Characters / Ranma ½: Akane Tendō

Ranma ½ Character Index
Ranma Saotome | Akane Tendō | Ryōga Hibiki/P-Chan | Tendō Household Residents | The Chinese | The Kunos | Other Recurring Characters | Major Story Arc Characters

Akane Tendō (天道 あかね, Tendō Akane)

Anime

^{Akane's original appearance} 

Voiced by: Noriko Hidaka (Japanese), Myriam Sirois (English), Rossy Aguirre (Latin American Spanish, TV series), Patricia Acevedo (Latin American Spanish, OVAS and Movies), Amal Sad-aldeen (Arabic, early episodes), Etab Naeem (Arabic, some episodes), Oossaima Yoossef (Arabic, later episodes)

A sixteen-year-old Ordinary High-School Student (or at least the closest you'll get in this series), Akane Tendō is a generally pleasant, friendly girl who can be helpful and self-sacrificing even to her rivals. However, she's also hot-tempered, very insecure, finds the Arranged Marriage situation very awkward and is notoriously stubborn, which means there are times she's come off as having a Hair-Trigger Temper toward Ranma Saotome. In general, though, they do get on well enough (although Ranma recurrently mocks her most sensitive spots, and Akane sometimes gives as good as she gets), she frequently helps him out or cheers for him, and is just as willing to make heroic sacrifices for him as he is for her. She is extremely possessive and jealous when it comes to Ranma and easily angers when she finds him in the arms of his other fiancées.

The youngest of the Tendō sisters, and a huge tomboy, Akane is prospectively one of the heiresses to her father's dojo. Promised to marry Ranma alongside her sisters as per their parents' agreement from an early age, Akane is ultimately chosen as his betrothed ahead of her sisters, albeit very reluctantly. This effectively makes her Ranma's original and foremost fiancée, unbeknownst to the fact that more girls would come after him for various convoluted reasons.

Albeit lagging behind Ranma's other fiancées in this aspect, Akane is also a martial artist, and although she's not as good a fighter as they are, she's dauntingly strong and she's nigh unstoppable if she's angry and/or out of control. She's also quite popular with boys, as she's considered the most beautiful girl at school, though this is an aspect that she pays little attention to; this also happens to make her the very reluctant object of an Unwanted Harem herself which mirrors Ranma's own.

