I bit the bullet and renewed my subscription to Netflix today. I think what spurred me on was seeing a post on Anime Lists that featured a poll on the best couples of the 2024 anime season, and one of them was Ranma and Akane from the new Ranma ½. So it must definitely be up on Netflix and good to go. I spent a pleasant evening putting shows on my To Watch list, including Squid Game, Ranma, GITS 2045, End of Evangelion, Arcane and Pluto. I also noticed they have the Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar. I will watch that again soon.
The first thing I watched was episode one of Squid Game season two. It was terrific. I thought the actor Gong Yoo who played the recruiter was especially good, giving us a good insight into his psychotic commitment to the job. The Russian roulette scene at the end was so tense. It seems so right that Seong Gi-hun, the survivor from the first season, should get his first revenge with this guy, who was his first contact with the dark organisation putting on the games. Then I watched the first episode of the Ranma ½ reboot. It was also great. I know the story and the characters so well from the manga, and parts of the original anime, but it was nice to see an updated version. The animation is eye-popping.
Watched ep 2 of Ranma ½ and Squid Game on my new Netflix subscription. Kuno, Ranma’s first nemesis and would-be beau of Akane, encounters girl Ranma during a fight with him – and falls in love. Hilarious. The second episode of Squid, like the first, is about exposition and setting us up for the point when Seong Gi-hun goes back to the island and participates in a new round of games. Bring on the games!
Watched ep 3 of Ranma ½ and Squid Game. In Ranma, Kuno continues to be blind about Ranma’s girl/boy dynamic and still has a crush on girl Ranma – AKA ‘the pigtailed girl’. His cluelessness is always a laugh. In Squid Game the games have begun, starting with a new round of Red Light, Green Light. But Seong Gi-hun is equipped with prior knowledge of what’s happening, so he’s able to help a lot of the contestants get through it. The vote at the end of the episode, where the contestants actually decide to stay in the game, when they could leave, seems batshit crazy. But then again, since they’ve just seen the organisation that runs the games murder a whole lot of people in the games, and even though the killers are masked, would they really just be allowed to leave? I wonder.
Watched the fourth ep of Ranma ½. Enter Ryoga, the direction-challenged martial artist who carries a very heavy umbrella. The ep ends with the iconic scene where Akane’s hair is cut in half during Ryoga and Ranma’s showdown.
Watched the fifth ep of the new Ranma ½ anime. it’s the aftermath of Akane’s hair cutting incident. The incident is tied to Akane’s attraction to Dr Tofu, the chiropractor, and is the catalyst for her coming to terms with the fact he loves her older sister Kasumi. Must say, we see a lot of naked girl Ranma in this episode (minus nipples).
Then I watched two episodes of Squid Game, eps 4, called Six Legs, and 5, called One More Game. It’s tense and compelling stuff. I was only going to watch the fourth ep, but it ended on a cliffhanger during the Six Legs game, and I had to continue. Outside of the game, Jun-ho, the cop who is trying to track down Gi-hun and the whereabouts of the island, clearly has a traitor in his midst. My money’s on the boat captain as the guy. We shall see if I’m right.
Watched the sixth ep of Ranma ½. Enter Kodachi, the Black Rose, rhythmic gymnastics martial artist supreme. She takes a shine to boy Ranma and challenges Akane to a duel in which, if she wins, she gets to date Ranma. But Akane sprains her leg and girl Ranma has to take her place. I like how the show has made Kodachi Kuno’s sister, where she isn’t in the manga. Makes it a bit less random.
I watched the seventh episode of Ranma ½. This was a continuation of the Kodachi episode, featuring her epic rhythmic gymnastics fight with girl Ranma in front of a stadium crowd. It’s so typical of Rumiko to turn a sport that’s feminine and delicate into a powerhouse and dangerous martial arts event. The animation, like the action, in this episode was spectacular.
