Ranma ½ (2024) Episode 1 Discussion

I ain't even gonna bother arguing with you. No one cares about ranna outside Japan. Ask any random anime fan of he's heard of ranma. Now ask them if they've heard of urusei yatsura. The chances of it being the later is much higher buuut if it let's you sleep happily then sure buddy.

@SabreDrago
I am french and here in France, Ranma is way more popular than Urusei Yatsura or Inuyasha (Inuyasha have been pretty niche in France), in the 90's, it was the third most popular kid anime in France after DBZ and Sailormoon. We even had on of the SNES videogame.
For the people aged between 40 and 50, Ranma is really huge in france. And France is the second biggest manga country way before US.

the 2020 french City Hunter movie even made an easter egg to the serie

And I am pretty Sure it's the same in Italia, Spain, Portugal and south america because the anime importation were made by the same peoples between these countries.

Peoples from US should stop to think US is the center of the world.

@SabreDrago
I am french and here in France, Ranma is way more popular than Urusei Yatsura or Inuyasha (Inuyasha have been pretty niche in France), in the 90's, it was the third most popular kid anime in France after DBZ and Sailormoon. We even had on of the SNES videogame.
For the people aged between 40 and 50, Ranma is really huge in france. And France is the second biggest manga country way before US.

the 2020 french City Hunter movie even made an easter egg to the serie

And I am pretty Sure it's the same in Italia, Spain, Portugal and south america because the anime importation were made by the same peoples between these countries.

Peoples from US should stop to think US is the center of the world.

This is a hard one to judge for me. It's funny, animation is good, the reactions and expressions are all similar to the original. However, that's kind of the issue, it's mostly just a slightly different version of the original with nothing really added. Why not just air the original, edit a few things out if you need? Season 1 of the original itself is fairly tame in terms of things that would be objectionable today. So I don't really know how to score it, it's pretty much on par with the original but then why wouldn't something that, while I'm exaggerating some, is a near shot for shot remake of the original?

I guess the best way I can sum up my thoughts on this are they need to continue in the spirit of the original, including the same types of jokes the original went for, but find a way to differentiate itself from the original. If it's just going to be a straight remake of the original then it lacks any real purpose for existing.

@Limily
Because it's a remake, they are starting in a way that has in mind the audience of this century, this new generation, they want to please the older generations by bringing this anime back, but at the same time They also want to adapt Ranma½ to the current generation.

In other words, they want to bring nostalgia back to older audiences, and innovate on top of that to attract the younger audience, of this generation

This is a way to make money off of both the younger and older audiences, to be honest.

@utopia- Well that's sort of my point though. Right now with just episode 1 all we see is no substantive difference between this and the original first episode. Just judging the two first episodes there's absolutely no reason not to have just gone with the original. Now I very much hope that changes going forward, I'm just saying judging on what I've seen in this first episode so far it hasn't justified its existence. However, it's been so long since I watched Ranma that it is at least fun to go through it again, but to my point again they could have announced a reairing of the original and I would have watched it again.

@utopia- We'll see. I suppose the point I'm making is when a season of anime gets remade into a movie with a huge animation budget that's one thing, when all they've really done is make the colors softer that's less justified.

@Limily And the fights? They are much better done in this new Ranma½ than in the previous version, there is a lot of sakuga in them, I don't think this adaptation can be differentiated from the old one just by "new softer colors"

@utopia- Somewhat. They're longer for sure. It remains to be seen if that's a good thing or not though. The reason I say that is the fights aren't actually that important overall. They're a vehicle for the comedy, not high stakes matches. The goal of the fights is to get people laughing at the absurdity of the situation, not the drama of the fight. In a comedy, especially one like Ranma, drawing fights out too long and focusing too much on them risks losing the audience because they're there for the comedy.

I'm just in a wait and see right now. I don't feel it's justified its own existence yet but I hope it does.

@Limily Honestly prolonging fights in my opinion is the opposite of what you said. Younger audiences like comedy, yes you are right, but they also love fights, the anime gets more hype, now when the fights, besides being well done, become long, it gives the anime more "hype", Fights don't necessarily need to be dramatic or comedic, they can just go on long enough to become epic, especially when there's a soundtrack to it, like in the fights of this first episode. So prolonging the fight, add soundtrack, Even without comedy or dramatic moments, it can still make a difference from the original anime(old version)

@utopia- If that's what they want to go for they'd have been better off remaking Inuyasha. Doing that would be the same mistake Hollywood has been making for at least a decade now. They buy a built in audience, then make something completely different, and wonder why the audience they bought abandons them. Ranma as a series seeks to use one dimensional caricatures with absurd traits and put them in absurd situations for laughs.

@Limily I don't know if that's really what they want. But that's what it seemed like to me after watching the first episode. Just take into account that it would be "easier" to sell an anime through epic fights than through comedy itself. I'm not saying the comedy will disappear, but I think they'll probably make the anime both comedic and serious (because of the prolonged fights). This kind of idea is not bad, honestly it is a high-risk proposal but one that sells well in the market in my opinion, The only thing that really harms this restart of Ranma½ is the censorship, I don't see the prolonged fights as something bad, This is actually a great thing in my opinion.