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A–H

• Action Girl: As one of the heirs of the Anything-Goes Martial Arts School, Akane is in good fighting form and is able to defend herself. After all, she could defeat every single male of her school every morning. Sadly, she's Overshadowed by Awesome.
• A-Cup Angst: Whilst it's not a constant recurring theme, Akane isn't happy with her breast size at all. She is very quick to take offense at slights (real or perceived) from Ranma about her breasts. An astute observer will notice that Akane also gets visibly angry in the first volume/episode when she sees Ranma's girl form naked and realizes that, yes, s/he really is bustier than Akane is. Finally, in the "Bust Battle" manga arc, she not only suggests Nodoka bring "Ranko" bra shopping with them because she's ticked that Ranma boasted about his girl form's larger growth spurt over her own, but is also shown to have a whole box full of things meant to make her breasts grow.
• Adaptational Jerkass: An odd case in the anime; Akane's personality and actions are translated relatively faithfully, but Ranma himself is very much an Adaptational Nice Guy, thus making her the codification of Tsundere in comparison. The anime makes Akane seem more impulsively violent in general, with Ranma getting far less of the manga's moments of mocking, teasing or otherwise doing nasty things. That said, the trope is also Zigzagged, in that anime Akane actually loses some of the more extreme Jerkass moments of her manga counterpart, while also failing to progress far enough into the manga to show late-series scenes when she's at her nicest.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Zigzagged in the anime. On the one hand, she is more openly critical and hotheaded making her act more violently than manga-Akane in the eyes of many fans. On the other hand, a lot of her more hostile activities from the manga are cut from the anime. Prominent example: in the Hypnotic Mushrooms arc, the manga version sees Akane attack Ranma with bow and arrows, and ends with her still holding a sword and warning him to stay away, but the anime version changes that to Akane only throwing some pots at Ranma for repeatedly glomping her in the kitchen and ends on a gag with Akane and Ranma equally unsettled by/suspicious of the platter of stuffed foods that their family brought home for dinner.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Downplayed, but some of Akane's feats of casual strength in the manga are absent in the anime — for example, when Principal Kuno kidnaps her and straps her to a broom in his introductory story, in the manga, she snaps it by flexing her arms and then attacks him with a flying kick, whilst in the anime, she knocks him away with the broom and then Ranma unties her. Additionally, Kodachi and Akane are on much more even footings in the anime than they are in the manga.
  • Zigzagged in that some anime stories actually invert this into Adaptational Badass. Most prominently is the Dojo Destroyer story; Akane turns him over completely to Ranma upon Ranma's return in the manga, but in the anime, the two actually have to work together in order to take the Destroyer down.
• Ambiguously Bi: Complicated to say given the very nature of the plot, but the manga version at least subtly implies that Akane may feel physically attracted to girl-Ranma, most notably during Ranma's first fight against Ryoga, when she and female Ranma are hugging each other atop a bicycle shed (if you draw a line from Akane's eyes to where she looks at afterwards, you'll notice that she stares at Ranma's breasts, with the same embarrassed expression that she previously had with Tofu Ono). She also says Shampoo is rather cute when she first meets her.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: As much as she hates perverts, she feels highly insulted when Ranma tells her he is not interested in seeing her body.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Girl: Is proud of her martial arts skill and being the heir to the dojo, but that gets blown out of the water with the appearance of Ranma and the others, so she falls into Can't Catch Up status. She's also very stubborn with her pride, refusing to accept help from Ranma even though she has no chance of winning a fight (i.e. Dojo Destroyer). She also falls under this in cooking, refusing to admit that a guy is better at cooking than her.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Weaponized in the anime's "Dual Jet Stream Raging Waters" technique, where she and Ranma stand back to back, link arms, and use each other as counterweights.
• Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: She once told Ryōga she loves him, briefly sending him soaring over the clouds... until she made clear she meant it as a friend, which sent him straight to Hell.
• Beautiful Tears: When Akane tears up, Ranma takes note of this and comments, "Gosh, you're cute when you cry."
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Albeit he doesn't show it that much, Ranma considers his betrothal to Akane to be of utmost importance, and upholds it above the rest because, unlike the rest of the girls, Akane will unequivocally show concern and be kind to Ranma when he most needs it, even in circumstances where there's no benefit to herself whatsoever. The rest of the girls? Niceties from them, there's always a catch.
  • Akane keeps her hair short after her Significant Haircut because Ranma made the effort to praise her new appearance in spite of how drastic the change was, even if he may not have meant it. However, it's implied that he did mean it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The female half of the Trope Codifiers, with Ranma as the male. Akane and Ranma rarely do anything but bicker and piss each other off. Nearly every scene with them together has Ranma insulting or mocking Akane, to which she answers by punching him or throwing something at him. Yet, they have obvious feelings for each other and get terribly jealous when the other is near one of their suitors, but neither Akane or Ranma are mature enough to be honest about how they really feel.
• Berserk Button:
  • Do not do perverted things around her... or get caught with a naked woman in the bathtub.
  • Attacks on her femininity or self-image, ranging from pointing out/mocking her chest as "small" or her figure as "fat", to insinuating her skills at traditionally female tasks like cooking or sewing are less than ideal.
• Best Her to Bed Her: As per Kunō's decree: no one at Fūrinkan High would be allowed to date Akane Tendō until they proved themselves worthy of her hand by defeating her first. This lead to Akane being greeted at the front gate every morning by a throng of boys declaring their love for her and asking her out, all while they are attacking her. They eventually stop trying after finding out about her engagement to Ranma, since he has beaten the school's strongest fighter and going up against him would end up badly, and an arranged marriage is something they can't challenge anyway.
• Betty and Veronica: Played With. In another series, Akane would seem like the Veronica; she comes from a slightly high upbringing, has boys vying to date her, and is an aggressive Tsundere who always gets into fights with her arranged fiancé Ranma even though they clearly are attracted to each other. But when you look at the competition, Akane is much more chaste, ordinary and approachable compared to Shampoo, whom is more exotic, seductive and even more unabashedly violent than Akane. The anime adaptation also plays up a friendship between Akane and Shampoo.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Akane is usually a friendly and helpful Nice Girl, but she can also be very hot-tempered and violent. Especially towards Ranma.
• Big Sister Worship: Kasumi is basically everything Akane wants to be. Unfortunately Akane can't rein in her temper or cook to save her life.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • She's the only fiancée of Ranma's whom he actually recognizes as such. Thus, this makes her the prime target for the other three's aggression.
  • Akane is so pretty that boys at school actively fight for her daily (see Best Her to Bed Her). Of course, she doesn't find this particularly flattering, or tolerable. Her beauty also gets her kidnapped with surprising frequency.
• Book Smart: Akane is the school's top student academically.
• Born Lucky: Whenever she enters a raffle or some other competition based solely on luck, she always wins first prize.
• Boyish Short Hair: She had this when she was younger, but decided to grow her hair out since she thought Dr. Tōfū would like her if she had longer hair. Early in the series she gets most of her hair accidentally sliced off by Ryōga, making her go back to this hairstyle and keeping it ever since.
• Brick Break: Usually does this to relieve stress, and it seems to be her primary method of training apart from jogging, as it's the one she's most often portrayed doing.
• Broken Pedestal: Played with. Akane decided to stop trying to emulate Kasumi when she realized that Dr. Tōfū would never reciprocate her affections and she'd never be anything else in his eyes other than Kasumi's little sister. Akane never stopped admiring her sister, though, but chose to be more of herself henceforth.
• Bully Hunter: Though not to the extent of Ranma, she hates it when the strong pick on the weak. In fact, in the movie "Nihao, My Concubine," Akane is the one who was most fed up with the antics of the Spoiled Brat Evil Prince Toma, and when she saw him torment Ranma with the latter's Absurd Phobia purely for shits and giggles, and then smugly retort that he could do anything he wants as the crown prince to her Death Glare, she gives him a Bitch Slap that beats the "spoiled" right out of him.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Particularly as the series goes on, Akane becomes aware of her own feelings for Ranma, but cannot bring herself to say it to Ranma, which would likely solve a lot of problems. Ranma doesn't make it easier on her, mind you. Akane herself actually brings this up in the Nabiki arc, saying that she can't tell Ranma how she feels like her older sister can.
• Can't Catch Up: An example of the "does improve, but is still outclassed" version. She gets much more impressive feats of strength, speed, agility and skill in the late part of the series, such as quickly making and accurately throwing a barrage of bamboo projectiles, blocking multiple arrows with a staff, jumping between the heads of the Orochi, and more importantly successfully defending against Kunō in a swordfight wherein he didn't hold back, due to believing her to be an unknown male. Of the other girls, only Ukyō is explicitly displayed to improve, in an anime episode wherein she undergoes intense training and develops a special attack. Of course, aside for Shampoo none of the girls are ever nearly a match for Ranma and other fighters around that level, and are all arguably offensively weaker even than Tatewaki.
