with the "hair match" thing, by the way.  I've read a lot more of the Ranma manga than I've seen of the series, and got tired of the trope there, too.

Still, it'll always be the show that really got me hooked on anime.  Ah My Goddess! (OVA series) was the first, but only because that tape was on top of the Ranma tape in the stack I borrowed from a friend. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 04, 2008 10:20 PM (AW3EJ)

5 Yeah, I don't know anybody who stuck with Ranma -the whole way through-. You can see in Inu-Yasha that Takahashi learned a lesson from Ranma, in that you need at least nominal plot progression to keep people interested. If someone concludes they can skip a whole season and it doesn't even matter, they're likely to decide to let the whole thing go. I do remember that a couple of the OAVs were pretty funny, though...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at April 04, 2008 10:58 PM (LMDdY)

6 I think UY was superior in pacing, certainly the early short episodes. It was utterly screwball and silly.

I never got into the Ranma TV show. I thought the short first season had potential though it was, as Steven says, uneven. After that it became Dragon Ball Z for girls with fan service thrown in to broaden their target audience.A pro wrestling romance sitcom. It did not work for me.

I was particularly disappointed that pretty much ALL the weirdos are one joke pony's. That is, they all have fallen into one of those damned ponds.

I like Takahshi's work and enjoyed the  nutty UY, the fairly dry Maison Ikkoku, the creepy mermaid shows and several of the one off stories (like Supergal....which is most DEFINITELY a wrestling show). Even Inu Yasha, which plods a  bit due to deliberately slow pacing, is, IMHO, enjoyable.  Ranma is just sort of there.

I do recommend some of the Ranma OAV's for the same reason that I strongly advise watching the UY OAV Attack Sherbert . However,  those recommendations are not entirely due to  their sublime pacing.


On a completely unrelated note...my Japanerse teacher laughs like Kodachi....which is....disturbing.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 05, 2008 04:12 AM (iHEpT)

7

Ranma is considered a classic the same way as Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku - and Dragonball and Yamato (Star Blazers). If you're a serious anime fan, you are expected to have watched some of it, but no-one expects you to watch all of it.

UY & Maison Ikkoku are rather better series. Steven likes DragonBall and Starblazers is one of the most awesomest series EVAH!

Just WHO do you think you ARE to tell us that these series are...

Oh...er...wait... you're....Him.

(Ducks..covers...all that) 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 05, 2008 07:56 AM (j9nkb)

8 Ok, having watched through the hair match and into the next one, I have to say that I disagree. It's a matter of taste.  The wrestling match was dumb and contrived, but it was still good fun.  However, I am finding the whole "waifu of Dr.Tofu" to be dreadfully familiar from bad American TV sitcoms, and I'm only to candidate #3. I hope it stops there.  It probably will, because they're not going to make the girl he actually wants one of the candidates.

But while the candidates will stop there, the torture will go on a few more episodes, I'm sure. Blech.

Posted by: ubu at April 05, 2008 04:14 PM (Hy4RP)

9

The thing is, there are three more hair matches in the part of series 2 that I watched, and every indication that those wouldn't be the last of them. Basically, an average of one about ever fifth episode.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 05, 2008 05:23 PM (+rSRq)

10

Using kun /chan is a somewhat less confusing and is easier to deal with. I was begining to feel like a one legged frog just jumping in a big circle. But Ranma could bring a completely new meaning to the phrase taking a cold shower.

Posted by: Bouff at April 05, 2008 08:23 PM (i17XR)

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