Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
215,481
edits
No edit summary |
("Anti-hero" doesn't have subtypes. Corrected the trope name to "Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes".) |
||
(28 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:1906_8233.jpg|frame| "Is that incredibly hot redhead the cool-looking pigtailed [[Arrogant Kung Fu Guy|kung-fu guy]]'s [[Half-Identical Twins|twin sister]]? Man, [[My Sister Is Off-Limits|how am I supposed to date her?!]]" <ref>Answer: [[Gender Bender|They're one]] [[Attractive Bent Gender|and the same.]]</ref> [[Fetish Fuel|On your marks!]] [[Rule 34|Get]] [[Rule 63|set...]] [[Fanfic|GO!]]]]
'''''Ranma ½''''' is a long-running martial arts/comedy manga and anime series by [[Rumiko Takahashi]]. It has a lot of [[Urban Fantasy]] aspects and a generally light-hearted atmosphere.
It tells the story of Ranma Saotome, a teenage martial arts prodigy. Upon returning from a training journey with his father Genma, he finds himself engaged to marry Akane
There's a small problem
This is the series which brought the "[[Harem]]" trope to its ridiculous
The anime adaptation lasted seven seasons
While the anime is considered a "classic", it suffers from several problems. It rapidly [[Overtook the Manga]] and was [[Cut Short|was canceled before it could complete the full storyline, ending three years before the manga itself concluded]]. The dearth of new material caused the show to become [[Monster of the Week|somewhat repetitious]] as the production team resorted to cookie-cutter [[
Even with these problems, the ''Ranma ½'' anime was quite popular in its
Despite its age, ''Ranma ½'' still has a remarkably large and vigorous North American fan community and is still responsible for a significant fraction of the anime [[fanfic]]tion on the web, including a wide variety of [[Intercontinuity Crossover|crossovers]]. ''Ranma ½'' is probably one of the most crossed-over series on the
On December 9, 2011, a two-hour live-action [[Ranma ½ (TV movie)|TV movie version]] aired on the Japanese network NTV. Based on an original story by Yoshihiro Izumi, it starred Kenta Kaku and Natsuna Watanabe as male and female Ranma, respectively, and Yui Aragaki as Akane, along with an [https://web.archive.org/web/
{{tropenamer}}
* [[The Glomp]]
* [[Love Dodecahedron]]
* [[Unwanted Harem]]
And the former trope namer of "Takahashi Couple", which is now called [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]].
{{tropelist}}
== Tropes A-E ==
* [[Abduction Is Love]]:
** Once to female Ranma [[Rescue Romance|in the manga]].
** Once to [[Because Destiny Says So|Akane in the first movie]].
** ''Every female but [[Squick|Cologne]]'' in the [[Beach Episode|second movie]].
** Female Ranma was also kidnapped for this purpose, and very nearly bewitched with a [[Love Potion]] in the ''Toraware no Hanayome'' [[TurboGrafx-16|PC Engine]] video game. Akane had to rescue her from being married to a {{spoiler|bear}} prince.
* [[Aborted Arc]]
** Manga only: Ranma's attempts to conceal his curse are quietly dropped in the middle of the "Full-body Cat's Tongue" arc and the story goes from no one at school knowing about his curse to everyone (except the Kunos, of course) knowing about it with hardly a comment from anybody, initiating the manga's shift from a [[Romantic Comedy]] to a [[Status Quo Is God|status quo is darn near god]] [[Situation Comedy]].
** Dr. Tofu's [[All Love Is Unrequited|one-sided love]] for Kasumi is completely abandoned... [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome|as is Dr. Tofu]].
* [[The Abridged Series]]: ''[[Ranma ½: The Abridged Chronicles]]''
* [[Absurdly Sharp Blade]]: Kuno. With a wooden sword, no less. Konatsu, Ryōga and even Kodachi, are still more extreme. The former uses a sword made of ''paper'' (without being a [[Paper Master]]), and the two others regular pieces of cloth.
** An intentionally absurd justification is made for Kuno's wooden sword by showing that he's so fast with it that when he swings, it he can smash rocks ''from the air pressure alone''.
** Lampshaded in the Martial arts rhythmic gymnastic competition when Kodachi attacks with a steel bar: "she uses that rope like it's a steel bar... oh wait, it is a steel bar."
* [[Abusive Parents]]: Staggeringly, none of the parental figures in either the manga or the anime are ever considered abusive within the setting despite their actions. The sole exceptions are: Genma, whom the
** In the case of Nodoka, she allowed Genma to take Ranma away for training on the basis that he would turn their son into "a man among men
* [[Accidental Marriage
* [[Adaptation Dye Job]]: Girl-Ranma, from black in the manga (and varicolored in random non-canon illustrations) to cherry-red in the anime. Likewise, Shampoo, from black to lavender/purple. Often overlooked is Akane, who also had black hair in the manga but started getting illustrated consistently with ''brown'' hair in late Takahashi illustrations (around the same time Ranma's red hair leaked back into Takahashi's style) but was portrayed with midnight-blue in the anime.
* [[Adaptation Expansion]]: The 13th OVA episode - which was done years after the originals as part of ''Shonen Sunday's'' 50th anniversary - added more content than was in the original manga story it was based on. Most likely done to allow more of the old cast to play part as a service to the fans who hadn't seen them in years.
* [[Affably Evil]]
* [[All Amazons Want Hercules]]: Shampoo towards Ranma.
* [[All Cheering, All the Time]]: Mariko, though we only ever see her when she's actively being a [[Martial Arts and Crafts|Combat Cheerleader]] so she might not talk that way in civvies. Then again, this is '''''Ranma ½'''''.
* [[And Call Him George
* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Nabiki often carries an abacus (played for laughs), even though this is seemingly modern day Japan (well, modern being set in the same decade as the show was produced), and hand-held calculators should have been readily available.
** They were and are, but abaci were still in common use at the time.
* [[Anguished Declaration of Love]]: There exists [[Played for Laughs]] and at least one [[Played for Drama]] versions.
* [[Animation Bump]]: The [[OVAs]] to the show, especially the most recent, which beats out even the movies for slick animation.
* [[Anime Theme Song]]{{context}}<!-- This property has over a dozen theme songs. Which one or ones fit the trope? -->
* [[Angst Nuke]]: The Shi-Shi Hokodan.
* [[Sliding Scale of Anti-
* [[Armor-Piercing Slap]]: Akane is capable of landing a slap to the cheek on anyone, regardless of how badly they may outclass her in terms of fighting skills. The catch is that they must first insult her fighting skills or general appearance. This effect is such an important part of her character that it was used in both the manga and the series to break her out of an amnesiac effect.
* [[Arranged Marriage]]: The driving force of the series. Three times in the original manga (the
* [[Art Major Biology]]:
** Akane somehow survives all of the water in her body being instantly evaporated by the Kinjakan. Of course, like almost everything else in the series, [[A Wizard Did It|A Magical Device Did It]].
** Basically, the series consists of 36 volumes of [[Involuntary Shapeshifting|Magic Curses that cause your body to transform into different creature in a split second]], [[Healing Factor|broken bones that heal in a week]], [[Megaton Punch]]es with [[Invulnerable Knuckles]], [[Charles Atlas Superpower]]s, [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|300/100-year old]], [[Miniature Senior Citizens|two-foot-tall old people]] (one of which was [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed in a cave]] with no food or water for ten years), [[Ki Attacks]], [[Fountain of Youth|de-aging mushrooms]], [[Our Vampires Are Different|a woman who ages by]] [[Life Energy]] [[Energy Absorption|Absorption]] [[Magic Pants|gaining and losing mass without explanation]], not to mention the [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|giant wildlife]] [[When Trees Attack|and sentient plants]], food items that can either give you [[Super Strength]] (and whiskers) or cause your hair to grow in feet-per-second, people and animals being [[Harmless Freezing|frozen in gigantic blocks of ice]], and people breaking [[Required Secondary Powers|the laws of physics]] ''and'' [[Square-Cube Law|biology]] with [[Supernatural Martial Arts]] on a daily basis.
* [[Ash Face]]: A frequent result of Happōsai's fire bombs.
* [[Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance]]:
** Pick any of the visiting [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] people who come by.
** The French Cuisine arc in the manga had the governess dressed in 20th century French gown, with her hair tied up to resemble a roast chicken. The gambling king looks ''exactly'' like the King playing card, right down to the swirly beard and crown.
* [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever]]: The [[Orochi]], Pantyhose
* [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny]]: Hinako Ninomiya in child form.
* [[Attractive Bent Gender]]: Ranma. All the guys at school cheer whenever Ranma suffers a [[Mode Lock]] as they seem to like [[Girl Watching|ogling]] Ranma more than most of the ''real'' girls. Nyanniichuan victims in general seem to fall under this category, perhaps because it ups the embarrassment factor of the curse; see the Musk Dynasty, especially their prince
* [[Author Tract]]: Almost completely bereft of them, as Takahashi is a very creative and diverse, almost purely entertainment-driven artist, but the self-stated ongoing message of her works is "be kind to others", and she has also stated that she "finds perfect characters boring", which fits with the goofy cast and overall tolerant tone.
* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]: Ranma and Akane. There is one moment of this in the second movie between Shampoo and Mousse.
* [[Badass Family]]: The Saotomes, most obviously, with Ranma and Genma both being martial arts masters. Shampoo and Cologne, the latter being the former's great-grandmother also count. The
* [[Badass Longcoat]]: Shinnosuke. A janitor's coat, yes, but Shinnosuke makes it very badass;
* [[Barehanded Blade Block]]: Or, if their hands are full, bare''footed'' blade block.
* [[The Barnum]]: Nabiki to an extreme degree.
* [[Bash Brothers]]: Mikado Sanzen'in and Azusa Shiratori, the Golden Pair of Martial Arts [[Martial Arts and Crafts|Ice Skating]].
* [[Battle Aura]]: Pretty much every martial artist in the series.
** Happōsai can actually shape his into a giant copy of himself, effectively becoming kaiju-sized. One episode of the anime has Happōsai split into seven clones ([[It's a Long Story|long story]]) and all of them do this at once. In one arc,
** Moreso in the anime, but Genma and Soun can both become kaiju-sized, although Genma is always in his Panda form when he does this, and Soun is always dressed as a [[Samurai]]. This is regardless of whether or not Genma was human at the time... and Soun just seems to keep his armor, spear and bow in [[Hammerspace]] in case he needs to make a quick costume change.
* [[Battle Harem]]: Ranma's [[Unwanted Harem]] is full of [[Hot Amazon]]s and [[Action Girl]]s. Not surprising, since he lives in [[Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting|a world where everybody gets their own style of martial arts]].
* [[Beach Episode]]: ''Ranma ½'' has almost an entire movie as this, as well as a pair of regular ones. An interesting note is the transition from manga to anime actually removes one as the setting was changed from a beach to a ski resort (though it also adds another one as filler). The "Ranma Goes Hawaiian!" chapter in the manga functions also as a beach episode.
* [[Beam of Enlightenment]]
* [[Beautiful All Along]]:
* [[Because You Were Nice to Me]]:
*
** This is the entire reason that Maomolin tries to "help"
* [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]]: Ranma
* [[Best Her to Bed Her]]: Shampoo, and indeed, all of the Chinese Amazons.
* [[Big Bad]]: There isn't one, but
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Quite a few times, but the best was when Ranma (who had all his strength taken away) was about to get ambushed by four of his old foes... Defenseless and pinned against a tree, Ranma closes his eyes and waits for it... But nothing happens. Looking up, he sees
* [[Big Eater]]:
** Ranma and Genma, the latter more than the former.
** Both are put to shame by the whole Chardin family, and later by Kurumi "Tendo" in the OAV.
** Nabiki Tendo has some traits of this, especially when she's being fed out of other peoples' wallets.
* [[Big Fancy House]]:
** The Tendō home, which contains separate bedrooms for all three of the daughters, Sōun himself, and two guest bedrooms: one downstairs used by Happōsai, and another upstairs which Genma and Ranma share. It also includes a full traditional Japanese bathing area, an equally traditional dining/living room, a modern kitchen with a big worktable in the center of the floor, a garden with large pond, and a dojo large enough to comfortably seat virtually every character ever seen on the show as of the series' first Christmas episode.
