How ignorant are you buddy? Don't you know of the great masterpiece by the oh-so-talented-Rumiko Takahashi? Oh, you don't! Well, then I guess I'll just have to fill you in, huh? Ranma Saotome is a very unfortunate (depending on your point of view) 16 year old guy. He was cursed with a very unresponsible father, that automatically got him a physical curse, a handful of unwanted fiancees, and an incredible fear of cats. The physical curse can be addebited to Jusenkyo, a very dangerous training ground in China, that Genma, Ranma's father, had taken him to, to train in the martial arts. Genma didn't know a word of Chinese, but, in his hurry to train, didn't listen to the guide's warnings and got himself cursed to become a giant panda when hit with cold water, and his son to become a buxom redhaired girl same with the cold water. The only thing that can change them back to original form is hot water. As for the unwanted fiancees: on the first episode Ranma meets the first (and in my opinion the only true) fiancee. Her name is Akane Tendo, a 16 year old temperamental martial artist lacking in the cooking skills department...and many other girlish departments as well. She has the capacity to pull out dangerous objects from nothing to hit Ranma with over the head after one of his insults. Genma and Ranma live with Akane and her family in the Tendo Dojo, where most of the insanity seems to center all the time. Then comes in Shampoo, a Chinese Amazon with purple hair that in the beginning wanted to kill Ranma's female form because she'd beaten Shampoo at a martial arts match. But then Shampoo is beaten by Ranma's male form and she now wants to marry him. With her come along Mousse, the practically blind idiot who's madly in love with her and is declaring war on Ranma, and Cologne, her 300 plus great grandma who tries to help her catch Ranma in any way possible. There is also Kodachi Kuno, the criminally insane rhythmic gimnastics martial artist, who tries to get Ranma in any underhanded way possible (i.e. drugging him, trying to kill his other fiancees, etc...), whose brother (Kuno) is obsessed with Akane and Ranma's female form, and her father, the principal of the Furinkan High School, that has a fixation for anything Hawaiian and shaving off every students hair. But there's also Ukyo, who at her entrance, passes herself as a boy trying to kill Ranma and his father. But after it's found out that Ukyo's a girl, and after Ranma tells her that she's cute, she falls in love with him and declares herself a fiancee. Ranma's great fear of cats was developed at the age of six, when his father strapped fish cakes to his body and threw him in a pit of hungry cats, just to learn a martial arts technique. Ever since then, Ranma goes paranoid everytime he's too near a cat (which really ruins Shampoo's chances to get him, since she's cursed to become a cat with cold water) and if he's exposed to one for too long he snaps and acts like one himself. The only things that seem to be able to snap him out of it is a sex change, or falling asleep on Akane's lap. But to the story we can't forget to add Ryoga, the perenally lost boy, who wants to kill Ranma for a bread fued, and for gettiing him cursed to become a cute black piglet. However, Ryoga doesn't really seem to mind the latter part since Akane (of which he's in love with) took him in as her pet piglet naming him P-chan.
Also, Ranma can't show his mother who he is because before leaving on the ten year long training trip with his father, he and Genma had signed a contract that said that if Ranma didn't become a man amongst men he and Genma would have to commit seppuku. So when she's around he acts as a girl and passes himself as Ranma Tendo, Akane's cousing. And Genma as her pet panda. I think I covered just about everything of this story, and I hope you understood my explanation even though it was a bit confused. It was actually a good thing that Savage Amazon wasn't here to help me because if so, this would have just been total chaos. |
