By Rumiko Takahashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

I’ve talked before about how frustrating Ranma can be if you take its characters too seriously. It’s an issue that has carried over to many anime fandoms: if you try to empathize with these characters, and make their actions emotionally realistic, you will find yourself thinking they are all selfish, horrible monsters. It’s not just Ranma, either: Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku ran on this as well, and to this day most of the one-shot ghosts in Rin-Ne are deeply unlikable. At the same time, though, you have to empathize with them to some extent, you have to like and root for the characters or else why would you be reading the series at all? Between these two poles is the sweet spot of Ranma 1/2, and we see some of that in these two volumes.

As always with Ranma, the best stories are the longest. The longest story here deals with Ryouga, who has found a way to weaponize his depression and use it against Ranma. He’s actually not aware this is what he’s doing until later in the arc, which is what makes his baffling attacks on Ranma more entertaining. But the most entertaining thing is seeing Ranma, who is getting beaten by this new attack, try to depress himself, which… really does not work at all. I was highly impressed with Ranma here, as he doesn’t need Cologne to explain an alternative to him, or find an alternate scroll with a better move, but comes up with the attack based on his own confidence purely on its own. I love seeing Ranma being a smart cookie, and wish it happened more often.

Ranma being a stubborn sullen teen fans will enjoy the arc where Ukyou, suffering a crisis of conscience after a 10-year okonomiyaki sauce she made turns out terrible (thanks to Ranma as a child, so he’s guilty) ends up staying with the Tendos and attempting to worm her way into Ranma’s life further. I’ve never seen much of the anime, which I understand softens Ukyou to a great degree, but Takahashi never bothers softening anyone in her manga, so here we see Ukyou being just as bad as Ranma (stubborn jerk) and Akane (jealous), trying to scheme her way into being Ranma’s real fiancee. It almost reads like an English farce at times, with all sorts of power balances going back and forth and sudden revelations, and also tries to bind up Ukyou’s self image as a woman and her self-image as a chef, which she finally resolves doesn’t have to be separated.

As for the rest of the volume, there’s the usual one-shot gag chapters. There’s also some Happosai here, but I hate him, so let’s skip those. Nabiki shows up more here, Takahashi having fully gotten a handle on her last time, selling pictures, information or anything really to the highest bidder. We even see Gosunkugi, who has been absent for a long time, and find out that he’s still as pathetic as ever. The cast of Ranma may be hard to empathize with, but they sure are funny, and you get a lot of humor in these volumes.

By Rumiko Takahashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

A word of warning here: I love Nabiki Tendo. Love love love her. I don’t deny that if I were ever to meet her in real life I’d run away, but she’s fictional, so I am free to openly admire a confident confidence trickster who decides to mess with Ranma and Akane purely because it amuses her… and also to get some of Ranma’s cash, of course. This volume is the first one where she’s really had an arc focusing on her, and she’ll only have one more after this (about 7 omnibuses from now). So most of what folks consider ‘canon’ comes from the 6-chapter story in this volume, where, after a huge fight – again – Akane decides that Nabiki can be Ranma’s fiancee instead.

Of course, like every other story in the series, Nabiki’s presence here is to help show how Ranma and Akane are perfect for each other, while also demonstrating why it’s taking forever to get them to admit that. Akane’s hair-trigger temper is seen here several times, topped only by Ranma’s amazing tendency to say exactly the wrong thing and not understand why anyone would get angry. If you combine this with their mutual innocence and gullibility, it’s no wonder that Nabiki can play them both like fiddles. It helps that Nabiki is one of the few women in the series not attracted to Ranma – at one point she decides to wrap things up, thinking “wouldn’t want him to get TOO attached to me.” I also like that she’s not perfect – her plan to sell Ranma to the highest bidder is done in by Shampoo, Kodachi and Ukyou deciding that killing Nabiki would achieve the same end (yes, Ukyou is also there, just slightly less murderous), and she misreads Ranma as genuinely trying to hit her towards the end. She should know better. She also shows a bit of concern that her plan might genuinely break Ranma and Akane up, which is sweet.