** The Kuno Estate is a massive place that almost resembles a medieval Japanese fortress: particularly in the anime, where it has a literal labyrinth of secret passages, dungeons and deathtraps.
* [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing]]: Nabiki. Oneshot character Satori the psychic kid even more so.
* [[Blessed with Suck]]: Most of the main characters with Jusenkyo curses, or other oddities, such as
* [[Blind Without'Em]]: Mousse.
* [[Blow You Away]]: Ranma's most frequent [[Finishing Move]] is the Hi Ryū Shoten Ha, which creates a tornado. He's also fond of modifying it [[Indy Ploy|on the spot]] to beat the more serious enemies.
* [[Blue with Shock]]
* [[Boobs of Steel]]: Played straight with Shampoo and Female-Ranma, who have generous busts and are highly skilled martial artists, as well as Miss Hinako who is one of the most powerful characters in the series since she drains power from her opponents. Atsuko Nakajima's OAV and movie character designs obviate the trope by making all of the girls extremely well-endowed, even the more modest ones.
* [[Bookie]]: Nabiki makes book on Ranma's fights, setting odds and taking bets. We first see her doing this, with the aid of her two factors, during Ranma's first fight with Ryōga. Nabiki's not entirely an honest bookie; she's not above trying to influence a fight to improve her profit margin.
* [[Bow Ties Are Cool]]: Ranma's pastel orange shirt and little red bowtie combo.
* [[Brainwashed and Crazy]]: Happens to Male Ranma when his female half is duplicated (though not split from him), and it seduces him in one anime episode.
* [[Brought Down to Normal]]: When
* [[Bully Hunter]]:
** Ranma does this occasionally, for example when she stopped Kodachi from beating up the Fūrinkan gymnastic team further or the time he stopped a group of masked kids that were bullying Gosunkugi.
** And again with Ryōga, most notably for defending a [[Brought Down to Normal]] Ranma from the rest of the males on the [[Fan Nickname|Nerima Wrecking Crew]].
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Most of the regular characters of the show at one point or another get beaten for comic relief, the males more regularly than the females. Most frequently Ranma, as he is the main protagonist.
* [[Call Back]]: To Akane and [male] Ranma's [[Naked First Impression|first encounter]], twice: Shinnosuke running into Akane in the bath (confirming his identity to her) and
* [[Calling Your Attacks]]:
** Almost entirely spoofed in the manga: nearly every attack, no matter how minor or improvised, has some sort of name. The Saotome school even has a named 'attack' that consists of ''running away until you can think of something else''. But it's also played straight, particularly with Ranma and Ryōga's most devastating attacks.
** Even better is the ''Howl of the Demon Dog'', where the user slides backwards and shouts that he doesn't care that he's been beaten. Ranma quickly renamed it the ''Whine of the Beaten Dog''.
** Konatsu is the most extreme spoof of this. Almost everything he does, no matter how useless or unrelated to combat, is shouted out with a silly title, including coming up with multiple names for doing the same thing...
**
** ''Attack of a thousand clubs!!''... it looks like she's using 10 or 20 clubs... oh wait, she IS using 10 or 20 clubs.
** Then there's both the ''Yamasenken'' and ''Umisenken'', which have some seven attacks each, with Ranma and Ryu calling each attack when they're used.
* [[Canon Foreigner]]: Sasuke Sarugakure, the Kunos' [[Ninja]] servant, in the anime.
* [[Can't Catch Up]]: Akane and the Kuno siblings to Ranma.
* [[Can't You Read the Sign?]]: Has ''oodles of fun'' with this trope. Characters sit on water mains with signs that read, "Danger: Do not Sit", laugh in areas where signs read, "Do not laugh loudly in the garden", and run on fences that read "Danger: Unstable". Rumiko Takahashi has quite a bit of fun with this gag.
* [[Card-Carrying Villain]]: Happōsai. He molests women, invades the privacy of women who are changing clothes or taking baths, steals underwear and food, racks up extortionate bills and sticks them on the Tendō dojo, bullies and beats and harasses his students... only for self-enjoyment. He is the only character who is actually proud of declaring that he will be "evil" until the day that he dies and that he never, ever, in his whole, rotten life has learnt something that served to help someone. Actually, ''thinking'' of making something good got his brain literally fried once. Even when he believes he's doing good, it's still used in his selfish pleasures down the road. Proof: as much as he says he taught the Happo Five-Yen Satsu to Hinako when she was a kid so her health could improve (which it did, truth be told), in the end, he used it just so he could freely steal the nurses' panties as she drained their vital energies. And he pretended to be Santa Claus to protect two children's innocent dreams... all the while as he ate and drank at their expenses and used them to steal panties.
* [[Catch Phrase]]: Many, but most notably Kasumi: "Oh My", Akane: "Honestly" and "Ranma no baka!" (roughly "dummy", or "Ranma you jerk" in the dub; she even has a "Baka Song"), Ranma's catchword "kawaiikune" ("uncute"), Happōsai: "What a haul!" and "Sweeto!", Shampoo: "Nihao, Airen!" and, to a lesser extent, "Aiyaaa!" and of course Ryōga's "Ranma, [[Prepare to Die]]!". {{spoiler|He never follows through on it when he wins}}. Akane in particular typically uses both of her catchphrases at least [[Once an Episode]].
* [[Cerebus Syndrome|Cerebus Fandom]]: Despite being one of the "classic" comedy series, the fanbase is littered with angst and drama fics as all get out. That's partially because the characters are so screwed up, partially because it's much harder to write intelligent comedy, and partially because the manga recurrently mixed very serious, with goofy, or even very dark gag comedy. It's a diverse mixture, and comes out particularly odd when a fanfic writer makes a serious effort to translate all of the aspects into another medium. Also, fanfic authors as a whole are not very happy people. It frequently goes so far that it has nothing to do with the original though. Ranma the nihilistic lolicon-fetishist cyberpunk pimp doesn't really work very well... and no that's not remotely an exaggeration. As far as the actual series goes, if anything, it ''inverts'' it ("serious" arcs like Herb, Ryu Kumon and Saffron notwithstanding). Whereas the earlier arcs with Shampoo and Mousse at least ''tried'' to create transition from one situation to the next, by the time Hinako showed up, Status Quo become God, and arcs like the Battle Dougi and Haunted Mirror typically ended with a single panel "conclusion" doing nothing but ''implying'' a [[Reset Button]].
* [[Changing Clothes Is a Free Action]]: Often as part of a sight gag, such as Ranma getting into or out of a costume to fool Ryōga in the space of a single panel, or Nodoka (who is in a full dress kimono) {{spoiler|seeing Ranma for the first time (but wearing girl's clothes), hugging him, and suddenly standing in proper [[Seppuku]] attire}}.
* [[Character Development]]:
** Arguably Ryōga, who first appears as an enemy and gradually evolves into a rival, a reliable ally, and possibly a friend (of all the characters who crash the abortive wedding, Ryōga is the only one who is not trying to deliberately spoil the event).
** Akane, and to a lesser degree Mousse, also turn nicer as the story marches on.
* [[Characterization Marches On]]: [[Rumiko Takahashi]] [[Word of God|herself]] stated in an interview that she originally intended Ranma to be "a clean-cut, nice boy with frank disposition", but that he kept surprising her and "turned out to be an indecisive, stubborn, sly guy." The Tendōs' characterisations are also more rounded in the first couple of books, with Kasumi dismissing younger men as boring, calling Genma out and being snarky, and Nabiki being a more normal high-schooler.
* [[Chef of Iron]]: Ukyo, master of Martial Arts Okonomiyaki and wielder of giant spatulas. Cologne to a degree with ramen noodle attacks and teaching Shampoo Martial Arts Takeout Delivery.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]:
** The horn whistle Shinnosuke gave Akane during their childhood is the only thing that can pacify the [[Orochi]] and send it back to sleep.
** {{spoiler|The photo of Akane that Nabiki sells to Ryōga winds up playing a role in snapping Ranma out of his stupor after falling down Saffron's pit trap... and winds up alerting the Phoenix to Akane's existence and leading to her kidnapping}}.
* [[Cherry Blossoms]]: Parodied or played for laugh in several storylines.
* [[Chick Magnet]]: Ranma attracts a good number of female characters in the series, even one-shot gag characters.
* [[Childhood Marriage Promise]]: Ukyo made a deal with Ranma while they were still kids who played together regularly that, in exchange for allowing Ranma to taste her family's secret okonomiyaki sauce recipe (which is [[Serious Business]], [[Reality Is Unrealistic|even in the real world]]), Ranma would marry her if it tasted good.
* [[Child Marriage Veto]]: Genma and Mr. Tendō had arranged for Ranma and Akane to marry. The kids swear they won't because they hate each other, but most people who've seen the series swear it's more akin to [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]].
* [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]]:
** After being a significant supporting character in the first couple volumes, Dr. Tōfū is gradually demoted to a plot device, then starts to appear more and more infrequently until, just over a third of the way through the series, he completely disappears and is never mentioned again. The anime averts this, having him show up in filler episodes right up to the final season. [[Word of God]] says that Takahashi didn't like the character: when Cologne brought her knowledge and martial art prowess, Tofū got completely useless and was properly scrapped.
** Shampoo's father in the manga. He appears in Volume 4 with two lines of dialogue, then he can be seen helping out at the Cat Café for a little while, but then he's just gone.
* [[Clingy Costume]]: Ranma gets stuck in a cursed swimsuit, which will drag 'her' into the depths of the sea unless she is honestly complimented by a particular man.
* [[Clingy Jealous Girl]]: Shampoo, Ukyo, Kodachi
* [[Cloning Blues]]: The Haunted Mirror. [[Played for Laughs]].
* [[Clothing Damage]]: Pretty much every time Ranma fights as a girl.
* [[Cobweb of Disuse]]: Happens within minutes to the
* [[Combat Commentator]]: Happens occasionally, with the peanut gallery making quips to explain what may be missing in a single still panel shot. Of course, this happens to also give certain characters an unusual and inconsistent knowledge of the martial arts, even if it is accepted as fact that they have no interest in them. Such as Nabiki immediately commenting on the nature of Happōsai's "Hermit Crab Fist" being him moving from bucket to bucket really fast. Also parodied later in the Ten-yen bet saga, where Akane and Ranma serve up some overdramatic commentary on the rather mundane happenings. One of the best examples of this trope might be the anime-exclusive episode dealing with [[Martial Arts and Crafts|Martial Arts Shogi]], where Happōsai and Nabiki (the former of which is just being a coward) take to the sidelines with Happōsai explaining how Battle Shogi relates to the rules of the boardgame.
{{quote|'''Genma''': Hey, it's harder than it sounds!}}
* [[Comedic Sociopathy]]: And how...
* [[Congruent Memory]]: Kuno's watermelon sword training.
* [[Continuity Nod]]: Remember how Akane [[Super Drowning Skills|can't swim to save her life]]? [[Rumiko Takahashi]] did when she {{spoiler|dropped her in a Jusenkyo spring}}.
* [[Cooking Duel]]: Practically every third episode, at least two involved actual cooking. See [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] below for some examples.
* [[Cordon Bleugh Chef]]: Akane
* [[Counter Attack]]: The Hiryū Shoten Ha; almost all the techniques in the Umi-Sen Ken style are specific counters to the Yama-Sen Ken.
* [[Covert Pervert]]: Akane and Ukyo have both had at least one of these moments each in the manga, as did virtually everyone else. It is a sex-farce comedy as much as it is a Martial Arts comedy, after all.
* [[Cross-Popping Veins]]
* [[Crosscast Role]]: The school play is the first time Akane is ever actually asked to play ''Juliet'' instead of Romeo.
* [[Crossdresser]]: Ukyo, Tsubasa and Konatsu. Unfortunate applications of hot water tend to make ''male'' Ranma one of these, to the horror of innocent passerby (including his own mother).
* [[Curse]]: The keystone and main plot driver of the series.