And I don't think Hollywood is an example to compare with Ranma½, since we are talking here about an anime that is starting over and not an original film/series/cartoon that Hollywood usually creates. Maybe this idea will work in ranma½

Nobody in America has heard of Urusei Yatsura. It is popular in Japan and nowhere else.


Inuyasha is more popular here because it aired on TV. We didn't get as much anime on TV as you guys did, especially not in the 70s or 80s.

@Limily And the fights? They are much better done in this new Ranma½ than in the previous version, there is a lot of sakuga in them, I don't think this adaptation can be differentiated from the old one just by "new softer colors"

@Lucifrost
in fact, Urusei Yatsura have been popular in france, but the latest diffusion have been in late 80 (it was seen as a non safe for kid anime and parent association made it stop, like Hokuto no Ken), while Ranma had been on air during all the 90's on the most popular french channel and non stop since the 2000 on private channel. In fact, Maison Ikkoku had in france more airing than Urusei Yatsura

Inuyasha was never aired on TV in france because it came at a time where anime where mostly banned on public channel (late 90 and first half of 2000) except few exception (Eva, Cowboy bebop, Trigun, Escaflown, Gundam, Sakura, FMA, GTO, Doremi, Excel saga, Digimon, Pokemon and Yugioh) because the program who was airing most of the animes in the 90 was badly seen by parent association (it was a show aimed for 6/12 years kids and most of the series aired in the show were for 10+ or even 12+).


In fact if France people read way more manga than they watch anime, it's in part because of that, anime were nearly banned on TV during 10 years (and because we read a lot)

In fact the bad reputation of animes lasted during so long that it's part of the reason was Miraculous kid TV show was made in 3D, even in 2015, the TV channel producing it didn't want to produce an anime serie for kids because they thought Parents would not let the kids watch it.

@utopia- the first season of the old Ranma serie was full of Sakuga. it was at late 2000 Sakuga level or at Hunter X Hunter 1999 level.

@utopia- When I said they buy an audience I mean they buy a series and reboot/continue it. That's why I mentioned that. An original series can be anything it wants because there's no built in expectation. A remake/continuation comes with expectations of what it is. Once an existing property is changed you start over from nothing. In most cases the original audience doesn't like it and you're forced to build the audience up from nothing as though it was an original series. However, it's worse because you likely end up with the original audience trashing it making it much harder to onboard people. I can't honestly think of a situation where it's ever actually worked.

So with Ranma you have the expectation of an absurd comedy in which nothing is meant to be taken seriously. If they try to make things more serious you're likely to lose the original audience and encounter a whiplash situation where the tonal changes are abrupt and both aspects suffer. We'll see what happens.

ranma is still voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi

@SabreDrago
I am french and here in France, Ranma is way more popular than Urusei Yatsura or Inuyasha (Inuyasha have been pretty niche in France), in the 90's, it was the third most popular kid anime in France after DBZ and Sailormoon. We even had on of the SNES videogame.
For the people aged between 40 and 50, Ranma is really huge in france. And France is the second biggest manga country way before US.

the 2020 french City Hunter movie even made an easter egg to the serie

And I am pretty Sure it's the same in Italia, Spain, Portugal and south america because the anime importation were made by the same peoples between these countries.

Peoples from US should stop to think US is the center of the world.

@chevalierkraken In Spain it was exactly as you said. Dragon Ball was, by far, the most popular, literally all the kids would watch; followed by Captain Tsubasa (known as "Oliver and Benji") - was it not popular in France?; then it came a mixture of Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2, depending on who you asked. I did not know about UY after I was older and saw references here and there, same with Inuyasha.

Why does this look worse than the 30+ year old anime? Whoever is in charge of color direction needs to be fired asap. I wasn't much of a fan of how the UY reboot looked, but this is clearly even worse. The senseless censorship doesn't even need to be mentioned. Just awful.

I love that they got the old seiyuu back though, that's a big reason for why I won't completely write off this cashgrab.

@bitz1209
Captain Tsubasa ("Olive and Tom") was popular, but not as much than Ranma and Sailormoon. Saint seiya was wayy more popular(It's in france nearly as popular than Dragonball and as much popular than Naruto), but it was mostly reairing in the 90's as the series initial airing finished in 1991


Not as good than the new version, as it's a late 80 serie, but the first season of Ranma (adaptation of the 5 first volume) had some of the highest production values of that time, and the second serie was still higher than the pierrot and Dragonball serie of that time

Why does this look worse than the 30+ year old anime? Whoever is in charge of color direction needs to be fired asap. I wasn't much of a fan of how the UY reboot looked, but this is clearly even worse. The senseless censorship doesn't even need to be mentioned. Just awful.

I love that they got the old seiyuu back though, that's a big reason for why I won't completely write off this cashgrab.