• Catchphrase Insult: Usually heard from off-screen, either after Ranma's done something to piss her off, or anytime she catches him in a compromising position. Which is followed by either the sound of Ranma being clobbered with some blunt heavy object, or a shot of Ranma being sent flying through the roof, or out the nearest window, as Akane angrily shouts "Ranma no Baka!" in the Japanese and "Ranma, you jerk/idiot!" (a variable English translation of the former). It's so iconic to her that she actually has a short Image Song based on her voice actress constantly chanting "baka".
• Changing Yourself for Love: Akane let her hair grow long to look more like her sister Kasumi because she knew Dr. Tōfū has a big crush on Kasumi and Akane wanted Dr. Tōfū to like her that way too.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: She'll often help people in distress within her general vicinity, even her bitter enemies. And if someone asks for her help she'll generally say yes regardless of personal ability or gain, and whether it means stepping up for the Rhythmic Gymnastic team or venturing alone into a "monster"-filled forest. But that doesn't necessarily mean she'll be nice about it. And at least once, it came back to haunt her, when the strangers she helped out and welcomed into her home turned out to be rivals for the Tendō School's legacy (it doesn't help that most of the people she aids tend to have bad intentions).
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Just thinking Ranma is attracted to another girl is enough for Akane to get angry, often resulting in her snapping at him or beating him up.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The battle dōgi in a manga-only arc made her a greater martial artist than even Ranma. Parodied later in the same story when the cloth by itself (operating alone with nobody wearing it) beat Ranma.
• Combat Pragmatist: Not as much as some other characters, but she routinely pulls weapons out her Hammerspace (in one occasion she even had bow and arrows).
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: As much as she needs to learn to slow down and stop being so rough when she cooks, learning that recipes aren't suggestions and that simply throwing in whatever she thinks might make it taste good, or cover up the mistakes she already made, would help. A lot. Some highlights include adding mayonnaise and sugar to curry (to counteract the vinegar she added earlier) and trying to make cookie dough containing cherries, cinnamon, watermelon and garlic, all at the same time.
• Covert Pervert: For being such a prudish girl who freaks out at the mere sight of a naked man, Akane is also the quickest person of the cast to see the perverted potential in just about any whacky set of hijinks. Especially if it involves Ranma. A first-rate example is when Kunō was about to ask for a wish to a magical rock: while she and Ranma discussed the situation, Akane imagined Kunō asking for female Ranma to love him, and immediately came up with the Imagine Spot of Kunō taking advantage of this to rape Ranko on the spot. She ends up giving a Big "NO!". There's also her Rescue Romance fantasy from the manga, including Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex and all.
• Cross-Cast Role: She was forced to play Romeo in a School Play as a child, and she's never really forgiven it.
• Cry into Chest: After her hair gets accidentally cut because of Ranma and Ryōga, Akane is so distraught that she cries her heart out into Dr. Tōfū's chest since she hoped he would like her more with long hair.
• Cute Bruiser:
  • Until Ranma showed up, she was the second physically strongest person in Fūrinkan, and is still one of its most popular girls.
  • Albeit he'd be the last to say it out loud, this is one of the main reasons Ranma likes Akane.
• Damsel in Distress: Throughout both continuities, Akane is repeatedly captured as a hostage for some reason or another. Prominent examples include Mousse's return, Pantyhose Taro's introductory story, Principal Kuno's introductory story, the Phoenix People arc in the manga, and both of the feature films. Parodied in Mousse's return story; Mousse initially tries to kidnap her and fails because his bad eyesight makes him mistake a stuffed pig for Akane. He then tries again and succeeds halfway through the arc.
• Damsel out of Distress: When taken captive, Akane does not usually believe in sitting around and waiting to be rescued, instead trying to free herself. Her track record of success is, admittedly, spotty^note she gets beat up by Pantyhose Taro the first time she tries to escape, then is stymied by a river and recaptured the second time; whilst the Phoenix People recapture her, she breaks out of imprisonment by herself and reunites with Ranma, she still does what she can to free herself.
• Dark Horse Victory: Played with when it comes to Ranma's other fiancées. One thing that they tend to overlook is that Ranma cares about Akane way more than they care to admit. As such, it's very common for them to assume that removing Akane will get them Ranma, when in reality, there's no Ranma without Akane. As a matter of fact, Akane leads ahead of the rest, but the rest don't want to admit it.
• Deadpan Snarker: If her reaction to some girl coming on to Ranma isn't anger, it's snark. She also is often the one to snarkily point out various issues with whatever Zany Scheme is going on at the moment, and is excellent at Imagine Spotting Ranma's vainglorious fantasies.
• Deuteragonist: Being that she's the other half of the series main pairing, she receives nearly as much screentime as Ranma. Half of which is divided between their rocky relationship and constant denials, or finding herself being held hostage by other would-be suitors, such as Kunō, Prince Kirin, Prince Tōma, etc.
• Double Standard:
  • In the first chapter/volume, which is a Once Done, Never Forgotten moment for her. When it's pointed out that she and Ranma saw each other nude because she walked in on him, she insists that all of the blame is Ranma's, as he's a boy and she's a girl and "it's different when a girl looks at a boy". When Ranma, in female form, unintentionally walks in on her again, she slaps him/her. Nabiki points out that it should be okay, as they were both girls, but Akane refuses to comment.
  • Perhaps similarly, she is horrified at the thought of being a worse cook than a boy when she discovers Ranma is actually quite skilled in the kitchen.
  • Upon first meeting, and sparring with, Ranma, she confesses how much she'd hate being beaten by a boy. Might not actually count though, seeing as how, at the time, she was being forced to fight off a mob of boys every school day for fear of being taken as the girlfriend by the one who beat her.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Is the poster child for this trope in the series. Other female characters may be even more nonchalant about it, but Akane is still the one most often seen hitting Ranma.
• Dude Magnet: Akane is insanely popular with the opposite sex. She had several dozen male classmates step up to Tatewaki Kunō's challenge of having to beat her to date her, and those may just have been the ones who continued to face her despite her repeatedly curbstomping them — there may have been even more to begin with, given her track record. Even her temper, ineptitude at cooking, stubborn pride and violent impulses fail to deter them; not only did the aforementioned mob return to challenging Akane after they believed she was no longer engaged to Ranma^note though only in the manga; in the anime they sincerely got over her, Kunō seems to consider Akane all the more attractive after she has finished beating on him, and Ryōga Hibiki seems oblivious to her less pleasant side. That's not getting into the numerous minor male villains that fall for her. It's not quite Love at First Punch, but it is close.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the anime in particular, the first opening was made with Akane sporting her initial long hair, but the opening was used for a considerably longer time after Akane's hair was cut. As such, her model in the intro didn't fit her later appearance.
• Entertainingly Wrong: In a sort of Running Gag, often when Akane reaches the wrong conclusions regarding a situation related to Ranma, she'll reach a point where she'll try to "understand" whatever aberration she thinks Ranma is committing, already disappointed from that wrong assumption about him. This only adds insult to injury, as Ranma hasn't even began explaining himself of what he's really doing, all while Akane is already gone past that bad thing she concluded he's supposedly doing.
  Akane: Ranma. Can it be that you love panties that much...?
  Ranma: Y-you idiot! I don't want any panties...
  (Akane gives him a pile of panties)
  Akane: If you really want them, they're yours.
  Ranma: Wait a minute!
  Akane: Only please, try to reform your perverted ways. [Tearing up] I thought it was just your body that changed. The time we had was short, but I'm honestly glad I met you. Goodbye, Ranma!
• Establishing Character Moment: For Ranma in particular. Ranma greatly disliked the fact that Akane callously backed off from her budding friendship with him as soon as she realized that he's a boy. This became the action that formed his opinion of her henceforth, becoming the source of why he bickers with her.
• Expy:
  • Akane is basically what Shinobu Miyake, the intended main heroine of Rumiko's early manga Urusei Yatsura, would have been if the latter was never Demoted to Extra. Similar to Shinobu, Akane is a Tsundere Girl Next Door with Super-Strength who balances out a fundamentally sweet nature and girlish desires with a short temper, a willingness to resort to violence, and a somewhat hypocritical attitude. All whilst being surrounded by exotic and often more attractive female rivals.
  • In terms of jealousy and anger towards Ranma, as well as on her tendency of reaching the wrong conclusions, Akane's behavior towards Ranma is very reminiscent of Lum's towards Ataru in Urusei Yatsura, only that Akane has a worse relationship with Ranma than Lum has with Ataru.
• Fanservice Pack: Akane may not dress up as skimpily as Shampoo or Kodachi, but she gets her share of attractive swimsuits and cute outfits throughout the series.