Of course, there’s a lot more in this omnibus than Nabiki, but it’s not quite as interesting. Picolette Charin’s story is wrapped up in a fairly weak way, though the force-feeding was pretty clever. The entire second half of the volume, though, is taken up with a new minor villain, who has the unfortunate name of Pantyhose Taro. In fact, his name drives the plot – he got the name from Happosai, who happened to be at the springs where the young baby had drowned and christened him as if it was a baptism – and his tribe forbids name changes unless it’s the one who gave the name. So Pantyhose Taro has a grudge, and is also possessed of possibly the most ridiculous Jusenkyou curse of all, a yeti riding an ox carrying an eel and a crane spring. This translates to a hideous huge monster, but Pantyhose Taro is fine with that – it’s the name he hates.

Most of this volume is taken up, unfortunately, with a lot of fights and with Akane getting kidnapped and used as bait – again. Luckily, there’s also some sharp humor as well, mostly at Taro’s expense. Pantyhose Taro ends up being the inverse of the usual manga villains – usually they never appear again in the manga, but the anime has them return. Here it’s the anime that didn’t bother to bring Pantyhose Taro back, but we’ll see him again soon. We’re halfway through Ranma 1/2 now, and next time we’ll get a few more amusing one-shots, as well as the development of two new devastating attacks for Ranma and Ryouga.

By Rumiko Takahashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

Takahashi has settled into a groove by now, and it shows in these two volumes, which have some of the strongest combinations of comedy and action in the entire series. Unlike the last omnibus, there’s no real serious plotline here – indeed, several of the plotlines are best known for their complete and total ridiculousness. But that just allows Takahashi to mine them for ridiculous and hysterical comedy, and show you why she had such an amazing reputation back in the 1990s. And it also shows off a bit more Ranma and Akane not-romance, for those who watch for that.

We start with ludicrous right off the bat, in the form of the Gambling King. (Well, OK, there’s a story with Kuno getting a sword that grants wishes, but it’s the weakest in the book, so let’s skip it.) The King is not unlike your typical Ranma one-shot villain – grossly egotistical, somewhat thick, tends to cheat in order to gain temporary victories – but of course what makes the comedy truly work is that he looks exactly like the King on a deck of playing cards, and therefore there’s always a comedy visual dissonance when he interacts with anyone. Add to this Ranma’s laughably awful attempts at a poker face, and you have a definite winner. (It was also nice to see Nabiki take on the King – she was winning handily till he cheated – though she’ll need to wait for the next omnibus to finally get her turn in the spotlight. It’s also fantastic whenever Kasumi and Nabiki emit ‘giant scary auras’, which they both do here.)

Next we see why Ranma always has his hair tied in a pigtail, and it again involves comedy villains (more pathetic than anything else) who look ridiculous – this time they all look like dumplings. This has some nice Ranma and Akane interaction, but also plays up a man’s vanity for laughs. The strongest story in the volume, though, involves a Hot Spring Resort that is doing a contest, the winner of which can travel to any spring in the world – including Jusenkyou. If you guessed this content involved an increasingly ridiculous series of obstacles that can only be defeated by martial artists, you are 100% correct. We also have the three ‘main’ fiancees present and correct (sorry, Kodachi), and they’re all thoroughly pissed off at Ranma, while also trying to help him. Even at this point, still not quite halfway through the series, everyone unconsciously knows if Ranma is cured, life will move on and he’ll have to decide who he likes once and for all. Takahashi’s final joke, of course, being that this never happens.

Possibly the most terrifying of the stories here – if only for the grotesque faces – sees Ranma taking on Picolette Chardin II, a master of martial arts eating, helped along by the fact that his family all have giant, stretchy mouths. Again, in a situation where the laughs come from the premise, all you really have to do is drop the cast – here Ranma, Akane, and their two fathers – into it and have them be themselves. So Ranma is stubborn and determined to be the best at this because it is a martial art, Soun is determined to ensure that Ranma remains engaged to Akane by the end of it, Akane stands to the side making deadpan wisecracks and occasionally helping when Ranma doesn’t insult her, and Genma eats.

So, for Ranma fans, this is pretty much the classic period. It maintains its high quality next volume, too, as we see Nabiki finally emerge as the amoral shyster she remains the rest of the series, and are introduced to possibly *the* most bizarre enemy of Ranma’s ever, Pantyhose Tarou.