Also watched another ep of Squid Game, this time episode 6, called OX. They’re onto the third game, which is called Mingle. All the players are on a large rotating carousal. When it stops, a number is called out and the players have to select enough players for that number then run to one of the many rooms that circle the place. If they don’t make it they get shot. It’s pretty savage and heartbreaking, because people get left behind. But the games are really just an entertaining distraction (they’re the McGuffin, if you will) from all the intrigue and relationship dynamics that are going on. Has Gi-hun twigged that the duplicitous player 001 is The Front Man? What will his friend, Jung-bae, do when he witnesses player 001 killing another player in order to win? Next ep is the finale – at least for now. Netflix are doing a smart thing and presenting the final episodes later in the year. I suspect they hope people will hang on till then before they cancel their subscriptions. Gotta keeps the punters hooked. And at the moment, I am.
Watched another ep of Ranma ½. Ranma and Akane go ice skating and get into the inevitable challenge with two prize skaters over little P-chan the pig. This is the important episode where Ranma gets his first kiss. Only it’s from a guy, the male prize skater called Mikado, while he’s in his girl Ranma persona! This Mikado is a real sleazebag – worse than Ataru from Urusei Yatsura, because he’s so successful at it. In short, it’s sexual harassment. After the initial shock, Ranma gets angry and looks to exact his revenge upon Mikado during the challenge. Thing is, Asuza, the partner of Midado, is as bad as him in that she’s a complete psycho. She calls P-Chan Charlotte and puts a heart pendant around his neck and chains him up to the trophy the winner gets. Eeek, what a pair!
I watched ep 9 of Ranma ½. It’s the start of the free skate challenge between Ranma and Akane and that evil duo of Azusa and Mikado. Ranma’s looking to get some payback to Mikado for kissing him, but really, it’s too late for that. The deed has been done. At around the halfway point Ryoga gets in the action, as his pig form of P-chan breaks his chains and, with Ranma’s help and some hot water, he regains his human form. So we go from boy Ranma and Akane to girl Ranma and Ryoga as the challengers to Azusa and Mikado. By episode’s end the rink ice has been destroyed and the combatants float on mini icebergs within the rink. Ryoga best be careful he doesn’t fall into the cold water and revert back to his pig form. It was such an interesting choice by Rumiko to have Ranma’s first kiss be while he is in his girl form and for it to be from another boy.
I watched ep 10 of Ranma ½. This was the final ep featuring the skate challenge with Asuza and Mikado. They get their commeuppance in the end. The second half of the ep features the entrance of Shampoo, the girl from China who once fought girl Ranma and was bested by her. As being bested by an outsider is considered a disgrace with her Amazon tribe, she gave Ranma a kiss of death and followed her to Japan for her revenge. Shampoo is one of my favourite characters in Ranma, so I’ve eagerly awaited her entrance. I always thought Ranma should end up with her, rather than Akane. I’m a Ranma/Shampoo shipper.
Watched the last two eps of Ranma ½. In the eleventh ep Shampoo meets boy Ranma for the first time and he quickly bests her in combat. Shampoo promptly gives him a huge kiss on the lips that is not a kiss of death. It turns out, according to her tribe, if a man beats her in a fight she must marry him. This is a proposition she takes to enthusiastically, but not Ranma. At this point, the parallels with Urusei Yatsura are pretty clear. Shampoo smiles at and cuddles Ranma exactly like Lum when she’s around Ataru, her ‘darling’. And that kiss, boy, I don’t think Lum and Ataru ever went that far. I actually colourised the original panel from the manga a few years back, I liked it so much.
In the twelth episode Shampoo and Akane fight and Shampoo uses a technique that gives Akane amnesia about who Ranma is. And only she has the special ‘shampoo’ formula that brings Akane back, and she says she will give it to Ranma if he agrees to kill the red-headed girl Ranma who is her enemy. Later, Ranma sits on the roof of the Tendo’s house and contemplates the situation, while admitting to himself that she’s beautiful. His central problem is that she wants to fight and kill girl Ranma, but wants to kiss and marry boy Ranma – and doesn’t know that they are the same person. It’s quite a predicament. His solution is to reveal the two sides of himself to Shampoo by dramatically pouring cold water in front of her while he’s boy Ranma. It works, and Shampoo walks off disappointed and heartbroken while Akane recovers her memory loss simply by hearing Ranma’s repeated taunts of how ugly he thinks she is. It’s wild, it’s wacky, and it’s a good time. I thoroughly enjoyed this new take on an old show. I can’t wait for the next season, which is slated to happen some time this year.