• Faux Action Girl: Early on it is established that Akane is a trained martial artist, and she is shown defeating numerous boys at her school. But very soon, she stops getting anything more than minor victories to her credit, and Ranma is usually the one who does the bulk of the fighting — indeed, he works with rivals or other fiancées more often than he does with her. This starts as early as the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics story, where Kodachi is initially presented as a rival to Akane - but then Akane hurts herself at the last minute and female Ranma is substituted for her. Zigzagged slightly in the anime, where Akane does get a couple of episodes involving her singlehandedly defeating foes like Temari Kaminarimon or Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung, as well as her genuine struggle against Natsume and Kurumi in their OAV.
• Femininity Failure: Every time she tries to do feminine activities like cooking or sewing, she fails spectacularly. The recurring issue seems to be a lack of finesse and problems with patience, especially if she's already upset at something. For example, in the story where Nodoka attempts to teach Akane to cook, she's shown attacking a bunch of carrots for the stirfry with a cleaver. The result of her wild, violent swings is that not only are the (unpeeled!) carrots hacked into uneven chunks, but they're mixed with slivers of wood hacked from the cutting board by the force of Akane's blows, all of which are unceremoniously bundled into the wok.
• First Girl Wins: Played with. Ranma met almost all the girls in the Unwanted Harem before he met Akane, but he had been promised to Akane before the other betrothals were brought up:
  • Ranma met Ukyō first when they were children, as his Genma stole Ukyō's father's food cart after tricking him into a betrothal between the girl and Ranma; As a matter of fact, Ranma was unaware that Ukyō was a girl to begin with, and didn't meet Ukyō again until after he had been already promised to Akane;
  • Ranma met Shampoo before returning to Japan, and accidentally got into a vendetta with her. Hunting for Ranma in Japan, Shampoo then learned that he was promised to Akane, and left dejected and betrayed before realizing that she could turn their unique situation into a betrothal;
  • Ranma met Akane herself after coming into the Tendō household under the impression that this is his first and only betrothal (as he didn't know about Ukyō, and Shampoo wouldn't come into the fold until later). He accepts Akane as his betrothed VERY reluctantly, though towards the end of the manga, he admits his love for her while she's unconscious, and later almost marries her before the rest of the cast interrupts the wedding.
  • Ranma met Kodachi last, in spite of being the first contender against Akane to seek his hand in marriage. Unlike the rest of the girls, Kodachi has no claim to marry Ranma other than from her own capriciousness.
• First Love: Played with. Albeit it's not explored that much, it's implied that Akane is the first girl Ranma has liked romantically, this being among the possible reasons why he upholds his betrothal to her. Before he met Akane, he had seldom expressed attraction towards girls.
• Flanderization: Her nature as a Tsundere got majorly exaggerated as the series went on. Although that may just be her more bad-tempered reactions sitting less easily with her increasingly benevolent/polite portrayal.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Akane had to use one of these to fight her way to school every day... until Ranma turned out to be her fiancé, after which they backed off. She still has the ability throughout the series, and shows it off on a number of occasions.
• Foil: To Shampoo. They have similar temperaments and backgrounds, as they both are heiresses of martial arts disciplines (Cologne for Shampoo; Happōsai/Sōun for Akane), they're both examples of Tomboy with a Girly Streak, they're both pursuing the same boy (Ranma), and from the outset, they both used to harbor anti-men sentiments that eventually faded away. Shampoo happens to be more flirtatious and conniving, while Akane is kinder. They also have Grass is Greener sentiments towards one another, as Akane admires Shampoo's beauty and martial prowess, while Shampoo covets Akane's position of privilege as Ranma's fiancée.
• A Friend in Need: Won't hesitate to stick up for her friends and even enemies if they ask her for help. That is, even if she doesn't have the first clue about how to help them, or even if it puts her in harm's way for their sake. This sometimes borders on Chronic Hero Syndrome levels.
• Friend to All Children: One trait Akane shares with Ranma is that she's great with children. She's even been shown fraternizing with local children well on numerous occasions. While it is true that she's a poor wife and terrible home-maker, she certainly has the potential to be a good mother.
• Friendly Enemy: Akane will always extend a friendly hand if there's need of it, even for Shampoo. Girl's not the kind of lass who'd EVER deny anything to a peer in need.
• From Roommates to Romance: Akane and Ranma live together because their parents expect them to get married. At first, neither of them is happy about their arranged engagement, leading them to fight often. As they spend time together, however, their mutual attraction becomes stronger even though both still refuse to admit it. At the end of the manga, it's implied that they have fully accepted the engagement, and that their wedding is now just a matter of time.
• Glass Cannon: Akane is incredibly strong and can easily dish out enough strength to actually hurt the likes of Ranma, and even Happōsai (although he recovers almost instantaneously). However, she does not seem to be able to take the damage anywhere near as well as she can dish it out, and also seems to lack the Healing Factor many of the other main characters have — there are two major examples of this, but her increase in skill in the later half of the series does raise the possibility that she takes some step towards mitigating this trope. Firstly, she sprains her ankle with a misstep the day before the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match and is told it will take long enough to heal that she'll have to either drop out of the match or get someone to substitute for her. Secondly, in the Dojo Destroyer arc, she hurts her hand bad enough while punching down a wall that Dr. Tōfū has to bandage it and tell her not to use it for a day or so. When she unthinkingly punches the Dojo Destroyer about an hour or two later, she hurts it so badly she can't use it any more for the rest of the fight.
• Good Is Not Nice:
  • Played with. She normally is a nice person, but this gets played especially when she helps Ranma with something, and she's hardly nice about it.
  • Regardless of hissing and moaning all the way there, Akane always gravitates towards helping Ranma.
• Got Volunteered: When Genma and Ranma moved into the Tendo household, it was anounced that Soun and Genma made a deal that Ranma would act as Soun's heir to the dojo in exchange of Ranma marrying one of Soun's daughters. Hearing this, Nabiki and Kasumi immediately nominate Akane as Ranma's future bride, and although Akane makes it clear that she resfuses the arangement, her objections are ignored and she and Ranma become engaged.
• Graceful in Their Element: While Akane doesn't know her own strength on land she is revealed to be a very gifted and graceful skater. This is one of the very few areas in which she can claim superiority to Ranma, who can barely stand up when wearing iceskates.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Akane can sometimes come off as this around Ranma, mainly in the earlier parts of the anime and manga.
• The Heart: For good and for ill, Akane is defined by her passionate, emotion-driven nature. On the up side, this makes her highly caring, empathic, generous, loyal, determined and brave. On the down side, it makes her stubborn, hot-tempered and prone to bratty behavior. The Shonen Sunday special even gives Akane a Heart stat of 4 to reflect this trait.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: She repeatedly denies that she's interested in Ranma, but even she knows what is the truth.
• Heir to the Dojo: As the only martial artist among the Tendōu sisters, Akane is effectively the heiress to the Tendōu Dojo, hence her father's drive for her to be married to Ranma.
• Her Own Worst Enemy:
  • Because of her insecurities and stubbornness (and Ranma's too by extension), Akane rarely, if ever, engages in martial arts training with Ranma, Genma, and even her dad. She almost always practices alone, which is one of the main reasons she lags behind the rest of Ranma's pursuants in terms of combative abilities.
  • Akane is more than aware that she's at her best whenever she gets along with Ranma, but her irrationalities and Ranma's own awful comedic timing serve to spoil whatever good mood they have.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Akane's most fundamental desire is to get along with Ranma. From there, anything that happens (including love) is welcome, but the way the story develops gives her little opportunity and drive to even begin with that original goal. Still, Ranma is certainly not blind to this, even as thickheaded as he is.
  • Akane is the only one of Ranma's fiancées who'd much rather not fight the rest, or anyone for that matter. This is one of the many reasons why she's Ranma's main choice.
  • Akane utterly dislikes the fact that she is helpless against the other fiancées in a great number of aspects, namely fighting, femininity, cooking, affection, you name it.
  • Akane is markedly affectionate and coddling when she's in a good mood, this being the reason Ryōga develops a crush on her.
• Hopeless Suitor: She's had a crush on Dr. Tofu since she was a little girl, but she knows that he goes crazy whenever he sees Kasumi. After accidentally getting her hair cut, she accepts that Tofu likes Kasumi and is able to move on.
• Hyperspace Mallet: If Akane gets mad enough, she'll drop the Megaton Punch (or kick) for grabbing a suitably nice, big heavy object and hitting the object of her wrath with it. Although the iconic mallet itself is actually quite rare in canon, she happily substitutes with a wide array of implausible improvised offensives that include shinais, bokken, the dining room table, her schoolbag, books, park benches, stone garden ornaments...
  • The king example is probably one of Viz Video's deliberately exaggerated liner notes, where Akane hits Ranma with a car (a Honda Accord, specifically). No, not by driving it into him...

