Ranma 1/2

Publisher
VIZ
Country of origin
Japan
Length
30 +
Year
1987

Ranma 1/2 Volume 2

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
9th Jun 05

From the creator of the amazingly popular Inu Yasha comes the gender bending antics of Ranma Saotome who is half boy half girl…

Ranma’s old enemy Ryoga is back to challenge him/her once again to get revenge. Ranma still can’t figure out why, that is until he learns that Ryoga also visited the training ground of the accursed springs, and like Ranma and his father transforms when soaked with cold water. Upon finding Ryoga in his new form (which is a small pig) Akane unaware that the small creature is Ryoga, adopts it as her pet. Then Ranma encounters Kuno’s sister Kodachi the black rose, who falls for the male Ranma and swears to kill Akane, and anyone else in her way. This leads to a deadly martial gymnastics match, something Kodachi is an expert at but both Ranma and Akane have difficulty mastering. Then they challenge a pair of martial ice skaters in order to win back P-Chan (or better known as Ryoga’s pig form).

Those who have read other work by Rumiko Takahashi will certainly recognise the visual style. Ranma’ characters are all clean and crisp, and very distinctive, every character is different in some way that makes them entertaining. As the series grows you end up with a huge number of these characters all who are vastly different to one another, which must have been a difficult task when you consider the large number of characters. Whilst in action scenes the backgrounds are fairly simple, when there is not much action there is quite a lot of little details that just add more to the scene

Also volume two starts a trend that most of the other following Ranma ½ volumes continue in that it ends on a cliff-hanger (or rather a storyline that will continue into the next volume). Admittedly some of these are done better than others, but most of them do their job in making you want to read what happens next.

Ranma ½ volume two continues to bring the reader into Ranma’s crazy world of martial arts and adventure. However if you’ve got to this point and you do not like Ranma ½ now would be a good place to quit (Volume one would of course been better) as other than the constant addition of new characters and challenges very little changes in the way of format. Those that do enjoy the series so far should continue to check out the other volumes, as the stories/characters/challenges get more entertaining when you enjoy the format.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 9th Jun 05