* [[Cursed with Awesome]]: Ranma's Jusenkyo curse, according to some people, though he would not agree. The [[Fan Wank|theory]] that Ranma is under some curse that makes him a [[Weirdness Magnet]] counts if you believe
* [[Cute Little Fangs]]:
* [[A Day in the Limelight]]: Nabiki's "Ten Yen Bet" arc. It allows her to have her own set of wacky adventures, and "[[Snark Bait|love interest]]", with Ranma and Akane as the [[Combat Commentator|background commentators]]. Her "New Fiancée" and "Destroyed Concert Ticket" stories also qualify.
* [[Deadly Dodging]]: Makes up a large component of Ranma's fighting style.
* [[Deadly Training Area]]: The valley of Jusenkyo has acquired this reputation.
Line 172 ⟶ 169:
* [[Death by Materialism]]: Nabiki fights a boy whose style of "martial arts" is based on ''sticking other people with the debts he incurs''.
* [[Defence Mechanism Superpower]]: The Neko-Ken.
* [[Demon Head]]:
** Soun, whenever he needs to jolt Ranma into doing something that he wanted, usually involving swallowing his pride and being nice to Akane.
** Kasumi and Nabiki also pulled a Demon Head during the Chardin arc.
* [[Determinator]]: Just about every martial artist in the main cast has pulled this act off at least once.
* [[Deus Angst Machina]]:
* [[Different for Girls]]: Explicitly lampshaded.
* [[Dirty Old Man]]:
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: Many characters have done this on whim, usually [[Played for Laughs]]. However, Shampoo,
* [[The Ditz]]: Azusa, Hinako. To a lesser extent Rouge and Konatsu.
* [[Does Not Know His Own Strength]]:
* [[Domestic Abuse]]:
* [[Double Standard]]: According to Akane, it's okay for a girl to see a guy nude but not for a guy to see a girl nude.
* [[Double Standard Abuse (Female on Male)]]: Where to begin...
* [[Dramatic Wind]]
* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: The entire main cast (sans Nabiki and Kasumi) in episode 119 "Tendō Family Goes to the Amusement Park!". This is only slightly [[Justified Trope|justified]] due to it being a race.
* [[Dropped a Bridget On Him]]: Subverted with [[Those Two Guys|Hiroshi and Daisuke]], at least in the manga. Their response to discovering that cute redheaded girl they've been crushing on is, in fact, their ''male'' best friend? "We don't care, she's still hot." [[Master of Disguise|Tsubasa]] also drops a Bridget on Ranma at the end of his introductory (and sole, in the manga) story, and [[Dude Looks Like a Lady|Konatsu]] drops it on Ukyo at the end of his.
* [[Dysfunction Junction]]
Line 192 ⟶ 190:
* [[Ecchi]]: Mostly of the comedic misunderstanding variety, but that doesn't discourage skin from showing in the slightest.
* [[Efficient Displacement]]: The surprising amount of ''detail'' on the character-shaped holes or impressions is [[Rule of Funny|part of the fun]].
* [[Effortless Amazonian Lift]]: Played with.
** While Ranma won't allow Akane to carry him as a guy, he lets her carry him piggyback when in girl form, emphasizing how Ranma thinks of himself according to his gender. Not that Akane would have any trouble carrying his guy form: she's sometimes seen dragging him ''by the pigtail'' while running (with Ranma trying to keep a cool composure all along).
** In a straighter example, Shampoo demonstrates the strength to catch Mousse in her arms after she saves him from a villain, continuing the trend of her being the dominant one in their "relationship".
** In another instance, female Ranma has to carry the much larger and much more powerful, but unconscious Prince Herb in her arms to save him from a collapsing mountain. In fact, Ranma (and Mousse and Ryōga) were splashed with cold water instants before for the sole reason of turning him female for this scene.
** Hinako-sensei in adult form is once seen carrying the unconscious bodies of ''three'' girls (Shampoo, Ukyo and Kodachi) at the same time. It seems her energy-draining power is also boosting her strength.
* [[The Electric Slide]]: Pick your poison: everyone does it as they're all martial artists of some form or another.
* [[Embarrassing First Name]]: Quite obviously, Pantyhose Tarō. "Pantyhose Tarō" ''is'' his full name, but he only wants to change the first half of it into something less embarrassing, such as "[[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|Awesome]] Tarō".
* [[Enemy Mine]]
* [[Energy Absorption]]: English teacher Hinako Ninomiya.
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Everybody in this series is a [[Jerkass]] at some point, yet most of the cast members considers something too much for them.
** Nabiki has had one canonical moment of this. When Soun reveals {{spoiler|that he's stolen Ranma's cure and is going to blackmail him into marrying Akane for it}}, Nabiki comments that at least she only steals money. [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Some fans]] also think her motive in the "Nabiki, Ranma's New Fiancée" story arc was teaching Akane to appreciate what she had in Ranma.
** Ryu Kumon, one of the more villainous of Ranma's opponents, has a pretty good example in his arc. In his search of an important document that Ranma's mother has, he pretends to be her son (whom she has never seen) in order to search for it. At one point, he gets tired of searching and walks up behind her, considering the fact that he could simply force her to give it to him and reaches out for her... and ends up giving her a massage when she sends him a smile, commenting that he's "Not THAT cruel
* [[Even the Guys Want Him]]: During the Koi Rod arc, Ranma (in both his male and female forms) falls in love with
* [[Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting]]: Anything-Goes insert-what-have-you-here.
* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]]: The [[Giant Mook|Dojo Destroyer]], Principal Kuno
* [[Evil Feels Good]]: Nabiki, Shampoo, Pink, to a lesser degree Happōsai, as he is even more upbeat, but not quite as malevolent. A running theme of the show is that several of the most [[Jerkass]]-y characters tend to be extremely serene and happy about it, whereas people with a strong conscience tend to get depressed far more easily, much like the real world tends to work, rather than sticking to the corrupt story convention that pain equals evil and happiness equals goodness. It is most overtly displayed with Pink and Link, the former physically identical twin is a happy casual sadist, and the latter an altruist who gets victimized for her sister's misdeeds.
* [[Evil Old Folks]]: Happōsai, [[Alternate Character Interpretation|possibly Cologne]].
* [[Evil Twin]]: {{spoiler|Kiima, after she used the Akaneniichuan}}, Pink.
* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]: Spring of Drowned Yeti holding an Eel and Crane while Riding an Ox.
* [[Expy]]:
**
** Genma. He seems based on Ryunosuke's father of ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]''.
**
*** It apparently wasn't lost on Takahashi herself that the Kunos were [[Expy]]s of the Mendous, as Takahashi had lobbied for Mendou's voice actor, [[Akira Kamiya]], to voice Kuno, but Kitty went with [[Hirotaka Suzuoki]] instead.
* [[Extreme Doormat]]: Konatsu.
* [[Extreme Omnivore]]: Kurumi in the [[OAV]]s can eat six-course meals prepared by [[Lethal Chef|Akane]] and ask for ''seconds''. Ranma supposedly gained this ability from a "noodle of strength" (which would come in handy with [[Lethal Chef|Akane]]), but it was never mentioned again.
== Tropes F-J ==
* [[Face Fault]]
* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: Ranma never escapes the curse (and the ways in which it comes crashing down sometimes meanders into [[Yank the Dog's Chain]]), and his [[Unwanted Harem]] never loses any members.
* [[Fan Disservice]]: Genma is sometimes nude when he changes back from panda form... Fortunately, usually averted
* [[Fan Service]]:
** And how. Ranma spends at least half the time female, and much of that time topless...
** And on the flipside, Ryōga and Mousse are often stark naked when they transform back into men.
** Ranma in male form - when not wearing his trademark Chinese shirt - is often shirtless, or wearing a very tight tank top (which also provides ample cleavage when he invariably transforms).
* [[Father, I Don't Want to Fight]]: Ranma in the anime only episode "Am I... Pretty? Ranma's Declaration of Womanhood" after a bonk on the head. Akane uses Ranma's skull as the [[Reset Button]] at the episode's end though.
* [[Faux Paw]]: Ranma does this when his [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|ailurophobia]] drives him into thinking he's a cat. Justified in that he's not actually supposed to be a cat or part-cat: he's just acting how he perceives a cat would.
* [[Feminine Women Can Cook]]: Kasumi's defining trait and a source of major angst for Akane; this is also Ukyo's primary advantage over Akane in the fiancée sweepstakes, and one she lampshades constantly. Shampoo as well.
* [[Femininity Failure]]: Generally the case with Akane.
* [[Festival Episode]]
* [[Fight Unscene]]: Used more and more often the longer the [[Anime]] runs.
* [[Filler]]: Both the manga and anime alike are full of minor stories designed to take up one episode or chapter and not really be of any importance. The anime gets more attention paid to its filler, however, because it created its own minor stories as well as adapting others from the original manga, making it appear far less connected to the manga, which consequently had fewer gaps between its story arcs.
* [[First Kiss]]: Ranma and Shampoo, much to [[Green-Eyed Monster|Akane]] [[Clingy Jealous Girl|
* [[Flung Clothing]]: Kodachi, more than once, changing to her leotard.
* [[Foe-Tossing Charge]]: When Akane (and with Ranma's aid at times) is forced to fight through the male student body of Furinkan High. They used to pose some measure of challenge at first, and she had to stop to fight them seriously. Nowadays, either she kicks them into the sky all at once, or just plows through them and leaves them flattened in her wake.
* [[Freaky Is Cool]]: "So, when is Ranma gonna turn back into a guy?" "Hey, fine by me if he stays a girl."
* [[Friendly Enemy]]: Ranma and
* [[Fruit of the Loon]]: The loon is Principal Kuno, the fruit is pineapples. Any questions?
* [[Furo Scene]]: Many, given the role hot water plays in the series.
* [[The Gadfly]]: Nabiki towards Akane and Ranma, Ranma often acts that way towards
* [[Gainaxing]]: And in the [[OAV]], they have independent mobility.
* [[Gender Bender]]: Making Ranma both [[Ms. Fanservice]] ''and'' [[Mr. Fanservice]] at the same time.
* [[Gender Vocabulary Slip]]: Ranma routinely uses the masculine pronoun of "ore" to refer to himself, even in his female form.
* [[Genre Shift]]: For the first few volumes, the manga is a (comparatively) grounded romantic comedy series with arc-based plots and tangible [[Character Development]]. After a while, it transforms into a manic, sitcom-esque gag-fest with an episodic [[Monster of the Week|monster/new character/new magical trinket of the week]] format and an [[Status Quo Is God|unshakable status quo]], punctuated by occasional longer arcs. [[Your Mileage May Vary]] on which style works better.
* [[Ghibli Hills]]: Anywhere in Japan that isn't [[City of Adventure|Nerima]] tends to be presented as such. At least until Ranma and co have finished trashing it over a [[Martial Arts and Crafts|Martial Arts tiddlywinks]] challenge or some such.
* [[Ghostly Goals]]: The anime has a cute ghost girl named Kogane who wants somebody to find her lost tanuki doll. The manga has an ugly old ghost matron who places a death curse on
* [[Girls with Moustaches]]: When Akane eats the super soba. It's full of male hormones, making facial hair growth a side effect. At least the whiskers drop off once the magic wears off.
* [[The Glasses Gotta Go]]: Inverted
* [[The Glomp]]:
** ''Ranma ½'' is the [[Trope Namer]]: the first known appearance of the word "glomp" is a sound effect in the Viz media English translation of Ranma 1/2 Volume One, Part 12, published in 1993. The term was adopted wholesale by the highly prolific Ranma fanfic community and the rest is history.
** It's Shampoo's signature move towards Ranma, although Ryōga has also been glomped by Akane once (while she was brainwashed... by Shampoo, natch).
** Akane has also glomped Ranma once, when he returned to the Tendō home after his fight with Herb.
** Ryōga was also glomped by Male form Ranma during the Koi Rod arc (and the shippers rejoiced).
** During the Do-chan (Battlesuit of Armor) arc, Ranma glomped Akane the ''best he freaking could without fainting on the spot''... They ''are'' a [[Tsunderes in Love|Takahashi Pairing]] after all.