I-S

• I Am Not Pretty: Despite her popularity among the opposite sex, Akane doesn't find herself attractive. Ranma's insults enforce this view. This makes her Obliviously Beautiful. Her rivals tend to hammer Akane's insecurities about herself to insult her, especially because they know that she's a Worthy Opponent for them.
• I Owe You My Life: Akane's main motivation for staying with Shinnosuke and his grandfather to help them and care for them, at least until they found a way to heal Shinnosuke permanently... however long that took.
• Iconic Outfit: Overlapping with Costume Inertia. Despite being quite the clotheshorse in the manga, Akane is most often seen, and most often represented in ancillary media, in her standard Fuurinkan High School uniform, a blue jumper with a long-sleeved white blouse (traded for a short-sleeved one in the early anime). It is so representative of her, several of her casual outfits in the anime are simply palette-swapped versions of it.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: She usually manages to hit Ranma with whatever she throws unless he finds a shield. Whether it's a stone, table, sink, or other thrown object. She once managed to nail Gosunkugi with an apple by throwing it around a corner, and early in the manga she made a perfect shot on an erratic Ranma with a severely-weighted arrow. He snapped it in half, but the shot was true. And then there's her accuracy at throwing hot water kettles over long distances...
• Informed Ability: A question not of her martial arts strength but her style; as the only daughter of Sōun to be interested in martial arts, Akane should be the heir to the Tendō School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts (as Ranma is the heir to the Saotome School of Likewise), but whenever Akane fights seriously she's never seen using anything other than fairly orthodox kenpō, rather than the anything-and-everything, whatever works style (with a heavy emphasis on secret techniques) that Ranma uses. Possibly justified by the possibility that, unlike Genma, Sōun is embarrassed by what he'd been taught by Happosai and only teaches conventional martial arts instead of the Anything-Goes Style.
• Insecure Love Interest: Akane is very aware of how unfeminine she is, especially compared to her two sisters. She's deeply insecure about her body and battle prowess, and it certainly doesn't help that Ranma constantly points out Akane's flaws. This comes back to bite her sometimes when Ranma actually tries to be a good fiancé to her, Akane's insecurity leads her believe that he's trying to make a fool out of her.
• Insulted Awake: Ranma manages to cure Akane of a Shampoo-induced memory loss technique that made her forget him by insulting her so much she gets mad and goes after him. In the anime, his dad even has it repeating on a large stereo and does some freestyle DJing with it.
• Irony:
  • Despite being the one girl that tries the least to pander to Ranma, she's the one closest to him and the one whose motives are least selfish regarding him. She happens to care about Ranma more than the other girls seem to realize.
  • Had she not been forced into the betrothal with Ranma, she may have never considered the prospect of romance because she had a rather low opinion of men to begin with.
• It's Personal:
  • She's mortified about the fact that she's an awful cook, especially due to the fact that it's one of the ways that she wants to show affection from the most. She's particularly hurt when Ranma decries her terrible cooking skills, as this is one of the aspects of herself that hurts the most.
  • There's mutual insults and vitriol with Ranma and the other girls, but she extremely dislikes being called unfeminine, as even considering the fact that the other girls are certainly girlier, Akane is not less a girl in spite of that.
  • She can't take insults with a stride because, regardless of what she cares to admit, she takes her betrothal with Ranma seriously. She extremely dislikes the fact that the relationship with the man she's supposed to marry is reduced to counterproductive bickering. Problem is, they're both too stubborn to approach the other with care and affection.
• Jerkass Ball: She's normally very kind, selfless, helpful and forgiving, but she's also very touchy, short-tempered and can really be a bratty jerk when others push her Berserk Button. When someone pushes her buttons, or she's in a very stressful situation, Akane can be very hostile and vindictive towards Ranma and those who have poked at said buttons. She can also be very possessive of the powerups she has gotten when other people try to take them away without explanation, to the point of unreasonable obstinacy when they finally do explain. On the other hand, she has come to Ranma's assistance/rescue just as often, and she goes well out of her way to help complete strangers, enemies, and self-professed rivals (or has helped Ranma save the same) without expecting anything in return. So, fundamentally, at heart she is soft, sensitive and kind, which helps explain further why so many people become lovestruck by her. But... what about the petty reasons that make her jerkish though?
  • She actually assists Kuno by giving him a spare bokuto with which to attack Ranma, just because Shampoo was clinging onto him during the Martial Arts Takeout Race.
  • During Shampoo's introduction, when the Amazon was unaware of Ranma's curse, Akane willfully activated his curse in a fit of jealousy, despite knowing Shampoo would try to murder Girl-Ranma.
  • One of the worst examples was in the anime episode where she gets angry at Ranma for accidentally ruining a dish she made when he was chasing Happosai (which he had apologized for since he thought he might've accidentally hurt her). Akane became incredibly bratty, acting spiteful to him every chance she got.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • She might have a Hair-Trigger Temper where Ranma is concerned and rarely if ever bothers hearing him out instead of just jumping to conclusions but she isn't wrong in losing her temper with him a lot of the time. Ranma has his good points but he's also very insensitive towards Akane and has a bad habit of throwing insults at her, especially ones that he knows are going to be a Berserk Button.
  • She has no reason to be particularly happy about her situation. She was engaged with Ranma unbeknownst to her, and on top of that, Ranma brought a huge cadre of problems and problematic people behind him that only multiplied over time. Aside from that, she's the Heir to the Dojo, so she has her whole future planned ahead of her, of which she had no input whatsoever. As a result, she's not a happy camper.
  • Her "hatred" of men at the beginning of the story is due to the fact that she's hounded daily by boys at high school every morning looking for quarrel with her, as Kuno stated that whoever defeats her has the right to date her. Even Ranma admits that this royally sucks for her.
  • All in all, Ranma is as big an idiot as Akane thinks he is, hence why she doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Dude does the right thing one of every five times, so to Akane, Ranma's not a very trustworthy fellow. Ranma also has a bad habit of not siding with her whenever she's actually right.
• Jerkass to One: Exactly said, to one kind of people. She easily gets annoyed by lecherous guys who want her and run to her every day she goes to school, and always beats them up. She also gets violent around brash jerks like Ranma. She's actually a really kind and selfless girl, is caring, always ready to help others, and until you make her angry she's very polite and friendly. Also, like Ranma, she's very quick to forgive grievances and treat even constant offenders like Kuno or Happosai, or self-declared enemies like Shampoo and Kodachi, with respect and kindness. Unlike Ranma, she rarely holds their faults against them unless they're actively making a nuisance of themselves—at worst, she's suspicious of their intentions, but is still willing to help out.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Early on, given her violent temper and getting incredibly angry for petty reasons (of course, lecherous guys being the target), Akane is closer to this, though she's still a very kind and loving person at heart - just see above. However, after she Took a Level in Kindness, she establishes herself as a Nice Girl.
• Just a Kid: In the beginning of the series, Akane lamented the fact that Dr. Tōfū is only able to see her this way.
• Karma Houdini: Akane hardly, if ever, has to pay for her actions and mistakes (though this is most prevalent in the anime). When it is proven she is wrong about something, she seldom apologizes, and often acts as if it never happened.
• Kid Samurai: Shown to be capable of wielding a wide variety of archaic samurai weaponry, and be just short of Kunō in sword skills. However, strangely, despite being shown as a more skilled armed than unarmed fighter, fanon tends to play her as a comparatively untalented karateka. Possibly because she is, surprisingly, seen training and fighting with her bare hands (or improvised weapons) more often than using the actual samurai weapons she's trained to use...
  • Moreso in the Live-Action Adaptation where she carries a bokken with her wherever she goes.
• The Klutz: Akane is at a complete loss at anything that is not related to athletics, including girly pursuits. In spite of the fact that it often gets on his nerves, it's shown that this is one of the things that Ranma likes the most about her.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Akane IS aware that her cooking is less than perfect, but still assumes it is much better than it really is and assumes people are just being rude when they justifiably don't like her cooking. She often tries to improve or improvise recipes on the fly, without any kind of prior tasting or advice, assuming that ingredients that work well on their own can only work even better in her concoctions. She also tends to act like she's always right and everyone else is always wrong, most notably how she would refuse to hear Ranma's side of the story due to her adamantly believing he's a pervert (thinking he invited Shampoo in his bed when she snuck in; hits Ranma when he was surprised to see Ukyō in his bed, claiming Ranma was planning to sleep with her; always siding with Ryōga when he starts a fight with Ranma; actually believing Ranma is sick in mind of wanting to steal girls' underwear when he was trying to locate the Japanese Spring of Drowned Man under the girls' locker room; interfering with Ranma in the watermelon/snowman race because she thinks Ranma was trying to win a date with Shampoo when he was trying to get back the Phoenix Pill; seems to believe Ryōga never visited Jusenkyo before despite knowing about his directionally-challenged trait that took him to a lot of places even outside Japan; etc.).
