Ranma ½/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Breakthrough Hit: For Viz Media as an anime distributor, being one of their first big hits.
  • Crossdressing Voice: English only. For the first three seasons of the dub, boy-type Ranma was played by a woman.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Fans tend to refer to male Ranma as Ranma-kun and female Ranma as Ranma-chan. Others still go with "Ranko", under the pretext that this is the name Ranma came up with himself when hiding from his mother in his female form.
    • The Nerima Wrecking Crew for the principle cast due to them causing as much damage as several natural disasters over the course of the series.
    • MADM or "Martial Arts Death Machines", a term popularized by Usenet discussions during "who would win in a fight"-style threads.
    • "Voodoo Spike" for Hikaru Gosunkugi because he's always running around nailing little handmade dolls to trees and gates and things, which looks like some sort of halfwit attempt at a voodoo ritual.
  • God Never Said That: Several of the most common fanons, most notably the purpose behind the trip to Shampoo's village and doubt that the Nanniichuan can cure the Nyanniichuan (or that anything can cure a Jusenkyo curse), are often falsely attributed to Rumiko Takahashi.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Dr. Tofu is Cheetor and Goku in the English dub, and Ranma is Inuyasha in both the English and Japanese versions.
    • That's nothing. Instead of the characters that represent the band DoCo, we could have: Noriko, Belldandy, Conan Edogawa, Leona Ozaki and Rei Ayanami. Talk about a band of heavy-hitters!!
    • One has to wonder if Mousse has a few interesting things up his sleeve, like a black notebook and a bag of potato chips, or his very own mobile suit....
    • Considering that the Ocean Group dubbed X-Men Evolution, most of the Ranma cast showed up in some fashion.
    • One of the best examples of this was when I heard Dr. Janet Frasier and recognized Kodachi Kuno (Seasons 1-4)! Then I found out that the Stargate SG-1 sets and Ocean Group are both located in Vancouver and in close proximity to each other; I wasn't surprised after that.
    • Surprised that it hasn't been mentioned that Soun is Megatron, YES!
      • And female Ranma herself takes a snarky role as Blackarachnia.
    • Maomolin the Ghost Cat is voiced by Double D. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Don't forget to mention that Male Ranma is also Bugs Bunny, Speedy, Usopp and the dubbed voice of Kyle. Gosh, he's a lot of people.
    • Amusingly, the Japanese voice of the Adorkable Ryōga Hibiki is also the voice of Ryoji Kaji, Spike Spiegel, and a whole host of other suave badasses.
  • Making Use of the Twin: Elaina Wotten-Costain's Season 6 substitution for her sister Angela Costain as the voice of Nabiki in the North American dub. Her performance was perfectly indistinguishable from her sister's: many fans didn't notice the actress had changed.
  • No Export for You: Hey Viz, how about that "Secret Spring" OVA, huh?
  • The Other Darrin: Starting with Season 4, the English dub abruptly switches out the voice of male Ranma from Sarah Strange to Richard Cox; the two sound not even remotely alike.
  • Trope Namer for:
    • The Glomp: The very first appearance of the word glomp is in Ranma ½ Volume 1 Chapter 12. Ironically, it's used as a sound effect during a grapple between Ranma and Ryōga and not for the affectionate tackle/hug it represents today. The first time it was used as a verb, however, was in a fanfic-style "interview" conducted in a 1994 issue of Animerica, from which it spread like wildfire among fanfiction circles.
    • Love Dodecahedron
    • Unwanted Harem
  • What Could Have Been: Before deciding on water for initiating Ranma's changes, Rumiko Takahashi considered having him change gender every time he was punched.
  • The Wiki Rule: The Ranma Wiki

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