** The most extreme glomping-series was the chapter wherein Shampoo used a magical "shiryaki mushroom spice" that gave anyone a hypnotic command to perform over and over. An awful amount of glomping was going on there. Ranma later used a suggestion incense to get
** Another chapter gave us the most dangerous glomps, when Ryōga is hypnotized into acting on his feelings for Akane. At first, Akane is worried she will hurt Ryōga's feelings if she lets him, but after seeing him glomp a telephone pole in half, the only thing she's worried about hurting is her own spine.
* [[Goldfish Scooping Game]]
* [[Gosh Hornet]]: Ranma's father tosses a beehive at his son as [[Training from Hell]]... with fairly mixed results.
Line 265 ⟶ 262:
* [[Hair Colors]]: Mostly a consequence of the animated adaptation, which gave the characters distinctive colors that remained fixed throughout the production. The first chapter of the manga was in color and portrayed Ranma with black hair in both forms. The fact the rest of the manga was in black and white, coupled with the greater availability of the anime, means that Girl-Ranma's hair is red in the public perception, to the extent that referring to her with black hair usually confuses most fans. Takahashi herself fueled this by publishing promotional pictures of "Ranma-chan" with various hair colors.
* [[Half-Human Hybrid]]: While not half-humans themselves, the people of the Musk Dynasty have inherited the blood of powerful animals and mythological creatures by throwing them in "The Spring of Drowned Girl" and mating with them. The Phoenix Kingdom, on the other hand, became [[Winged Humanoid]]s through centuries of consuming Jusenkyo-cursed water (bird curses, natch) for pretty much every aspect of their lives ([[Mundane Utility|drinking, bathing, washing...]]) [[Lego Genetics|throughout generations]].
* [[Hammerspace]]: Used by nearly everyone in the cast in the name of comedy. [[Hyperspace Mallet|Hammers]] are but a fraction of the items pulled out. Usually it's a shinai, bokken, spatula, chui, kettles, tables, miscellaneous so-called-weapons, heavy blunt objects in general... Of course, it's Mousse's [[Hyperspace Arsenal|whole schtick]].
* [[Hand Behind Head]]
* [[Harmful to Minors]]: The whole point of the Neko-Ken, a technique officially banned by all right-thinking martial artists due to the fact it revolves around traumatizing a young child physically and mentally to induce a [[Berserk Mode]]. Not just [[Training from Hell]], but also [[Sanity Has Advantages|fundamentally flawed]] as well. Unfortunately, [[Fair Weather Mentor|Genma]] [[Sink or Swim Mentor|Saotome]] is not a right-thinking martial artist.
* [[Having a Blast]]: [[Fanon]] is that the Happo Fire Burst is this (as well as a [[Ki Attack]]), due to the canonical [[Zig-Zagging Trope]]. [[Canon]] first presents it as a [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]], before revealing it to be a [[Joke Item]]
* [[Heavy Sleeper]]: Ranma, who can dodge attacks without waking up. Shampoo also knows of a technique that allows her to fight automatically while asleep. Akane once inhaled a magic incense that did the same thing.
* [[Henohenomoheji]]: Ranma often wears one as mask.
* [[Here We Go Again]]: The end of the "Invincible" Phoenix Sword saga.
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Ranma, upon Akane's [[Disney Death]] at Jusendo. Not even a [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]] punch from
* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: Though they haven't seen each other for a long time by the time the series starts, in the anime, Genma and Soun are usually shown hanging out together, playing shogi, go or enjoying the countryside. In the manga, they don't spend much time together on screen. However, in both canons, Soun considers Genma to be morally reprehensible and gets mad at him for his various [[Jerkass]] deeds, although it never has any serious consequences. Soun seems to be the only character who can [[Intelligible Unintelligible|understand Panda!Genma's speech]], without Genma having to resort to holding up signs.
* [[Hey, You]]: Ranma as "Boy".
* [[High School Hustler]]: Nabiki, in fanon—in canon, she's more of [[The Barnum]].
* [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood]]: Ranma especially, but many secondary characters also have some form of trauma that's typically played for laughs (
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]:
** Herb was ultimately defeated by gathering all the [[Ki Attacks|energy he had released]] into one big, mountain-crushing bomb.
** Kuno's Watermelon Sword attack is defeated when Ranma places a watermelon on his head, causing him to knock himself out.
* [[Honest John's Dealership]]: Nabiki, at every given opportunity.
* [[Honor Before Reason]]:
* [[Hot Amazon]]: Shampoo.
* [[Hulk Speak]]: Shampoo, but only in the English and German dubs.
* [[Human Doorstop]]: In the first movie, Lychee's elephant
* [[Human Mail]]:
* [[Hyperspace Mallet]]:
** In fanon this is Akane's signature weapon. However, while she occasionally does use some form of mallet in both the anime and manga, she usually uses any available blunt object, most frequently shinai, and various other characters have used them in either medium.
** Noteworthy for Soun, who, when using his battle aura to turn Kaiju size, appears in full samurai armor.
* [[Hypno Fool]]: Ranma and Akane are frequently the victims of mind-influencing magic, spells and poisons. Ranma is more frequently the victim in the anime (a hypnotic technique from Sasuke to make him go on a date with Kuno, being controlled by his evil side come to life courtesy of
* [[Identity Amnesia]]:
** After bonking himself hard on the head during the Watermelon Island story, Kuno went from grabby-but-harmless buffoon to a crazed stalker whose skill actually allowed him to terrorize Ranma.
** In one anime episode, Ranma, when he got whacked upside the head hard enough, thought he really was a girl. However, that was a case of [[Loss of Identity]] rather then [[Identity Amnesia]]: she remembered being "Ranma" perfectly, her personality was just twisted into an entirely new format.
* [[Idiot Crows]]
* [[The Idiot From Osaka]]: Ukyo
* [[I Do Not Drink... Wine]]: The Seven Lucky Gods from [[The Movie|Nekonron, China]].
* [[Imagine Spotting]]: Combines with [[Medium Awareness]] as characters are often able to look up into previous panels and make remarks such as:
{{quote|"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?"
"Good idea, we should have a Western ceremony!" or
"Leave me OUT of your sick fantasies!"
* [[Important Haircut]]: Akane, though not by choice (one of Ryōga's rogue bandannas cuts off her hair), she still uses it as a right of passage to move on from her childhood crush.
* [[Improbable Weapon User]]: Lots of minor characters, but the main crew isn't too far behind.
* [[Improvised Weapon]]:
** Akane is very good at using anything at hand to bash Ranma.
** Ranma, particularly in the manga, is very good at improvising weapons and has done so with a large variety of objects like pinwheels, rocks, sticks, clothesline poles, his hair, tennis rackets, paper fans, Ryōga, etc.
** Mousse has a special "White Swan" attack, which involves him hitting his opponent with ''a swan-shaped training potty''.
* [[Indecisive Parody]]: While some people consider it an action comedy series where the humor extends into the depiction of martial arts tropes, other people see it as this. Especially since it pokes fun at otherwise serious scenarios (a duel against a nigh-invulnerable opponent whose fingerpoke can explode a person to bits<ref>Or so they believe.</ref>, a teamup against a two story-tall minotaur monster, a no-holds-barred battle with a murderous ki master, a duel against a deathly-serious opponent with layers upon layers of meaning about family honor), with hilarious [[Lampshade Hanging]]s of techniques and deconstructions of the foes' motives (an "Ultimate Secret Technique" that consists of running away to think up something better, the monster is actually a [[Jerkass]] martial artist named "[[Embarrassing First Name|Pantyhose Tarō]]" by Happōsai, Ranma stealing the deathly-serious opponent's clothes and leaving him in boxers, etc). And that's the "serious" fights against "serious" enemies: the comedy-oriented [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] contests fully embrace the trope, showing eating contests or martial arts cooking battles with the same [[Serious Business|exaggerated drama]] of ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' or ''[[Saint Seiya]]''.
*
* [[Innocent Fanservice Girl]]: Ranma does not seem to comprehend that being topless as a girl is not always appropriate. He honestly isn't much better at staying clothed as a guy
* [[Instant Cosplay Surprise]]
* [[Insulted Awake]]
* [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy]]:
** Akane tries to pass off Kuno's obsession with her onto Ranma this way, though it doesn't actually work. Because he wants both of them. Aside from that, the only person in the entire series who comes close to playing this straight is Konatsu towards Ukyo.
** Aside from that, the only person in the entire series who comes close to playing this straight is Konatsu towards Ukyo.
** During the arc where the Tendō engagement gets switched from her to Nabiki, on hearing Nabiki tell Ranma "I love you" to manipulate him and think it is real, she decides to try giving up on Ranma because she couldn't express her feelings and Nabiki could.
** It's also shown by Ranma toward Ryōga in the Fishing Rod of Love arc.
** There's also an anime only episode where Mousse decides to return to China, and even actually tries to get Ranma and Shampoo closer to each other.
** Ryōga does this in the final chapter. Like the other suitors, he comes to fight for Akane, but when he sees them in their wedding outfits and looking happy (it goes to pot a moment later) he decides that Akane is happier with Ranma and leaves at peace with himself, able to devote himself to Akari.
* [[I Was Just Passing Through]]: Is actually subverted with Ryōga, who comes to Ranma's aid during the moxibustion storyline. With Ryōga as Ranma's not-very-friendly (up until then) [[The Rival|rival]], whose [[No Sense of Direction|horrible directional sense]] would enable him to ''legitimately'' make the claim to having been "just passing through", you'd expect the playing of this card to be a no-brainer. But when Ranma out-and-out asks him if he's [[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You|saving him for himself]], Ryōga angrily denies it, says he hates bullies, and then breaks down crying with sadness to see a "great warrior" such as Ranma reduced to such a state. Later, he helps Ranma regain his strength.
* [[Japanese Architecture]]: The Tendō home and dojo, to the point where many of its traditional features are essential to the plot. Much if not most of the progress in Ranma and Akane's relationship takes place on the engawa overlooking the koi pond.
* [[Jerkass]]: Most of the cast.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Ranma
* [[Jumping the Shark]]: Fans who disapprove of the series' [[Genre Shift]] agree that this happened, but opinions seem to differ drastically on exactly when, with the most popular allegations being against the introduction of
== Tropes K-O ==
* [[Kamehame Hadoken]]: The Shi Shi Hokodan and Moko Takabisha [[Ki Attacks]]. This is more notable in the anime, where they're shown as sustained energy beams in the second [[Non-Serial Movie]] (normally, they're [[Street Fighter|Hadoken-style]] fireballs). Herb's [[Ki Attacks]] are also like this once he gets out of [[Mode Lock]]. The anime has Natsume and Kurumi's "Ryūka Ringu", or "Ring of Dragon Fire", which is one part this to one part [[Everything's Better with Spinning]]. Though based on magic instead of ki, Saffron has a variety of fiery projectiles, all the way up to a super-blast of flame the name of which roughly translates as "Empire Instant Annihilation Blast".
* [[Kansai Regional Accent]]: Ukyo.
* [[Karma Houdini]]:
** Nabiki Tendō has ''never'' received any sort of comeuppance for her callous actions in the entire series. [[Rumiko Takahashi]] likes this character and considers her [[Comedic Sociopathy|sociopathic actions within the family dynamic to be the reason she's funny]].
** Asuza never pays for her kleptomaniac tendencies, in which she steals things in plain view, sometimes right IN FRONT OF the owners. She also has no problems beating up the owners to get said cute thing of the hour. In a sense, she's basically MUGGING people and always getting away with it. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised that some of the things she's got stashed in her house she stole from little kids...
* [[Keeping Secrets Sucks]]
* [[Kendo Team Captain]]: Tatewaki Kuno.