• Lethal Chef: Has no culinary talent whatsoever, despite (or rather, because of) how hard she tries. Related to her penchant for trying to "improve" recipes. Slightly better in the manga where she leaned to make edible curry. In the anime she learned to prepare tofu during a cooking contest (which isn't saying much because tofu is PRE-MADE anyway). This may be due to her having only the ingredients she needed on hand in that contest, since she generally tries to put in stuff that's out of place, and often pays no attention to what she's adding. While her clumsiness at basic kitchen tasks is excusable (such as being ridiculously unskilled at peeling, slicing, or measuring), she generally lacks the patience and discipline to take things slow and follow strict instructions before trying to leap ahead to much more complicated dishes.
• Like an Old Married Couple: To a point with Ranma. In fact, they end up engaged partially because of this.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She isn't allowed to know about Ryōga's curse, less the fact that he's her pet P-Chan. Even though Ranma hates that Ryōga often takes pig form to sleep in Akane's bed, he won't reveal the truth to Akane.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Invoked. In the beginning, Akane had long hair down to her upper waist so she could look more feminine like Kasumi. Once she loses it, she finds her own kind of femininity that doesn't attempt to emulate her sister, but she's still very sensitive about being seen as unfeminine.
• Love at First Punch: Akane's violent tendencies fail to chase any of her suitors off, and Kunō actually seems to take them as a sign of affection. In the second Non-Serial Movie, Prince Tōma actually seems to fall for Akane because she slaps him in the face and scolds him.
• Master of Delusion: Beats this trope into the ground when Ryōga/P-chan is concerned. Despite the overwhelming evidence that's come her way — including Ryōga transforming and "disappearing" right beside her — she's never put it together that they are the same person. In the Mark of the Battling God arc, she noticed the mark drawn on both Ryōga and her pet, and concluded that "the same person must have drawn on both of them!" She also never picks up the subtle hints when Ranma would taunt Ryōga by calling him P-chan (or Charlotte in the ice skating arc) right in front of her. What makes it worse was that Azusa managed to piece together that her "darling Charlotte" and Ryōga are one in the same due to seeing her collar on him, and she doesn't even know a thing about Jusenkyo. In the anime OAV of the Tunnel of Lost Love, Ryōga has to carry Akane across a river through a combination of leaping and running on water; he just manages get her to the shore before he falls in himself. When he scrambles up the bank in piglet form, Akane greets "P-chan" with sincere cheerful surprise, leaving Ryōga visibly dumbfounded that she evidently didn't figure it out.
• Master of None: According to her "ability scores" hexagon in Shonen Sunday, Akane has equal levels of Power, Stamina, Intelligence, Technique and Speed... but that level is 2. Shampoo, Ukyō and Kodachi are all her superior in some field, and only Kodachi is weaker than her (literally: Power 1 and Stamina 1).
• Misplaced Retribution: She constantly punishes Ranma when another girl provokes her jealousy, such as clinging to him in affection, climbing into his bed, or following him into the bath. Ranma's protests towards the girls, or his explanations to Akane that he never asked for any of those, tend to fall on deaf ears.
• Mistaken for Lesbian: At times, Akane worries that people will think she and Ranma are lesbians when they have romantic moments while he's in his girl form. Mariko thought so, and Shampoo outright accuses her of being a lesbian.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Most notably, she somehow telepathically hears Ryōga when he almost dies fighting Lime, and is certain she heard Ranma's anguished profession of love for her, even though he insists he didn't say it aloud.
• Never My Fault: She doesn't always take responsibility for what goes wrong, and will recurrently assume that it is Ranma's fault. Such as when breaking the balcony which endangered Nabiki, she is upset that Ranma saved Nabiki instead of herself, which caused a sprained ankle. She also off-on thinks that the people who dislike her cooking are just being rude. She will often admit to herself when she's gone too far and hurt Ranma for thing that weren't his fault, but she won't actually say it out loud.
  • On occasions when the stubborn Akane does realize that she was wrong about something (usually concerning her latest accusations towards Ranma), she quietly treats such incidents as cases of Let Us Never Speak of This Again, without any overt apologies to Ranma whatsoever. For his part, Ranma is usually just glad that the trouble is over and never presses Akane for a well-deserved apology. One such incident is when Kodachi produces doctored photos of her and Ranma kissing, leading to yet another of Akane's tantrums. Only when Akane overhears Kodachi's admission to using fake photos does her anger subside, not once listening to Ranma's vehement denials.
• Nice Girl: Ignoring her incredibly short temper and her attitude towards men especially at first, Akane is incredibly caring, selfless and kind.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: She tends to make things much more difficult than necessary for Ranma due to how she wrongfully assumes he's being the pervert she believes him to be.
  • In the watermelon/snowman race where she tries to interfere with Ranma trying to win, nearly costing him his chance to get the Phoenix Pill.
  • Interfering with Ranma's fight against Hinako because she thought he was trying to molest her when he was actually trying to get her pressure points to seal away Hinako's ki-draining ability. In the manga, he even shows her the chart, but instead she wrongfully assumes he's trying to molest Hinako.
  • Following Ryōga's instruction to tell him she hates him in order to learn the Ultimate Shishi Hokodan, which he uses on Ranma in the next fight (considering from what she had seen and was told about the technique, it's powered on depression, this makes it worse). Then she makes it worse in her attempt to patch it up by saying to Ryōga "Let's be friends forever!", which only makes him more depressed as he took it as being friend-zoned. Granted, she was sincerely trying to help in that last one, but was completely unaware of how he would take it.
• Nice Mean And In Between:
  • Being a normally Nice Girl but with an incredible Hair-Trigger Temper, she qualifies as the in-between if compared to her sisters Kasumi and Nabiki, who are extremely nice and extremely mean respectively.
  • In terms of Ranma's three serious suitors, she also falls in between the nice Ukyō and the mean Shampoo. As the series progresses, she switches places on this scale with Ukyō.
• No Listening Skills: Whenever she thinks the worst of Ranma, she refuses to listen to his explanations, pummeling him first, asking questions later.
• Oblivious to Love: In regards to Ryōga's infatuation. Some think her very first-hand display of how Ryōga can lose control of his strength when he gets overjoyed by being given affection from a girl may have intimidated her into pretending to not notice Ryōga's feelings for her, on the basis that, whether or not she believes Ryōga is into her specifically, she has legitimate reasons to think that Ryōga is too dangerous to be a possible love interest of hers. This theory stems from her remark at the end of the "Waterproof Soap" story, where she said whoever ends up as Ryōga's girlfriend would have to be made of sterner stuff than her.
• The Obstructive Love Interest: Akane has a bad track record over the series of tending to misunderstand Ranma's actions, jump into wrong conclusions and punish Ranma without giving the chance to explain himself. However, Ranma also doesn't give her much of a reason to try and listen to him.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Played for Laughs. Akane is the least outrageous girl in Ranma's Unwanted Harem, and is often the voice of reason in most of the manga, but she's a mess to deal with as big as all the other girls between her temper, her violent outbursts, and her tendency to get mono-focused (especially on what she wants).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If Akane doesn't act belligerently at something, that means that something has made her so mad that she just opts to go Screw This, I'm Outta Here and not entertain the kerfuffle by putting up a fight. Those are the moments where Ranma has to pause, think, and try to look for her and talk.
• Ordinary Highschool Student: Or at least the closest you'll get in this series.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • She is the remaining top martial artist in the district and is able to quickly defeat a mob of about thirty fighters from her school each morning in the beginning of the series, but later she gets abducted various times in both canons, occasionally overpowered or otherwise kicked around by rivals and challengers from out of town. This doesn't mean she's anywhere near bad (in fact, she's still quite capable of superhuman feats of strength, agility, and skill), just that everyone else is that much better.
  • The story spares no effort in showing that, in spite of how little she thinks herself as such, and how much of a tomboy she is, Akane is a very beautiful girl with several suitors behind her. Still, since her rivals are girlier and more aware of it than her, she's under the impression that she's lagging behind, even though she's winning.
• Passionate Sports Girl: Played with. Akane engages in martial arts and exercizes regularly to the point of being tremendously athletic. However, it's shown that she does this for her own satisfaction, and it's neither for the sake of the dojo nor to engage in competitive combat.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: With Ranma, or so their fathers think. Actual opinion of that in the story's followers is more... mixed.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: At the drop of a dime, at the least provocation, regardless whether the perceived "perversion" is real, or imagined. If she thinks Ranma's guilty, he either gets a splash of cold water, or he gets sent flying. Sometimes both. And if she's not already busy elsewhere (taking class, for instance) she will usually lead the righteous mob of girls chasing Happōsai for his perversions.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Akane is a genuinely heroic character, make no mistake. But, especially early in the series, she does display some misandric attitudes, and then there's the time she confessed to Ranma that she thinks his curse makes him a freak - before following it up with the statement that his mind is obviously "sick" too as a result of it.
