Ranma ½: Chuugoku Nekonron Daikessen! Okite Yaburi no Gekitou-hen!!

Trust me, you don't want to watch this... The Ranma series is good, but the movies are crap. Having enjoyed the Ranma series from when I was around 8 years old, I really looked forward to the movies after finding out they existed, but they were just lacking in every way. You know the distinct humour and style of the first season of Ranma? Yeah, you won't be finding anything close to it here.

Just some generic brand copy, a movie simply created for the sake of giving a popular series a movie and milking its fans, a heaping pile of shit with pages of ... Ranma manga stapled to its steamy core.

I should preface this review by saying that I have not seen the series Ranma 1/2 I actually saw the VHS at a garage sale and recognized it as one of the movies advertised at the end of the Pokemon VHS tapes; thus, my expectations of this movie fell in line with what was portrayed in the trailer. The trailer outlined what the movie was about and showed every good scene in the movie. Every other scene was rather sub par.

Story:
The story revolves around Akane getting kidnapped and Ranma... and company going to save her. This concept isn't too interesting or original but it had ... potential if they had spent as much time developing the story and characters as they did writing bad jokes. Yes, I realize Ranma 1/2 is a comedy, but this movie wasn't funny. Every single joke fell flat and often intruded upon what should have been very serious scenes. Every time the movie started to take it self seriously it felt the need to throw in a joke to lighten things up and it took all the suspense away.

Animation:
The animation at first looked passable for a movie made in the early 90s but it appears they spent the entire animation budget in the first half of the movie. When it came time for the climax the best the movie had to offer was cartoony flashes of colour on the screen. Almost any episode of Dragonball looks better with a tv budget then this looked with a movie budget. At least the characters designs were nice.

Sound:
As I watched this movie on an English VHS tape it should go without saying that I watched the Dub, and I don't believe any of the actors gave a damn. The performances almost all fell flat especially male Ranma when ever he screamed or shouted. The facial animation would tell one story while the sound coming out of his mouth would tell a completely, less believable, sound. The only performances I could stand were Girl Ranma and Akane and even they sounded phoned in. The music was mostly forgettable aside from the song "It's Love" in the end credits. In fact the credits were the best part of this movie.

Overall I won't hold this movie against Ranma 1/2 in general, in fact I'm interested in checking the show out now. That being said, don't watch this movie, It's not worth it.