* [[Ki Attacks]]
* [[Kick the Son of a Bitch]]: Those who don't think of Mousse as a [[Jerkass Woobie]] (and even some who do) typically regard Shampoo's mistreatment of him at this. It shows she can be cold, cruel and callous, yes, but, as they point out, Mousse is a blatant [[Stalker with a Crush]] who has been harrassing her for thirteen years before the series starts, at least, and chased her to Japan openly declaring his intention was to [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]. Shampoo makes it extremely clear in both continuities that she does not love Mousse and has never loved him (making Mousse's attempt to beat Ranma to make him "give her up" clearly more using him as a scapegoat than anything), rather than this being a case of [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]]. Not only does she continually refuse his efforts to kiss her during one story in which she is looking at being [[Baleful Polymorph|turned into a cat forever]] if she can't be kissed, insisting that the only way the kiss will work is if she loves the person she kisses, the manga has a [[Filler]] story where she hears that it sounds like Mousse is going to die... and couldn't care less. While Ranma (who Mousse has tried to kill or at least humiliate dozens of times
* [[Kid Samurai]]: Tatewaki Kuno.
* [[Kill It with Fire]]: Saffron's attacks.
* [[Kill It with Water]]:
** Quite a number of martial artists are transformed into (relatively) harmless animals when hit with water. Once, an entire mountain was rigged so as to eliminate all enemies this way.
** In the first movie, Ranma realizes how to get past the [[Big Bad]]s perfect defense. He kicks up water in the flooding room, and punches it blazingly fast at his opponent. As he blocks punches by grabbing them with his chopsticks, this technique obviously does not work on the water punches.
* [[Knife-Throwing Act]]: Mousse disguised himself as a circus knife-thrower when he came back (for good) to hunt down Ranma. And he did pin the latter down to the target board, but Ranma escaped the deliberate stabbing.
* [[Knuckle-Cracking]]: Ranma likes to crack his knuckles, especially by just flexing his fingers, all the time when getting ready to start fighting seriously.
* [[Kryptonite-Proof Suit]]: Water proof soap.
* [[Kryptonite Is Everywhere]]: Present early in the series, with many convenient bodies/sources of cold water, and Ranma frequently being forced into otherwise benign bodies of water due to his tendency to jump before he looked (
* [[Lamarck Was Right]]: The Musk Dynasty. To some extent, the Phoenix Kingdom. [[Superpowerful Genetics]] play a large role in these cultures' development.
* [[Large Ham]]: "I MUST PREPARE THE INK QUICKLY LEST I FORGET!"
* [[Larynx Dissonance]]:
** In the European Spanish dub, the same actress dubs female ''and'' male Ranma. Spot-on performance for the former, while the latter sounds [[Cross-Dressing Voices|ten years old]].
** Sarah Strange played male Ranma in the first few seasons before Richard Cox took over the role.
* [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]]: Or Bokken Guided Amnesia as it were...
* [[Last Confession Wins]]
* [[Left Hanging]]: The [[Anime]] series ends nowhere near the manga's climax, whose own open ending [[Your Mileage May Vary|may be just as bad depending on your perspective]]
* [[Lethal Chef]]: Akane. Her cooking is so bad that anything living would get food poisoning (averted by Kurumi). Happōsai, who's probably the most inhuman character in the series, couldn't even stomach eating her cookies and complained that he should've been warned they weren't meant for human consumption. This gets ridiculously [[Flanderized]] in [[Fanfic]], even after she begins to improve in the last third of the manga and makes an acceptable curry once (the funny part about this is that the men of the house only find this out after she leaves to deal with a "monster" in the woods at the request of some villagers, and they think she ran away from home out of rejection).
* [[Lighter and Softer]]:
** The anime, compared to the manga. ''[[Ranma ½]]'' may be a comedy, but it's an ''action''/drama/comedy, and the original manga is pretty dark sometimes (more so if considered from a first-person point of view). As [http://ranmarelated.blogspot.com/2008/01/darkness-of-ranma-matter-of-perspective.html this blog] points out, there are all sorts of things
** Example of the [[Lighter and Softer]]: in a [[Filler]] story, a mysterious weirdo has cursed paintings that he says will kill people if their seals are removed, citing how his grandfather and father, who painted two of them, died upon completion. In the anime, it's changed so that he specifies his ancestors were in their late 90s when they finished, implying he's just full of hot air and trying to drum up interest by overblowing things. Oddly though, it's the anime that has the spider-demon and oni's seals be removed, causing them to emerge as [[Kaiju]], whereas in the manga, only the scribble-panda comes out. Of course, Soun, Genma and Happōsai promptly grow into giants themselves and hold them off all night without causing any damage.
* [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]: One sells Kuno the phoenix egg.
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]
* [[Loophole Abuse]]: In the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics, also Ranma winning the combination of downhill race and running battle, and more. See [[Loophole Abuse]] for details.
* [[Lord Error-Prone]]: Tatewaki Kuno.
* [[Lost in Translation]]: See [[Punny Name]] below. All they had to do was adjust the pronounciation of the dub (or the spelling of the subtitles) a bit...
* [[Loudspeaker Truck]]
* [[Lovable Sex Maniac]]:
* [[Love At First Punch]]:
* [[Love Dodecahedron]]: [[Trope Namer|The term was coined just to describe Ranma's relationships]].
* [[Love Makes You Crazy]]: Pick a suitor.
* [[Love Makes You Dumb]]: Dr.
* [[Love Potion]]: Not actual potions as such, but otherwise a common feature. Between the anime and manga, we've seen, among other things, a literal [[Together Umbrella]] and [[Red String of Fate]], mushrooms that become a love potion when stewed, bracelet "jewels" that are taken as love potion pills, "compatibility testing" sakura-mochi, a box of aphrodisiac-soaked band-aids, and a "heart fishing pole". Thanks to his [[Unwanted Harem]], and the general lack of scruples on the parts of... well... ''everyone''... Ranma Saotome tends to be the one who gets whammied with these the most.
* [[Lover Tug of War]]
* [[Mad Love]]:
** The Kuno siblings are madly and unrequitedly in love with alternate halves of Ranma. Tatewaki is deluded from reality, and wants to court several disinterested women at once; whereas Kodachi is extremely flamboyant, psychotic, and tries to use paralysis potions in her aim to gain Ranma as an enamoured servant.
** Shampoo's personally stated motto centers around her willingness to kill any "obstacle" in her path if it is convenient. She is also a sadistic bully and manipulator, will gladly brainwash others if possible, and even force Ranma into loving her.
** Mousse, meanwhile, has been stalking the utterly disinterested (to the point of wanting him to die) and recurrently violent Shampoo since they were three, and is so fixated on her that his initial purpose in the series is basically defined as [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]. However, Mousse turns more conflicted, is far more loyal (as seen in the Herb arc), and usually less calculated than she is, and settles down to simply wanting Ranma to get married to Akane, to leave Shampoo for himself.
* [[Making a Splash]]: Cologne's Shark Fist and various other water-manipulation techniques. Also Ranma himself in the climax of the first movie.
* [[Martial Arts and Crafts]]: The [[Trope Codifier]], if not [[Trope Maker]]. Some of them include:
** Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics.
** Martial Arts Pairs Figure Skating.
** Martial Arts Takeout Food Delivery.
** Martial Arts Tea Ceremony.
** Martial Arts Cheerleading.
** Martial Arts Calligraphy.
** Martial Arts Shogi.
** Martial Arts Dining.
* [[Master Apprentice Chain]]:
* [[Master of Disguise]]:
** Tsubasa Kurenai, who is just as likely to [[Viewer Gender Confusion|crossdress as a pretty girl]] as be disguised as a very convincing ''tree''. Kiima claims that her people have regularly used Jusenkyo to transform into humans {{spoiler|other than Akane}} when they want to spy on or mingle with them.
** Ranma himself tends to dress up, usually in girl form, for his schemes. Akane is the only one [[Paper-Thin Disguise|to see through his disguises]].
* [[
* [[Maybe Ever After]]: How the series ends.
* [[Mega Manning]]: Ranma can learn new martial arts techniques simply by watching others train at them, or even by having the techniques used against him.
* [[Mega Neko]]: The cat-ghost in
* [[Megaton Punch]]:
** Akane to Ranma, but most of the martial artists do this at one time or another.
** Notably used by Shinnosuke's supposedly infirm grandfather, who even screams, "[[Calling Your Attacks|Megaton Punch!]]" as he does it.
** The Hiryū Shōten Ha is at its core a rare serious version of this trope. The force of the uppercut, combined with the gale force wind it summons, invariably launches Ranma's opponents far, far away.
* [[Megumi Hayashibara]]: Girl-type Ranma, theme songs, member of DoCo supergroup.
* [[Messy Pig]]: If we're allowed to define "messy" as "complicated", Ryōga definitely qualifies.
* [[Mind Control Device]]: Quite a few, which are usually used on (and even ''by'') Ranma Saotome.
* [[Mind Control Eyes]]: Happens to Ranma quite a bit and usually his male half.
* [[The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body]]: Animal-curse characters can fly or run on all fours instants after being cursed. Pantyhose
* [[Miniature Senior Citizens]]: Cologne;
* [[Misplaced Wildlife]]: Lampshaded and justified with the forest of Ryūgenzawa.
* [[Mistaken for Cheating]]: Multiple times, and almost always over-the-top.
* [[Mistaken for Gay]]:
* [[Mix-and-Match Critters]]: Pantyhose Taro's monster form
* [[Mode Lock]]: Depending on the mode, either the method of curing the curses or a reason to look for an antidote.
* [[Moment Killer]]: '''All the time''' to Ranma and Shampoo and to Ranma and Akane.
* [[Money Fetish]]: Nabiki
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: The [[Walking the Earth|Ryu]] [[Arrogant Kung Fu Guy|Kumon]] [[Angst|storyline]]. While still crammed with the usual Takahashi humor, his backstory is surprisingly somber (at least initially), and his relationship with Nodoka Saotome has [[Fridge Brilliance|layers upon layers of meaning]].
* [[Morality Pet]]: Inverted. ''Being'' the pet, and his subsequent falling in love with Akane, is part of what sets
* [[Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate]]: Mousse: he's an antagonist often enough to qualify.
* [[The Mourning After]]: Soun Tendō never quite got over his wife's death, as [[Tear Jerker|painfully illustrated]] in the end of the [[Manga]] Hinako arc.
* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Two of the guys lose their clothing after a transformation; and Ranma's tends to get torn up during the same. Even Kuno and the reveal of the two Male-to-Female [[Wholesome Crossdresser|crossdressers]].
* [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]:
** Every crazed suitor in the entire series. Shampoo is willing to pull this on Akane and Ukyo if she thinks she can get away with it, as is Kodachi, while Mousse tries to dispatch Ranma in the same way. It's not clear whether early-series Ryōga would kill Ranma, but he definitely wants to severely beat him him/her. Earlier, he was also throwing ki infused weapons/scarfs against Ranma that cuts through things a sword through Swiss cheeses.
** Ranma, under the Koi Rod of Love's spell, viciously attacks Akane, believing her to be the Hypotenuse.
* [[Mutilation Conga]]: Happens to every main male character at some point in the series.
* [[My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours]]: Obvious here.
* [[My Significance Sense Is Tingling]]: Several times: most notably Akane and Ranma sensing Ryōga being killed by Lime in the manga, but there are other examples.
* [[Neck Lift]]
* [[Nerd Glasses]]: Mousse.
* [[Never My Fault]]: '''Everyone'''.
* [[Never Trust a Hair Tonic]]: Genma is quite embarrassed about his baldness and has tried all kinds of cures. There's the one that only works when he's angry, the one that comes from a one-of-a-kind dragon's whisker, and so forth.
* [[Nightmare Face]]: Ranma's face during his Cat Fist that appears at 16:18 in episode 23 "You Really Do Hate Cats!". It just looks creepy.
* [[Ninja]]: Subversion: Sasuke. Played straight: Konatsu the Genius Kunoichi, who lives up to the "Genius" part, but [[Wholesome Crossdresser|not so much the "kunoichi" part]].
* [[Noblewoman's Laugh]]: Kodachi Kuno, and it's really exaggerated, played up to the point of absurdity.
** This may have to do with the fact pretty much everything about Kodachi is absurd.
** Once done in an area where a [[Can't You Read the Sign?|sign]] read, "Please do not laugh loudly in the garden".
* [[Nobody Calls Me Chicken]]: Ranma, moreso in the anime than the manga.