• Poor Communication Kills: One of Akane's biggest issues with her relationship with Ranma is just how bad she is at actually communicating with him, both in the sense of talking to him about her problems and in the sense of being willing to listen to him. Ranma's even lampshaded it, pointedly asking just when Akane has ever heard him out before she clobbered him during the Happo Fire-Burst story. What makes it even worse is that Akane is aware of this being the case, but lets her emotions get the best of her.
• Precocious Crush: She had a crush on the much older Dr. Tōfū since she was a child, but she manages to get over it once she accepts she'll always be a child to him.
• Running Gag: Akane angrily punting guys to the sky, most commonly Ranma and Happōsai.
• Sacred First Kiss: Akane doesn't take it well when Ranma steals her first kiss while under the influence of Cat Fu. In the anime, he just kissed her cheek, too, but she acts as horrified as if he'd consciously kissed her on the lips
• Selective Obliviousness: Mainly in two areas: that Ranma usually ends up in incriminating situations without helping it; and that she shouldn't trust the claims of Shampoo, Kodachi, or Ukyō when Ranma is involved. It's also been theorized by fans that this may explain her apparent inability to realize either Ryōga's feelings for her, that Ryōga and P-chan are the same, or both. For Ryōga's feelings, possible justifications range from "she doesn't want to hurt him by confirming she only thinks of him as a friend" to "she's scared of how out-of-control he gets when excited". For P-chan, the usual argument is that she doesn't want to believe her best friend would do something like that, seeing as how it's a pretty big abuse of her trust - though others suggest she may just enjoy using "P-chan" to make Ranma feel jealous for once.
• Self-Serving Memory:
  • She "chooses" to remember Ranma giving a fairly cogent explanation of one of his harebrained schemes as "blah-blah-blah you have small breasts blah-blah-blah" in order to justify her thumping him. The explanation involved pressure points on an adult teacher's breasts.
  • Early on, she "remembers" herself as a very little girl next to a high school-age Kasumi despite being only three years younger, revealing her insecure self-image next to the more mature sister she looks up to.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Typically wears very plain outfits or her gi, but it doesn't take a lot of effort for her to show how cute she can be, especially in the late manga, the anime, and the OVAs, which put her in very fancy outfits.
• Shipper on Deck: Seems quite happy for Ryōga when it appears he and Ukyō have a relationship going on, and tells Ryōga to his face that she's glad to hear he's found someone after hearing about the situation with Akari. In the anime, she makes it quite blatant that she believes Kasumi and Doctor Tōfū belong together.
• Shorttank: She's the hot-tempered Tsundere female lead who has tons of Belligerent Sexual Tension with the male lead. In the eyes of the Western audience, she may seem fairly girly despite her training in martial arts, but Ranma still makes fun of her tomboyish traits which feeds into Akane's insecurities and anger towards him.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Akane claims she Does Not Like Men early on in the series, but she's more specifically referring to the horndogs that leer at her everyday at school and just want to get into her panties. She has no problem with men so long as they're kind and considerate like Dr. Tōfū (whom she secretly nursed a crush on, at the beginning of the series). She's the most attracted to Ranma whenever he stops insulting her and tries to be nice to her for a change or protect her from the bad guy in turn.
• Significant Haircut:
  • Akane had a gorgeous set of long hair when she's first introduced, which made her the most attractive girl at school. She grew her hair like that in an effort to look like her sister Kasumi, all with the goal of gaining Dr. Tōfū's attention. Her hair is accidentally cut by Ryōga, as she's caught in the middle one his attacks against Ranma. The loss of her hair, which was a significant source of her pride and self-esteem, eventually led the way for her to realize in the long run that her feelings towards Dr. Tōfū would never be reciprocated.
  • The loss of her hair represents Akane's acceptance of herself as more of the tomboy that she actually is, and less of the Girly Girl that she was pretending to be.
  • The haircut led to Ryōga to first notice her, and eventually develop a crush on her.
  • It also led to Ranma first realizing that he'd be concerned about her well being henceforth, and that he wouldn't be in a circumstance where he can ignore her at all.
• Skewed Priorities: Akane's primary "comedic" trait outside of comically overreacting is her tendency to fixate on the wrong thing at the wrong time and cause troubles because of it. Like in Ryōga's introductory story, where she gets her Traumatic Haircut because she thinks that the ideal time to argue with Ranma is when the two of them are running from somebody who is attacking them indiscriminately. Or the tail end of the Martial Arts Figure Skating arc, where she starts throwing ice boulders at Ranma and demanding he explain why he and Ryōga are always fighting, even as Ryōga continues attacking Ranma. Or in the manga version of the Dojo Destroyer arc, where she nearly gets cut in half by a stray attack from the Dojo Destroyer because she's fixated on Shampoo's claim that she got kissed by Ranma, and then grilled Ranma over it whilst the Destroyer kept attacking the pair of them. Or...
  • Taken to Idiot Ball levels in the first movie, where she's more frustrated that the entire crew only has rice and pickles to eat than being kidnapped and forced to wed. So she successfully blackmail's Prince Kirin's crew by threatening to dump their food supplies overboard... into forcing Kirin to try her food, instead of sending her home. Then, when Ranma and Lychee are caught in a cramped net, she finds the unconscious Lychee is too close to Ranma for her liking, so she decides to pick a fight with Ranma — who, mind you, is there to rescue her. This is made even worse when she proceeds to nearly allow herself to be wed to Kirin after Ranma is tipped off of Kirin's boat, apparently out of anger at Ranma's "insensitivity".
• Sore Loser: Akane has real issues with being shown up at anything she takes pride in, especially fighting or cooking. The first hint of it comes during her first sparring match with Ranma; despite having promised she wouldn't hurt the visitor, when Ranma effortlessly dodges her strikes, she gets mad and charges forward to launch a punch that would have seriously hurt Ranma if it had landed, given it punches clean through the dojo wall. She mentions shortly afterwards that she would have hated to have lost to a guy. It's a recurring plot point of her trying to get even when any of Ranma's other would-be suitors show her up, sometimes to the point of obsession. Finally, during the storyline where Nodoka offers to teach Akane how to cook, she is shown being aghast when she learns that Ranma is a better cook than she is, furiously redoubling her efforts at the humiliation of being shown up in cooking by a boy.
• Spider-Sense: Like several protagonists, Akane has a danger-related "sixth sense" allowing her to be aware of attacks before they hit her. They are mostly set off by Kodachi or one of Ranma's suitors trying to attack her.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Under normal circumstances, she can't lay a finger on Ranma, or anyone of equivalent skill (i.e. Ryōga, etc.). But if she's pissed over a perceived slight, or an act of perversion, it no longer matters how much faster or stronger they are than she is. Akane will toss the offending party out the nearest window, or Megaton Punch them through the roof.
• Super Drowning Skills: A reoccurring plot point is that Akane cannot swim at all. Luckily Ranma knows a variation of CPR. Precisely why she can't swim, even she doesn't know, and it really bothers her — the manga even gives her an Idiot Ball by having her reveal in one story that she figures she just hasn't figured out how to breathe the water yet. And be startled as hell to find out that this is not what you're supposed to do in order to swim. But even then, when she realizes she has to hold her breath, she lacks any sort of natural buoyancy and sinks to the bottom of the pool, justifying the manga calling her a "hammer girl" (for her inability to float, not... yeah.) The sad thing is that she still can't swim while wearing a life preserver, which causes the Principal to give up on teaching her entirely.
• Super-Strength: Not the strongest in the series, but still thousands of times stronger than a normal human. As mentioned above, capable of feats ranging from completely shattering a stone pallisade in one blow, to lifting enormous weights (casually lifting stone lanterns above her head is a favorite of hers,) to causing solid concrete telephone poles to wobble/suffer a fist-sized/deep dent. When angered, appears to get much stronger, and has knocked out or hospitalised Ranma, punted Ranma and Happōsai several kilometres, or casually kicked a massive iron ball taller than she is like a normal person would a football. Once, during one of the aforementioned swim classes, she figured she could just kick off real hard from the edge of the pool and propel herself across that way; instead, she kicked a huge hole through the wall despite having zero support or leverage while underwater.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: She disguises herself as a boy in order to battle the Yamata no Orochi without being eaten as the beast loves the taste of women. She also disguised herself as a male kendoka from the opposing team to battle Kuno at a tournament and give Ranma much needed assistance. On the other hand, she hated being called upon to be Romeo in school plays, as she always wished to be Juliet.

