Rumiko Takahashi and Ranma 1/2

Who is Rumiko Takahashi?

Rumiko Takahashi, born in 1957 Oct. 10,

is one of the most famous manga producers in                                                                           

Japan and possibly the richest woman in Japan as well.  She                                                                  
started her work in 1974 and has created several hits that have                            
become popular in the U.S. and the very icons of Anime in the
80s and 90s.  She created several hit TV shows and manga,
the first one that made her claim to fame in 1978 was a series called
Urusei Yatsura, which was a slice of life, sci-fi comedy anime made in
the 80s about a young, perverted, uncommitted japanese boy named 

Ataru gets involved in a interstellar crisis, and an alien
princess named Lum now wants to marry him.  (The alternate English title

is Invader Lum). The Lum costume is practically a national icon in japan. 

The most popular of her series in the U.S., made in the mid and

late 90s, is Inuyasha.  Inuyasha is an action, romance adventure story of
a modern Japanese school girl named Kagome who finds a well that takes her 

back into feudal, mythical japan, where she meets a half-demon
young man by the name of Inuyasha, and goes on an adventure to                       
stop demons from reeking havoc all over feudal japan. However, the
series that she made that made one of the biggest impact in the
anime world in the way of creating the basic themes of most
other anime, is her series, Ranma 1/2.  Ranma 1/2 is a
martial arts romantic comedy that came out in the mid 80s and early 90s,

and it has a very unusual theme to it.

The Basic Premise of Ranma 1/2
For almost his entire life, a Japanese boy named Ranma Saotome

has been trained by his father and master martial artist, Genma Saotome,

training him all across the world with different martial arts styles

and continuously training him to get faster and stronger physically

in order to master their style of 'Anything Goes Martial Arts'.   
     When Ranma reached 16 while training in China, Genma decided to
go back to Japan and engage him to one of the daughters of Genma's
old training partner, Soun Tendo, who happily agreed to let his
16 year old daughter, Akane Tendo, get married.  However, their relationship

starts out rocky, and there is one slight problem on top of that.

Yep.  That just happened.

Just a month before he came back to Japan, Ranma and his father, while training in

the Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo (pretty much a large collection of 5000 year old ponds), each fell

into a cursed spring, and know when either of them get poured with cold water,

Ranma turns into a short, beautiful young girl with red hair and his father turns into a panda,

and hot water turns them back to normal.   Neither of them are quite happy about it, and thus Ranma's life becomes a nightmare of transgender mishaps and comedic disasters.

      This was THE first well known gender bender in popular media, and it is by far

still the best because shows that revolve around having your sex somehow changed

are not common.  That's not to say this anime and manga revolves only around his

ability to change into a girl.  Lots of other important cast members are introduced

near the beginning, such as rival martial artists and love interests, old masters, and

other fighters who have fallen in the cursed springs of Jusenkyo, each of which have

very well developed characters.  In fact, surprisingly for a Japanese show, with the

exception of female Ranma running around topless for some scenes, the humor and visuals are pretty chaste, at least by anime standards.  In fact, what makes the comedy so hilarious is

the creative combination of conventional face-fault japanese comedy and sarcastic

ironic American comedy.  Rumiko Takahashi creates a setting and feeling that emerses you in japan's culture yet makes it feel natural to a foreigner as well.  Both the comedy and

the setting is pulled off mostly due to the main character Ranma Saotome, who Rumiko Takahashi intentionally designed to be an "imperfect" character and the most multi-dimensional character in anime history, saying in an interview that she was sick of characters in anime that have perfectly drawn out personalities.