* [[Non-Fatal Explosions]]: Happōsai regularly throws around homemade gunpowder hand grenades. It's usually [[Butt Monkey|Ranma]] himself that gets left charred, smoking and pissed off, but otherwise unharmed. In one episode of the anime, he also uses [[Abnormal Ammo]], altering this move from the "Happo Daikarin" to the "Happo Daikabin", or "Happo Mold Burst". That's right, as in the nasty fuzzy stuff that grows on spoiled food.
* [[No Romantic Resolution]]: Takahashi spent so much time getting to the ending that she did not know how to make a serious resolution anymore.
* [[The Nose Bleed]]:
* [[No Sense of Direction]]:
* [[No Social Skills]]: Being raised alone, constantly on the road, with martial arts as the most important goal, and ''by Genma'' no less, did a number on Ranma's people skills. While he has no problem socializing per se, and generally gets along just fine, he's extremely blunt, has all the tact of a chainsaw, and casually insults people who are standing right there (often, to their face
* [[Oblivious to Love]]:
**
** Ranma to Akane. He seems ignorant of her feelings for him and ends up [[Love Hurts|hurting]] her because of it.
* [[Ocular Gushers]]:
** Sōun Tendō. In fact, one reading of his name in Japanese means "Crying Man".
** And in the manga, when Happōsai needs Ranma's tears for a [[Fountain of Youth]] potion, poking a pressure point on Ranma's back causes him to literally blast a torrent of tears out his eyes, so that Happōsai has to catch them in a bucket.
* [[Off-Model]]: You can tell which Season 4, 5 and 6 episodes were outsourced to low-budget studios.
* [[Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date]]: Ukyo and male!Ranma go on a date involving row boats. Ryōga and Akane are also on a date, and fighting ensues.
* [[Old Master]]: Cologne and Happōsai, each of whom is 100+ years old (300+ years old in the anime) and can kick the asses of the rest of the cast combined.
* [[One-Hour Work Week]]: Soun Tendō's seat on the neighborhood council seems to give him an inordinate amount of free time (enough for a few training trips and playing Shogi all day with Genma), yet yields enough cash to pay the taxes and bills on his [[Big Fancy House]] and attached dojo, plus cost of Martial Artist induced repairs, support his daughters, and still fit in expensive family holidays to seaside inns or mountain villas. He does complain about the bills, but it's only been twice in the entire anime and manga that they've ever been a problem. Also, the Tendō Dojo doesn't appear to have any actual students. He does rent out the dojo for social gatherings, seen in one saga, and gets paid to take monster... or hoodlum-hunting missions though.
* [[One-Sided Arm Wrestling]]: Ranma versus Akane, and Akane versus Ranma after she ate some magic noodles.
* [[One-Winged Angel]]: Subverted by Saffron's transformation, which only turns him into a more adult version of himself. Possibly played straight with Pantyhose Taro's Monster Form.
* [[One of the Boys]]: Ukyo gets this treatment a lot.
* [[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You]]: All of Ranma's recurring rivals to some extent, leading to plenty of [[Rivals Team Up]] situations.
* [[Oracular Urchin]]: Miyo, a classmate of Akane's who appears in an anime [[Filler]] episode.
* [[Orochi]]: A giant monster from Japanese mythology. Its ''Ranma'' incarnation is unique in that, rather than an eight-headed serpent, its eighth head is actually its body, with seven independent heads trailing behind it from their necks.
* [[Overshadowed by Awesome]]: In the beginning, Akane and the Kuno siblings were hot stuff, already capable of superhuman feats. Then Ranma Saotome rolled into town, and Akane became a definite second-stringer, due to being completely unable to touch Ranma unless he let her. Kuno and his sister were still a credible threat... but then [[The Rival|Ryōga Hibiki]] arrived... and then [[Hot Amazon|Shampoo]] showed up... and soon the original "best martial artists in Nerima" were at the bottom of the totem pole.
* [[Overtook the Manga]]: This resulted in the anime needing a number of unique episodes, many created homebrew, a few actually extensions of manga [[Filler]] stories (such as the "Japanese Nanniichuan" story, which took up one or two chapters in the manga and three episodes in the anime).
* [[Overwhelming Obsession]]: There are a few characters which exhibit this trait to one degree or another. Ukyo Kuonji is a mild case, having built her life around being an [[wikipedia:Okonomiyaki|okonomiyaki]] cook and even creating a martial art using the implements of her craft. (As noted below in ''Fan Works'', fanfic writers frequently turn this [[Up to Eleven]] when writing her.) And then there's Azusa Shiratori, a one-shot character from early in the story who is obsessed with [[Kawaisa|all things cute]]; given half a chance, she will steal anything that catches her eye, give it a French name, and then insist from that point on that it is her property. About the ''only'' thing she cares about other than cute stuff is her ice skating.
== Tropes P-T ==
* [[Pair the Spares]]: Played with and postulated, but not actually done.
* [[Pandaing to the Audience]]: Genma's cursed form. In the earlier arcs of the manga, he even had a tendency to appear out of nowhere and randomly save Ranma's from having people discover his curse. This is part of the [[Aborted Arc]] to keep Ranma's curse a secret.
* [[Panty Thief]]: Happōsai.
* [[Paper Fan of Doom]]
* [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]: All the time. Akane and Ranma seem to be the only ones able to see through it (poor, poor
* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Half-way done to Ranma by Genma, who takes him away from his mother before he can even walk. Genetically-induced in the case of
* [[Parody]]: The Mirror Copy arc is a huge parody of Kazuo Umezu's much more serious ''Scary Book 1: Reflections''. It starts with narration speaking of a place called "the Mirror Mansion" for the enormous mirror governing the main
* [[Pastel-Chalked Freeze-Frame]]
* [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]]: Only very occasionally as most of it is [[Kick the Son of a Bitch]]. Ranma himself tries to do this, usually directing his hate towards people who should be hated. But the keyword is ''tries''.
* [[The Peeping Tom]]: Nodoka, Ranma's mother, has a definition of "manliness" that includes a man must be a peeping tom.
* [[Perfectly Arranged Marriage]]: Ranma
* [[Person of Mass Destruction]]: Phoenix King Saffron; Dragon Prince Herb; Battle Aura
* [[Playboy Bunny]]: Several times.
* [[Playing with Fire]]: Saffron, "a flamethrower without a safety valve".
* [[Please Kill Me If It Satisfies You]]: Type 2 with Ranma to
* [[Poster Gallery Bedroom]]: Tatewaki Kuno, with his giant posters of Akane and female Ranma, possibly to help him "[[Is That What They're Calling It Now?|meditate]]" and choose one of them. Kodachi follows his example with massive photos of male Ranma. Also, Mariko Konjo puts up a gigantic picture of Kuno in her bedroom, even kissing it goodnight, during her story arc.
* [[Power-Up Food]]: The legendary [[Applied Phlebotinum|Super Strength Soba]] noodles confer herculean strength to whoever eats them. After Akane mistakenly ate Happōsai's, she was able to lift, toss, juggle and ''split in half'' multi-ton, two-stories-tall iron bells. Unfortunately, they had the side-effect of sprouting whiskers on her face until she took the antidote.
* [[Powered Armor]]: Do-chan the sentient Battle Dogi and Gosunkugi's mail-order Power Suit.
* [[Power Perversion Potential]]: And how!
* [[Prepare to Die]]:
* [[Professional Gambler]]: The Gambling King, who is actually a terrible gambler. It just happens that Ranma is worse.
* [[Punny Name]]: In the original Japanese, the names of the Joketsuzoku characters were [[Bilingual Bonus]] [[Punny Name]]s—Shanpū, Koron and Mūsu had Chinese-sounding names that coincidentally sounded like the English words for hygiene products; similarly, the Musk Dynasty warriors Haabu, Raimu
* [[Puppy Dog Eyes]]: Happosai has been known to try this tactic. Seeing as how he's a [[Dirty Old Man]], and usually using it to try to get a girl to let him grope her, it never works.
* [[Qipao]]: A standard part of Shampoo's wardrobe.
* [[Quivering Eyes]]: Akane every time Ranma does something that goes beyond their normal bickering and really hurts her feelings.
* [[Radial Ass-Kicking]]: Early on, Akane had to do this to get to school.
* [[Rain Aura]]
* [[Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs]]: The Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken. Fans argue over whether this is an actual technique or not, but it '''does''' allow the trainee to pull this feat off.
* [[Real Men Hate Sugar]]: Hardcore Martial-Artist Saotome Ranma is a subversion of this trope: he personally ''loves'' elaborate ice cream sundaes and parfaits, but would not be caught ''dead'' saying so, much less going to restaurants and ordering them. Fortunately, he is able to turn into a cute girl. This allows him to openly and gleefully order chocolate sundaes with a cherry on top in public; heck, he even uses the cuteness of his appearance to scam ''free'' ice cream cones off the young and impressionable clerks!
* [[Real Men Wear Pink]]: Ranma Saotome is skilled enough at cooking that his [[Supreme Chef|mother]] is impressed, at least passably skilled at sewing, good at tea ceremony and gymnastics, and seems to take pride in his ability to [[The Tease|wind guys up by acting cute]] when [[Gender Bender|in girl form]]. In a nearly literal interpretation of the trope, Ranma can make a pastel orange shirt and little red bowtie look kinda badass.
* [[Real Women Never Wear Dresses]]: Kasumi. ''Of course''! She doesn't fight, she is not aggressive, does menial tasks and doesn't get involved other than being helpful to her family and friends. And she wears skirts or dresses ''all the time''. Which [[Fan Dumb]] fangirl wouldn't hate her for having the audacity of not being an [[Action Girl]]?
* [[The Rival]]: Ryōga, primarily, but truckloads of guest-rivals filled out an awful lot of story arcs. Ukyo and Shampoo have this relationship in the anime.
* [[Road Sign Reversal]]: Ranma and Genma travel back in time, switching the arrows pointing to Jusenkyo so their past selves will go the wrong way. Happōsai sabotages the attempt by reversing them again. It wouldn't have worked anyway because {{spoiler|the whole thing takes place inside Ranma's dream}}.
* [[Roofless Renovation]]: This happens all the time to the Tendō home, usually caused by one of Ranma's martial artist rivals. The worst incident is caused when Rouge, a Chinese woman cursed to transform into an Asura, blows away half the roof with a fireball attack.
* [[Running Gag]]:
** Shampoo will always, without fail, hit or run over someone with her bicycle when she appears.
** In the manga, there are periodically [[Can't You Read the Sign?|signs]] in the foreground or background that read something to the effect of, "Please do not [do whatever the character in the panel is doing]", usually with bizarre specificity.
** Whenever someone has an exaggerated monologue on an awkward situation, he/she has a high chance of using a microphone to declare it.
** Ryōga picks up souvenirs from wherever he gets randomly lost.
* [[Sacred First Kiss]]
* [[Say My Name]]: "Ranmaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
* [[The Scottish Trope]]:
* [[Screw Yourself]]: The manga features a plotline where Ranma runs into magical female doppleganger who, upon discovering that Ranma is actually male, latches onto him like only a crazy [[Yandere]] could. {{spoiler|In the end, she hooks up with a magical ''male'' Ranma doppleganger, and they become [[Sickeningly Sweethearts]]
**
* [[Second Love]]: Akane ending up falling in love with Ranma after getting over her first love Dr. Tofu.
* [[Selective Obliviousness]]: Just about everyone in the series at some point. Most notably: Kuno's apparent refusal to understand either that Ranma and "the pigtailed girl" are one and the same, or that neither "the pigtailed girl" nor Akane Tendō are at all attracted to him, seems to be one part this, one part massive ego. Also, Akane Tendō either remains unaware of Ryōga's attraction to her, no matter how obvious it turns, or immediately forgets it. She also tends to believe the worst of Ranma even when he doesn't deserve it, or in other cases, want to believe the best of characters when they don't deserve it, such as Nabiki, Shampoo, or in Ranma's case, the battle-dougi story.
* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: Soun and Genma, and to a lesser extent Ryōga and Ranma.