T-Y

• Terrible Artist: Even when they don't turn out completely horrible, her "cute" animal drawings, cookies, or stitchings always comes across as entirely different creatures. Once, when Akane and a vengeful doll switch bodies, she tries to draw a pictures of herself to convince P-Chan of her plight, and he's more easily convinced by how terrible the self-portrait is than by her actions. Another time, when trying to pacify a rampaging sacred horse with a good-looking portrait, her drawing of it made it even madder.
• The Three Faces of Eve:
  • When contrasted to her sisters, she becomes The Child, as she is the youngest, most naive, sentimental and immature of the three Tendō sisters.
  • She's also The Child when compared to Ranma's two other official fiancées, since Akane is the most temperamental and immature when it comes to her feelings for Ranma.
• Tomboy: She enjoys martial arts, has quite a temper and lacks of traditionally feminine talents.
• Tomboy Angst: One of Akane's main issues is her insecurity about her femininity and how she aspires to be more like her Yamato Nadeshiko older sister, Kasumi. However, her bad temper, skill in martial arts and lack of traditionally feminine talents make it difficult for her. Ranma's taunting doesn't help matters.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She's extremely tomboyish, but she does turn out to like cute things and prefers to wear skirts and girly outfits. An amusing Call-Back happens when Ukyō tricks her into going on a date with Ryōga: Ranma laughs at Ukyō saying that Akane is such a tomboy she would never fuss over something so girly, and Ukyō is aghast at how any girl could be so unfeminine; volumes later, Nabiki tricks her into a date with Ranma, and Akane is seen fussing and giggling over which outfit he'd like best, exactly how Ranma claimed she never would. In fact, such is her love of feminine things that one could argue she's a failed Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak; she wants to be more girly-girl than tomboy, but just can't manage it.
• Too Dumb to Live: Akane has made some pretty major mistakes over the series...
  • Twice, she tried to jump into the water either to help Ranma with a losing battle or to swim away, recalling only after the fact that she can't swim.
  • Akane has a recurring issue with Skewed Priorities, in that several stories involve her making a fight more difficult (or even dangerous) for Ranma and/or for herself by ignoring the real battle and picking a fight with Ranma. This has gotten her nearly decapitated twice — first by Ryōga's belt, and then later by the Dojo Destroyer's sign.
  • In a manga story where Hinako Ninomiya offers to help Akane learn how to swim, it turns out that Akane thought that part of learning how to swim... was learning how to breathe water. The fact she's supposed to hold her breath and avoid swallowing water is nothing less than a revelation to her.
  • In the second of the "One to Carry On" two-parter OAV, after having lost a duel in a two-on-two match against her supposed sisters Natsumi and Kurumi, she decided to prove she was still the superior fighter... by going out and challenging both Shampoo and Ukyō at the same time. Despite the fact she's never won a fight against either girl when facing them one-vs-one. They call her out on this idiotic move, but she tells them to shut up and fight her. They oblige, and proceed to curb-stomp her ass.
• Too Qualified to Apply: Inverted and parodied. Akane is actually the least qualified off of Ranma's fiancées in almost all respects, but wins by virtue of her living with him. Thus, she leads because she interacts with him the most, so they get used to each other better than with Ranma with the other girls.
• Took a Level in Kindness: At the start of the series, Akane is a frantic paranoiac who beats up a few dozen boys every morning. She's shown as increasingly friendly, idealistic, understanding, and helpful over the course of the series, and recurrently reins in her temper towards the end. One of the latest stories has her as a Kasumi-ish character who played mother for the youthened Ranma and Ryōga.
• Traumatic Haircut: Her first big character-changing moment is accidentally getting her lovingly-grown long hair sheared off by Ryōga's belt-sword, which he tried to attack Ranma with to resume their duel but the latter kicked away because he was more concerned about Akane, who was storming off in a huff after Ranma claimed he wasn't holding Akane because he liked her. Akane had grown her as long as Kasumi's in an effort to get Dr. Tōfū to like her; getting it cut off meant having to let go of her childhood crush and mature into a young woman. Another reason comes from the fact that Ranma told her that he likes her short hair in an effort to console her, which she appreciated.
• Tsundere: Fiery-tempered by nature and quick to resort to violence, Akane is a classic example of the tsundere archetype. But unlike most tsunderes, Akane doesn't neatly fit into the tsun-tsun (Harsh) or dere-dere (Sweet) sub-archetypes, instead vacillating between the two in that she shows very different sides of herself to different people.
  • Around most people, Akane is very much the 'dere-dere'' type of tsundere. She is polite, patient, forgiving, thinks the best of people, and generally is a very nice and kindly girl. However, she also has her temper, and when she is finally pushed to the breaking point, she lashes out, whether by shouting or dishing out slapstick violence depending on the precise nature of the offense. Normally, her wrath is reserved for Happosai and Tatewaki Kuno, unrepentant perverts who have a habit of forcibly touching her against her will.
  • Around Ranma, however, Akane switches to the tsun-tsun type. Though they can and do coexist peacefully, she is extremely quick to begin verbally fighting with Ranma — and is equally likely to both begin bickering with Ranma in response to something thoughtless or insulting he said or to throw out her own barbed insult at him first. And she gravitates towards violently expressing her wrath by attempting to bludgeon him with random objects or hit him with a punch or quick much quicker than she does with other people (outside of Happosai and Tatewaki Kuno). Moments where she expresses her sweet side are much rarer when she's interacting with Ranma, which makes them stick out all the more. It also takes a lot of provocation for Akane to even hint to herself that she likes Ranma, never mind expressing that fact around him.
  • There are also arguments as to whether or not her portrayal differs between manga and anime, and how much so if it does. That said, while she retains a hair-trigger in both, the much longer manga gives her many further opportunities to show her nicer, sweeter side (Sweet type), while the anime lacks these and exaggerates her more violent reactions more often (Harsh type).
• Unconscious Objector: Taken to silly levels (like everything else in the series). In a story where Happosai tries to pretend to be P-chan, he gets a case of Laser-Guided Karma when it turns out that Akane tosses and turns in her sleep with incredibly violent activity, pummeling anyone stupid enough to crawl into her bed about as efficiently as she does when awake. Weirdly, this trait never appears before or after this story.
• Undying Loyalty: Played with. In spite of their incessant bickering, Akane would risk life and limb for Ranma.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Sometimes she can be really ungrateful towards Ranma in response to his good behavior, due to her overall paranoia.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Akane's main crux. She may well be incredibly strong, but she's the least skilled of all the main leads in combat. She can fend for herself well enough against her own rivals, but they're just better fighters than her (worse, Shampoo is actually stronger than Akane is). The problem lies on the fact that she basically trains on her own, as she can't count on Ranma to train with her (as he doesn't like to fight her), Genma or her dad (as they don't even offer to do so), or even Happōsai (as nothing good can come from him). It certainly doesn't help that Ranma approach to training is very Sink or Swim Mentor — the kindest training seen from Ranma towards Akane is basically Ranma non-verbally taunting Akane about how slow she is compared to him (by reading a manga and effortlessly dodging her every attack) and expecting her to push herself to get fast enough to hit him. And he's a big softie compared to Genma.
• Unspoken Retort:
  • During the Rhythmic Gymnastics arc, after Ranma and Ryoga have spent the night "training" (i.e. trying to kill each other), and an exhausted Ranma is absently chewing on a dish towel at breakfast, Akane thinks to herself, "That's it, we're doomed."
  • After Mikado kissed Girl-type Ranma, and Ranma ran off crying, Mikado comments on his kiss being too much for an innocent girl. Akane, having witnessed it, and being fully aware of Ranma's Gender Bender curse, sourly thinks to herself of Mikado, "You'd cry, too, if you knew who you kissed."
• Uptight Loves Wild: For Ranma. It's referenced multiple times throughout the series... Such as one of the opening themes about Ranma and Akane being titled "Don't Make Me Wild Like You" and Ranma's name essentially meaning "wild horse."
• Vanity Is Feminine: Played for laughs by Ranma. One of the unintended consequences of her eating the Super Strength Soba is that she'll grow whiskers as its full effects set in. Ranma does her best to make her take the antidote, but she keeps kicking his and Shampoo's asses until it happens. Horrified, Akane escapes to the top of a tall pine tree with Ranma behind her laughing his ass off because, as macho as Akane is, she's girly enough to be aghast at the prospect of having whiskers.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Zigzagged. If Ranma is losing in a fight, there's a good chance she'll either help him kick your ass or she'll do it herself... or at least, she'll try to do it herself. It's not easy to defend your fiancé when everyone else is better than you. Then again, she might just sit back and watch the show. Or, if Ranma says/does the wrong thing, she may attack Ranma herself! But when the chips are down, Akane will fight to the death to defend Ranma, and she has saved his life or at least provided much-needed assistance more times than he's willing to admit; even when her "help" only puts her in danger, it usually takes Ranma out of the main fight long enough for him to regroup and regain his focus.
• What Does She See in Him?:
  • While Akane has her flaws, Ranma is in many ways a pretty damn poor excuse for a potential boyfriend, being socially awkward, manipulative, a liar, wishy-washy, and averse to showing any affection, and that's without taking into account the problems that comes from having Genma Saotome as a father-in-law, or the multiple engagements he's gotten.
  • Ironically, a gender-inversion of this trope is invoked by Ranma himself, given he initially expresses considerable distaste for Akane due to their unflattering first meeting. When he sees Akane's horde of would-be suitors in the early series, he's clearly smitten with her ability, but he also wonders why they're so interested in such a violent girl in the first place. He later lampshades it when Kunō first confronts him for being too informal towards her:
  Ranma: (at Kunō) Look, man, if you want a girl who's more likely to kill you than kiss you, then you can HAVE HER!
• What the Hell, Hero?: A Running Gag consists of Akane finding Ranma in the most awkward situations possible, or finding out something that completely undermines his otherwise sincere intentions towards her.
• When She Smiles: Ranma freely admits that she's cute when she smiles.
• Wooden Swords Are Just Better: Whilst fans associate Akane with wielding a mallet of varying sizes, her actual go-to weapon in canon tends to be either a bokken or, more frequently, a shinai, fitting her Kid Samurai and Tomboy themes.
• Worthy Opponent: Played with, depending on who you'd ask:
  • Ukyō generally likes Akane as long as she doesn't get too close to Ranma, not hesitating to attack her if that's the case. She finds Akane's proximity to Ranma disrespectful, as she considers herself his fiancée.
  • Shampoo dislikes Akane mainly for being Ranma's fiancée, though she doesn't hate her personally and doesn't mind her that much, herself being no stranger to Akane's kindness. Still, this is not a deterrent for Shampoo to attack Akane, and remove her as an obstacle to obtain Ranma.
  • For Kodachi, Akane just might as well not exist, as the only interactions she has with Akane are through sheer aggression.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • A negative example. Most of the other fiancées make Akane their target because, unbeknownst to her, she is indeed a Worthy Opponent. The notion that she doesn't see herself as beautiful doesn't mean that her opponents don't see it, which is why Shampoo and Kodachi tend to attack her looks.
  • Akane is the only fiancée of Ranma for whom he'd drop everything else at the drop of a hat, regardless of who is with him. If something's not okay with Akane, it's not okay with Ranma (though it sometimes does take him some time to realize it).

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