Plot: 

There is no overriding plot in Ranma 1/2.  There is no
mission or goal to the series beyond Ranma and his friends trying to
survive each other's romantic obsessions or defeating some menace

that terrorizes the town or school.  The main premise to all his adventures is fighting
off his dangerous rivals, avoiding crazy women(and men) who want
to marry him(or Akane), mastering martial arts techniques,  and
fighting off anything related to martial arts, the supernatural,
or any other batshit things that come his way, whether he likes
it or not.  That doesn't meen all his adventures are unserious
or not life threatening, its just that Ranma leads a continiously
chaotic life, full of hi-jinks, action, and a surprisingly deep
romance.
     While the series is possibly the funniest shows to come out of Japan,

with 161 episodes, 13 specials, and 2 full length movies ,the reason

it is so important to anime history is the number of

archetypes it either inventes or makes famous.  Just to name a few,

the Tropes it created for Anime are:


The love docahedron
The love triangle has existed since romance novels were first
created.  However, the love dodecahedron is a more recent
invention, and Ranma 1/2 was the archetype.  In a love
dodecahedron, there are about 8 to 12 recurring characters that
each have feelings for another character, or several characters
in some cases.  But the person they are in love with doesn't return the

feelings because either 1) person B doesn't like person A, 2) person A

can't express his feelings to person B, 3) person B considers person A

'just a friend' or 4) person B is simply clueless.

     Considering the fact that nearly all the love interests are martial artists that

can fight on the early dragonball level, and everybody assumes everybody else is after 

the guy or girl they are after except the main character, causes enormous levels of havoc for

him and others.  Ranma has at least 4 official and unofficial fiances.

The Tsundere and Hammer Space

What is a Tsundere?  A Tsundere is a girl you would describe as this. 

The Tsundere sees the main character, her love
interest, in a compramising situation.  It looks like he's doing
something inapropriate with another girl or doing something
inapropriate to her.  It's almost never actually true though,
its usually just a weird misunderstanding.  Either way, a Tsundere will

grip her fist or grab the heaviest object, and smash them while yelling

"BAKA!!" or idiot.  And yet this girl is still in love with the guy. 

Akane Tendo is one of the earliest and most famous of

Tsunderes, so much so that the voice actor of Akane, Noriko Hidaka,

was asked to do a song showing off the character personality of this trope to its fullest.

   In anime, in the case that a male character is ACTUALLY
doing something perverted, or is thoroughly convinced, the girl
will reach behind her head, a massive wooden mallet will appear
in her hand, and she will smash it down on the guys head,
knocking him out for a few minutes.  While the idea of reaching
behind your head to pull an imaginary weapon out of thin air is
an idea as old as Loony Toons, the idea of a hyperdimensional hammer punishing
perversion in anime has become so popular that fans across US and japan

have dubbed this dimension, Hammer Space.

The Love-Hate relationship/the Takahashi couple

Going back to the Tsundere, if the male also has the same aggresive feelings toward

the Tsundere as well, this forms a new trope.  In most anime today that involve a
young boy and a young girl as the main characters that seem to
dislike each other, they will often hate each other while slowly
finding out they are in love with each other, thus leading to
mountains of deniel until the truth is let out somehow.  Even
while denying this, if anybody hits on one of them, the other will get
jealous or very protective of them.  This is the Takahashi Couple.

Fun Facts in Recent Media:

One of the biggest examples of a completely perfect takahashi couple in recent media is the

relationship between Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter books and movies.  Whether you like or dislike

the books, one interesting fact is that J. K. Rowling when writing the 6th Harry Potter Book

and movie, she actually based it on Ranma 1/2 in the way of its romance subplot.  She introduced a new

character, Cormac, to have the exact same personality, age, and looks as one of the main show-off rivals in Ranma 1/2

Tatewaki Kuno, while rewritting Lavender Brown's personality into the exact same personality as Shampoo, an extremely

clingy fiance character from Ranma 1/2.

http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.co.uk/content/id/13029/urusei-yatsura-complete-ova-collection.html

http://inuyasharocksfansite.freeservers.com/photo.html

http://www.gamespot.com/users/GuilSSJ/view_image?id=OdcJsxhw7hOc4Rju

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HyperspaceMallet

http://akane.bircd.org/