* [[Seppuku]]: Genma promised Ranma's mother that he and Ranma would commit [[Seppuku]] if he didn't raise Ranma to be "a man among men".
* [[Shapeshifter Swan Song]]: Copycat Ken's breakdown resembles this (anime only).
* [[Shapeshifting Squick]]: {{spoiler|Kiima transforming into Akane and then instigating naked cuddling with Ranma in the final storyline
* [[Shipper on Deck]]: Oh, where to start? While just about every member of the [[Love Dodecahedron]] ships their rivals at some point (in an attempt to [[Pair the Spares]]), Soun
* [[Ship Sinking]]: Most of the teased ships are ruthlessly sunk right in the harbor before they can truly sail, but it doesn't stop them.
* [[Ship Tease]]: Takahashi has teased a wide variety of the ships found in the yard, even going so far as to tease a [[Foe Yay|RivalShip]] (Ranma/
* [[The Ship Yard]]: Most, if not all, varieties of [[Shipping]] described here have shown up in both canon and [[Fanfic]]
* [[Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?]]: Despite being shown attending school and having a few scenes set in school, they don't seem to be doing that much academic work.
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** Viz Video's VHS and DVD releases often [[A Worldwide Punomenon|referenced movie titles, songs, or other pop culture elements]]. Such as ''[[Big Trouble in Little China|Big Trouble In Nekonron, China]]'', ''[[wikipedia:Farewell My Concubine (film)|Nihao, My Concubine]]'', ''[[wikipedia:Like Water For Chocolate|Like Water for Ranma]]'', ''[[wikipedia:Hannah and Her Sisters|Akane and Her Sisters]]'', ''[[An Affair to Remember|An Akane to Remember]]'', ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest|One Flew Over the Kuno's Nest]]'', and ''[[Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!|Faster, Kasumi! Kill! Kill!]]''. And those are just the movie and OAV releases—the TV series had gems such as "[[wikipedia:Karma Chameleon|Dharma Chameleon]]" and "[[wikipedia:Smells Like Teen Spirit|Smells Like Evil Spirit]]". Then [[Hurricane of Puns|it got even worse]]. The Japanese episode and movie titles within those releases had straight-up translations, though.
** The anime also has a number of [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'': a couple of characters from the series can be spotted in blink-and-you'll-miss-it scenes: the two most notable are when Shampoo demonstrates Instant Nanniichuan, the dog turns into a replica of Ataru, and when Kuno does a flying dive onto a status of Cherry in the Wishing Sword episode, but they also show up in a couple of crowd-scenes. One anime filler episode has Kodachi show up in a scene that may be a reference to the first introduction of Ryoko Mendo. The below mentioned OVA also has Lum herself clearly show up as one of Ranma's many fawning concubines during Akane's first nightmare.
** For [[Maison Ikkoku]] fans, there's Akane wearing Kyoko's iconic "Piyo-Piyo" yellow apron.
** An episode of the anime has Genma (panda version) dressed up as Oscar from ''[[The Rose of Versailles]]'' when he is kidnapped by Azusa that rename him Oscar. Plus, Azusa call some of his objects "Rosalie", "Fersen" and "Marie Antoinette".
** The manga has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to ''[[Dokonjo Gaeru]]'': a sickly little girl with a crush on Ranma, appearing in a single Valentine's Day filler chapter from the manga, calls her stuffed bunny "Pyonkichi".
** A single episode OVA that was released as part of the ''It's a Rumic World'' celebration for the anniversary of Shonen Sunday had multiple shoutouts to ''[[Inuyasha]]''. In one of Akane's dreams, a painting on the paper wall is clearly Sesshomaru's dog form. In another scene, Akane dreams that she's in a losing battle and you can clearly see Kagome, Inu Yasha, Shippo and Miroku as her fallen comrades. Later, in the same dream, we see Kodachi with facial markings similar to those seen on Sesshomaru, his mother and other full blooded dog demons.
* [[Shrine to the Fallen]]: A typical Buddhist shrine to the memory of Mrs. Tendō is occasionally shown.
* [[Sibling Team]]: The [[OAV]]s' Natsumi and Kurumi.
* [[Signature Move]]: Ranma's [[Blow You Away|Hiryu Shoten Ha]] and
* [[Single-Minded Twins]]: The anime has Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung, the manga has Pink and Link.
* [[Sitting on the Roof]]
* [[Slap Slap Kiss]]: Subverted: Ranma and Akane bicker constantly, but never quite succeed at kissing despite their obvious growing attraction to each other.
* [[Sleeves Are for Wimps]]: Many of Ranma's Chinese outfits, and also Pantyhose Tarō and Ryu Kumon's entire look. Ranma readily wears heavy sleeved outfits when the weather is cold: he rolls them up often for fights (which happen often).
* [[Small Annoying Creature]]: Happōsai.
* [[Smashing Watermelons]]: Used as part of one of the early storylines. Tatewaki Kuno also turns this into a inverted form of [[Training from Hell]].
* [[Smoke Out]]: This is used at least once by every character with a slightly shady or ninja-esque martial art, including Ranma, Mousse, Kodachi, Genma, Happōsai and Konatsu. Ukyo Kuonji uses a flour bomb to create the smoke, as part of her Okonomiyaki Martial Art. Note that they all make a similar gesture doing so; apparently, [[Smoke Out]] are quite standardized.
* [[Snap Back]]
* [[Snot Bubble]]
* [[Soap Opera Disease]]:
* [[Social Services Does Not Exist]]: How Genma could pull off the Cat-fist training and ''not'' get jailed for child abuse is a wonder to everyone, in the show and out. Nabiki even lampshades this at one point.
* [[Spell My Name with an "S"]]: "Tendō" vs. "Tendou" vs "Tendo". Repeat for any place, character, or special technique with an "oh" sound anywhere in their name. [[Fanfic]] is split on the latter two, with both seeing a large amount of usage in stories.
** It doesn't help that the video games and certain official materials with romanized names take it one step further and use spelling such as "Kunoh
** In a more specific example, the character officially romanized as "Rakkyosai" is often spelled "Lukkosai" due to early fan scripts and the character's own nickname
** Often also written as "Tendö" in [[Fanfic]] by writers who do not know better, which is especially hard on the eyes for [[Fanfic]] readers in countries which ''do'' use Umlaut characters, because there "ö" stands for a completely different sound than "oh".
** Names with y-based diphthongs get hit with it the worst, especially as they combine with the "oh" sounds above, with some segments of the fandom spelling items like "Jusenkyo" or "Moko Takabisha" as "Jyusenkyou" or "Mouko Takabishya."
** The [[Punny Name]]s for the characters mentioned in that trope are also spelled in those approximations of Chinese in certain circles, whereas the majority (as well as official translations) go straight for the pun.
* [[Spider Sense]]: Most of the martial artists have this.
* [[Spirited Competitor]]: Ranma and
* [[Squeaky Eyes]]
* [[Stalker with a Crush]]:
** Both of the Kunos, and Mousse too.
** Ryōga almost escapes this status, as he does have a good relationship with Akane as friends. The fact that he happily sleeps in Akane's bed in his pig form on a semi-regular basis pushes things right back into creepy territory (although it has been shown that he genuinely perceives it as stoically acting as a bodyguard).
* [[Standing in the Hall]]: Seen in the second episode as Ranma and Akane are punished for being late.
* [[Status Quo Is God]]: No one ages, no one graduates, and Ranma and Akane's relationship develops at a positively glacial pace.
* [[Stealth Clothes]]
Line 537 ⟶ 547:
* [[Straw Hypocrite]]: Many of the ones inflicted with the curse want to be rid of it yet have no problem with the advantages.
* [[Sudden School Uniform]]: Principal Kuno introducing a mandatory hairstyle (or trying to) in addition to the existing uniforms.
* [[Supernatural Martial Arts]]: Hard training will not only let you do [[Ki Attacks]], but give you [[Super Strength]], at the very least specific forms of [[Super Speed]], make you [[Super Toughness|Super Tough]] if not outright [[Nigh Invulnerability|Invulnerable]], massively amplify your recovery abilities and let you use even the most ridiculous things as lethal implements of destruction.
* [[Super Speed]]:
** While none of the characters travel at 'standard super speed', Ranma is capable of punching dozens, or even hundreds of times at such speeds that not even those attacked noticed. At least until they realize that they can't be hurting that much from one punch. Even before taking the speed-training from Cologne, Ranma was able to punch over 500 times in 5 seconds while being spun around at super high speeds.
** When so inclined, the characters can actually run (or cycle, or row, or swim
** When Ranma needs to realize the advantages of his female form (faster and smaller), he trains by running on water.
* [[Surprise Jump]]: A running gag results in Ranma clinging to the ceiling if he is scared enough.
* [[Surrogate Soliloquy]]:
* [[Swarm of Rats]]: Unleashed against the kidnapped girls in ''Nihao My Concubine'', followed by a tide of cats chasing them just after Ranma has gotten all smug about girls being scared of small furry animals.
* [[The Sweat Drop]]
* [[Sweetheart Sipping]]: Kuno and Girl-type Ranma (yeah, [[It's a Long Story]]). Also Girl-type Ranma and Harumaki (one part softheartedness to one part
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]]: Ukyo, for all of one episode.
* [[Sweet Tooth]]: Ranma takes advantage of his much-hated girl form at any opportunity to get ice cream in the anime.
* [[Talking with Signs]]: Genma-Panda, since he can't talk.
* [[Tame His Anger]]: Both [[Protagonist|Ranma Saotome]] and [[Tritagonist|Ryōga Hibiki]] do this. [[The Rival|Their anger was towards each other]]. By the end of the series, they're pretty much [[Heterosexual Life Partners|the best of friends]].
* [[Taste the Rainbow]]: A martial art for every interest.
* [[The Tease]]: Girl-Ranma
* [[Thanks for the Mammary]]: And he just freezes in shock and dread, forgetting to let go!
* [[Theme Naming]]: Pretty much every regular that is part of a group or family:
* [[Theme Tune Cameo]]: The studio would insert the first season's theme song for random music whenever they needed a generic song. The background music is used for Ling-ling
* [[There Was a Door]]:
* [[The Thing That Goes Doink]]
* [[Those Two Guys]]: Hiroshi and Daisuke for Ranma and their [[Distaff Counterpart]]s Yuka and Sayuri for Akane. These are filler characters in the anime. [[Superpowerful Genetics|Lime and Mint]] and [[Winged Humanoid|Koruma and Masara]] act like this towards their respective lords. In the anime, Nabiki gets two unnamed extras usually helping her run her gambling pools.
Line 564 ⟶ 575:
* [[Time Travel]]: The Nanban Mirror, only in the anime.
* [[Tomboy]]: Akane; Ukyo. Ironically, [[Wholesome Crossdresser]] Ukyo is actually ''less'' of a [[Tomboy]] than the dress-wearing Akane. Ranma is also this, when female and not pretending to be a girly girl (usually for the sake of a disguise).
* [[Took a Level in Badass]]:
** It is never explained how Nodoka went from being hideously clumsy with a sword (such as accidentally flinging it at people while ''unsheathing it''), which is very very bad for a ''[[Seppuku|kaishakunin]]'', to handling it with skill perhaps equivalent to [[Kendo Team Captain|Tatewaki]] shortly before becoming a permanent member of the Tendō Dojo.
** In the [[OAV]]s, Akane specifically trained to take back the Tendō Dojo from [[Sibling Team|Natsume and Kurumi]].
** Inverted with Tatewake Kuno, who, upon his introduction, demonstrated enough martial prowess to slip through Ranma's guard and mark his neck and was portrayed as a possible serious rival, only to devolve into a gag character in subsequent appearances, and can only be seen as a badass again (or even as a threat at all) when facing regular humans or when augmented by hyper-specialized, albeit temporary, training.
* [[Tone Shift]]: As mentioned above, something of a reverse [[Cerebus Syndrome]]
* [[Tough Love]]: Poor Ranma. As above, how Genma [[Training from Hell|"trains"]] his son using the 'Cat-fist' method.
