Ranma ½ (2024)

Ok, look. I know this is a beloved classic to a lot of people. I have no nostalgia for this series and previously only knew of it by name. If you've been enjoying it, I'm happy for you. I wouldn't dare ridicule someone for liking something I did not. So I hope you'll provide the same courtesy to me as I share my own thoughts. Ok? Ok... this is the worst anime I've ever seen in my entire life.

So ya know how my least favorite part of InuYasha was all the terrible ship dynamics and how all the couples had absolutely zero chemistry with ... one another and we were just expected to interpret their constant fighting as them conveying their feelings for one another? Imagine if they made an ENTIRE show about just that one concept. Every time, and I do mean EVERY TIME a new character got introduced, I was like "Oh, thank god! Hopefully this new character will provide us with some new storyline to focus on and the horrible interactions between Ranma and Akane can be sidelined for a while!" But no. Instead they make every single new character obsessively predatory towards one of the two main characters and aggressively jealous of the other one. Every. Single. Time.

The obliviousness of everyone not realizing Ranma or Ryoga's alter egos are also just unbelievably stupid. Not to mention that there's literally zero plot reason for them to hide their identities other than to repeat the same insufferable gags every stinkin episode. It's just nonstop love triangle after love triangle. And they're ALL awful. There's also a lot of very uncomfortable dialogue for LGBT viewers to listen to. I'm sure someone will defend it by saying it was a product of its time, but isn't the point of a remake to... REMAKE things for a modern audience? I really don't have much else to say. I hated every second of it. I have no clue how long this remake will last, but I hope I'll have at least ONE good thing to say about this series when all is said and done.

1/10

Why? What was the point of this remake?

Ranma 1/2 follows the same route as the Urusei Yatsura remake in that we are getting a censored remake of a beloved classic. Yes, talking about how they removed the topless fanservice that both series were actually famous for. It's easy to write off people getting upset about the censorship as perverts because, after all, why do you need tiddies in your anime? Obviously you don't. There are plenty of good series that don't have topless women. The response to that is why did they have to remove one of the aspects that these classic shows were famous ... for?

The original Ranma 1/2 came out at a time where showing tiddies on TV was extremely daring. It was a risky marketing tactic that worked. Not to mention with the whole gender flip-flopping gimmick the topless scenes actually made sense. The original manga & adaptation did what they wanted completely uncensored and unrestricted. Aside from an updated art style and animation style, the remake is just an inferior copy which you have no reason to watch unless you just really don't want to see nipples... which is kind of weird.

I actually enjoyed the first episode of the new adaptation until he got the topless scene where the nipples were removed. If the topless scenes are so integral to the story that you can't remove all of them, then why censor the ones that remain? Now we live in this weird reality where nipples don't exist, and for what? Half assed censorship? If Netflix wanted to censor Ranma, they could've at least gone all the way. Now we've just got this weird bastardization of the source material that isn't in line with the original yet isn't completely censored.

I get it: "why are the tiddies so important to you?"
My counter to that is "why was it so important that they were removed?"

Who was this remake made for? What was the point of it?

I gave it a 1 even though it's probably more fair to give like a 6. This remake isn't particularly bad, I just absolutely abhor what it stands for.

This is an absolute abysmal joke of an adaptation of Ranma that you should avoid at all costs.

The pacing of this anime is so unbelievably heinous and detrimental to the quality of the story that it reduces it from something that would be merely alright for a remake, to downright dreadful. This remake has so far condensed almost half of the first season of the original, namely, the first eight episodes, into just four episodes. It isn't done evenly either, as no less than three episodes of content of the original are squeezed together to make just one of these.

The appalling amount of context cut ... out of the episodes in this remake hamper the story greatly. It's removed entire sections of insights into Akane's character, why she is the way she is, the earliest moments of her bonding with Ranma, and none of the moments they've deigned to leave alone make up for what isn't there. Not to mention, there is so much missing context and character insights, that when one certain major early event happens to Akane, it falls horribly flat, because this joke of adaptation has provided none of the significance as to what that means to her. It leaves the Ranma series thus far as nothing but an inferior shadow of what the story really is, and a dull one at that. This is without even going into the fact that about half the characters sound horribly miscast.

Do yourself a favor and watch the original, because this isn't Ranma.