Ranma Half
Some Japanese anime can take itself all too seriously, giving the impression that it is great art along the lines of Akira Kurosawa’s films or Yukio Mishima’s books.
Of course, some anime truly is brilliant, after all Hayao Miyazagi won the Oscar for the best animated film in 2003 for Spirited Away, a charming tale of a girl drawn into an alternative world of mythology and magic.
But other anime films can be firmly tongue in cheek, offering an irreverent, self-mocking humour. One of the best of these is Ranma Half, based on the manga or comic books of the same name. Unlike most Japanese anime, Ranma is written and drawn by a woman artist, Rumiko Takahashi.
Why is it Ranma Half? Well, half the time Ranma, a teenage boy, turns into a teenage girl. The basic premise is that there is a magic pool in China, and anyone who falls into it is forever after doomed to turn into the last creature that drowned in the pool, every time they get wet with cold water. It takes a splash of hot water to turn them back into their real form.
On a trip to China with his martial arts-teacher father, Ranma falls into the pool and is afflicted with the body of a teenage girl every time he gets wet in rain or a bath or an accidental soaking. His father is possibly even more unlucky – he turns into a panda.
Perhaps they are both lucky. One of Ranma’s martial arts rivals gets turned into a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, who is adopted as the pet of Ranma’s fiancée, a teenage girl who was betrothed to him as a baby. Their on-off relationship is complicated by the sudden appearance of girls, boys and pandas, while everyone else around them tries to carry on a normal life.
Hilariously funny, it is also truer to everyday Japanese life than some cartoons. For example, the homeware is plain instead of being adorned with Hello Kitty, and the school life of the confused hero is shown as it is today in ordinary Japan.
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