* [[Training from Hell]]:
** This seems to be the only way any of the higher-grade special techniques can be learned. Also inverted in one storyline: training on Watermelon Island is [[Training from Hell]]... that's actually useless in battle. It's [[Training from Hell]] for the [[Smashing Watermelons]] game.
** Soun and Genma spent years with Happōsai, supposedly training. Of course, the training is implied (they are strong martial artists, [[Overshadowed by Awesome]] not withstanding), we are only shown the hell.
* [[Transformation Ray]]: Usually related to mystical water:
** Jusenkyo. Drowning (non-fatally) in a spring or being splashed with water from it will curse you with transforming into whatever creature drowned there first. Powdered versions exist, but they're only good for one transformation. In addition, Prince Saffron needed pure water from Jusendo (the source of Jusenkyo) for his metamorphosis into the Phoenix King.
** Japanese Nannichuan. Created by a traveling monk, underneath what is now Fuurinkan High's women's locker room, to transform a pack of mischievous foxes into men. The men then turned out to be even worse than the foxes...
** [[Non-Serial Movie|Togenkyo]]. Anything that falls in the spring or is splashed with its water will be permanently transformed into a man.
* [[Trap Is the Only Option]]: In an early chapter/episode, Gosunkugi/Sasuke (manga and anime respectively) finds out about Ranma's phobia of cats and decides to lure him into a cat-filled room to terrify him. He does this by sending Ranma a letter telling him to show up at a particular location if he ever wants to see Akane again... while Akane's standing right next to Ranma and reading the letter too. He then does a hilariously poor impersonation of being the kidnapped Akane (once again, while Akane's right next to Ranma) when Ranma shows up at the designated location. Ranma still goes along with it because he just wants to know what the hell this weirdo is up to.
** Multiple characters have managed to trap Happōsai via panties or a bra. Happōsai admits to knowing the trap is there, but being unable to resist it.
* [[Trash Talk]]: It's an integral part of Ranma's fighting style.
* [[Trickster Mentor]]:
* [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty]]: Ranma; Genma; Kodachi.
* [[Tsundere]]:
** Akane; precisely which type is [[Base Breaker|heavily debated]], but perhaps the most reasonable explanation is that she's intended to be a Type B (mainly from Kasumi's description of her as a "very sweet girl, she's just a violent maniac/little high-spirited), and becomes one after a particularly rocky start that makes her seem more of a Type A. [[Broken Base|Of course]], you have a lot of argument over which canon makes her lean more towards one type or another.
** Inverted: Ranma in his female form. He even breaks out the time honored "I'm not doing it because I like you" line.
* [[
== Tropes U-Z ==
* [[The Unfair Sex]]
* [[Unfazed Everyman]]: Nabiki.
* [[Ungrateful Bastard|Ungrateful Bitch]]: Akane a majority of the time towards Ranma.
** Stops her from fighting Shampoo who could've killed her, she elbows his face.
** Inadvertently stopped Kodachi from malleting her when she was defenseless, and she leaves him paralyzed on the roof.
** Catching her when Cologne cut the support line they were hanging onto, she kicks him away towards Ryoga.
** Tackles her out of the way from Ukyo's spatula, she punches him for shoving her too hard (>_>).
** Fights the Dojo Destroyer when it was obvious Akane can't do jack against him, and she tells Ranma to get lost because it was her fight.
* [[Unholy Nuke]]:
* [[Universal Adaptor Cast]]
* [[Unlucky Childhood Friend]]: Ukyo; Mousse; Shinnosuke.
* [[Unskilled but Strong]]: Saffron.
* [[Unwanted Harem]]:
** The former [[Trope Namer]], both played straight and [[Deconstructed Trope]]: Ranma's status as a chick magnet gives the [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]] a fairly debilitating guilt trip. But though he's not enough of a cad to abuse the situation, it also soothes his [[Testosterone Poisoning|manly]] [[Pride]]... badly battered by his [[Attractive Bent Gender]] curse. And though all the girls involved adore him, they're also rather exasperated by his [[Cannot Spit It Out|wishy-washy]] attitude. It should be no surprise that the end-of-series {{spoiler|attempted marriage}} ended in a {{spoiler|[[Blast Out]]}}.
** Somewhat subverted during the Reversal Jewel arc when Shampoo, under the jewel's effect, attempts to leave the harem, Ranma rather insistently runs after her to get it back, at first because of her abrupt change of temperament, then due to his ego rather than true feelings. Lampshaded by Cologne when she notes that he got so used to Shampoo chasing him, he ''had'' to find out why she stopped.
** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] in Episode 4 of Season 2, "Behold! The 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' Technique", where it's indicated (by way of [[Flash Back]]) there are at ''least'' two girls whose fathers Genma promised Ranma to long before he is even introduced to the rest of the cast. Ranma [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshades]] this by asking 'How many more fiances do I have, anyway?' at the end of the episode.
** Akane. Especially at the beginning of the series where every morning before school she has to fight her way past a bunch of guys who think that if they beat her, then she has to go out with them.
* [[Valley Girl]]: Mariko, ''like totally''. Subverted in that she appears to be [[Your Mileage May Vary|the strongest young female fighter in the series]]. Or at least she's the only one who can actually claim to have defeated Ranma, [http://www.anymanga.com/ranma/021/011/006/ if mostly], [http://www.anymanga.com/ranma/022/001/008/ or entirely], through surprise... and in one hit, no less.
* [[Vanity Is Feminine]]: Ranma takes insults to his female form's attractiveness ''much'' harder than he does to his male counterpart. One specific installment had Ranma insult Akane on her looks, which naturally put her into a temper. Kasumi confronted him afterward and said he had to apologize, because even if she was tomboyish, "...she's still a girl".
* [[Walking the Earth]]: Ryōga, though rarely on purpose; Ryu Kumon, since he's looking for the counterpart technique to his own; Ranma and Genma prior to the manga.
* [[Warding Gestures]]
* [[Weak but Skilled]]: Ranma is not weak, but most of his enemies like Saffron, the Orochi, Herb, Pantyhose Tarō, Ryōga and Ryū are explicitly displayed to have considerably greater raw offensive power than himself. Ranma tends to find some way to either win or obtain his objective by a combinations of strategy (all of them), cheap shots (Happōsai, Herb), exploiting specific weak spots, luck (Saffron/Happōsai/Herb), speed, and through judicious use of the Saotome Ultimate Technique (run away and come up with a better plan). Ranma is usually untrained at whatever [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] of the week he is challenged at, but his genuine aptitude for anything Martial Arts usually lets him/her triumph.
** Happōsai and Cologne. Their old age makes them physically weak, but their (hundreds of) years of training and researching martial arts makes them nigh unstoppable.
* [[Weaksauce Weakness]]: Ranma's [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|ailurophobia]]; Rouge's back pain due to having six arms; any Jusenkyo-cursed martial artist and water.
* [[Weirdness Censor]]: Both Tatewaki and Kodachi Kuno are oblivious to the fact that male and female Ranma are the same person... despite the fact that's he's transformed in front of them!
Line 610 ⟶ 628:
* [[What Song Was This Again?]]: Viz Video's song subtitles, as well as dubbed versions of DoCo's OAV songs, were "translated" to fit the melody and the rough spirit of the original lyrics. Fans came to label these "Trishliterations" after Viz Media's Trish Ledoux.
* [[When She Smiles]]: Ranma's opinion of Akane.
* [[When the Clock Strikes Twelve]]: Used twice: first, during the Curse of the New Year's Bell arc, where the Mao Molin's curse would have turned Shampoo permanently into a cat unless kissed before the [[108]]th toll of a bell. Then
* [[Where It All Began]]: The final arc of the manga revolves around returning to Jusenkyo to save it. The readers finally get to see
* [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]: Ukyo; Konatsu. In a filler, Tsubasa.
* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: Ranma's fear of cats and water. While falling into a pool in an episode, he screams, "Why does it always have to be water?!".
* [[Wife Husbandry]]: Inverted in a flashback where Genma offers Ranma to this fate in exchange for some food.
* [[Willfully Weak]]: It is common for the characters to limit themselves be it to the rules of the particular style, not using every ability to their fullest extent, trying to not injure/kill their opponent, not caring enough to bother with it, etc. Special mention goes to Genma though since he came up with, and then chose not to use, the Umisen-ken and Yamasen-ken techniques, and almost never uses his battle-aura. Ryu Kumon supposedly promised to not use the "school of the violent thief" after his duel with Ranma, and Ranma himself never again used the counterpart school either, although in that case, beyond being a counter to Yamasen-ken, all that it really provides is extreme ninja stealth and master thievery.
* [[The Worf Effect]]:
** Done most often to Ranma himself, as most of the (anime) [[Villain of the Week]] characters wind up proving their credential by kicking Ranma's ass. Mousse and Ryōga get this treatment during the Herb arc, as both are effortless beat by Mint and Lime respectively to build hype on Herb... who proceeds to Worf the crap out of Ranma just to prove this is serious opponent.
** Ryōga also occasionally gets his ass kicked, but generally much less often then Ranma does and usually to help highlight that this is an unusually potent opponent.
* [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl]]:
** Ryōga has no problem hitting Ranma's girl side... unless a [[Wig, Dress, Accent|wig and glasses]] disguise is involved (though that's ''only'' while he's unaware of Ranma's real identity).
** Averted with Ranma himself as he showed no qualms about wanting to hit Cologne during her debut. There was also the fight with Kodachi where he himself was on the line (and she did hit Kodachi using P-chan as a weapon). In the anime, they actually could touch her on occasion, but either they used grabs (which she could break out of, due to being much stronger than them) or she blocked them with her bookbag. That was only in the first season, though, and no other [[Mooks]] would ever be able to touch her afterwards. For the most part, however, Ranma plays it straight, preferring not to fight girls, unless there's an unavoidable reason, and even then, he'll only do it in girl form.
* [[Yamato Nadeshiko]]: [[Dissonant Serenity|Kasumi]], [[While Rome Burns|Kasumi]]. Can you respond to any situation in any other way than to say, "Oh, my!"?
** Sure. She also says "Dinner's ready!"
** Sure. She called Akane a "violent maniac"... A line which got mistranslated (by the otherwise good and faithful English dub) into merely being "high-spirited".
** Sure. In one manga chapter, she gets so "mad" at Ranma that she pokes him in the forehead and says "Me" to him, just like mothers do to their babies when they misbehave.
* [[Yandere]]: Most of the girls get accused of this by different fan groups.
** While under the influence of the Fishing Rod of Love, Ranma becomes a terrifying [[Yandere]] towards Ryōga. [[Hilarity Ensues]] (perhaps we should be glad Ranma is such an easy-going guy).
*** To point out how insane Ranma got, he deliberately triggered his curse for him and told
** Kodachi and Shampoo are the only ones who have been flat out shown as very willing to kill anyone in the way, although Shampoo isn't crazy, but rather really really into expediency (even scarier).
* [[You ALL Share My Story]]: Ryōga very prominently; many others as well throughout the series.
* [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair]]: Both Akane (black with blue highlights) and Shampoo (lavender/violet) in the anime. And as an [[Adaptation Dye Job]], female Ranma's bright red hair.<ref>Towards the end, the red color leaked back into the manga for color drawings.</ref>
* [[You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!]]: The phrase "Joudan ja nai wa yo!" literally means this, and Akane says this more times than one can count throughout the anime. Usually with maximum rage in her voice.
* [[You Know What You Did]]: Akane gets lured into this a lot.
* [[You No Take Candle]]: Shampoo and the Jusenkyo guide. While this is supposed to illustrate Chinese language in Japanese, the odd thing is they are the only Chinese people who speak like that; Cologne, Mousse, Pantyhose
----
Line 642 ⟶ 658:
{{reflist}}
{{Ranma ½ Franchise}}
{{Wizard top 50 anime}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:The Eighties]]
[[Category:The Nineties]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Viz Media]]
[[Category:Anime]]
[[Category:Manga]]
[[Category:Trope Overdosed]]
[[Category:Multiple Works Need Separate Pages]]
[[Category:Essential Anime]]
[[Category:Manga of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Manga of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Anime of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Anime of the 1990s]]
|