Ranma One Half / Tropes A to F

This page covers tropes found in Ranma ½.

Tropes A To F | Tropes G to L | Tropes M to R | Tropes S to Z ]

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A to B

• Abduction Is Love:
  • Once to female Ranma in the manga.
  • Once to Akane in the first movie.
  • Every female but Cologne in the second movie.
  • Female Ranma is also kidnapped for this purpose, and very nearly bewitched with a Love Potion in the Toraware no Hanayome PC Engine video game. Akane has to rescue her from being married to a 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 Kunōs, 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 darn near god Situation Comedy. However, this shift in status also allowed for greater creative freedom in school-based plots, allowing Ranma's classmates to have their own interactions and opinions regarding his curse; in contrast, the anime went to painful lengths to preserve the secret, leading to very forced scenes, contrived resolutions where the original story required the classmates to be aware of the curse, tons of wasted potential as the anime never even used the secret for new storytelling opportunities, and a brusque and out-of-character reveal when it became literally impossible to put it off any longer.
  • Dr. Tōfū's one-sided love for Kasumi is completely abandoned — as is Dr. Tōfū.
• Absurd Phobia: Ranma's fear of cats is usually Played for Laughs, until he goes into his Cat-Fu mode.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade:
  • Kunō. With a wooden sword, no less. An intentionally absurd justification is made for Kunō's wooden sword by showing that he's so fast with it that when he swings, it can smash rocks with the air pressure alone.
  • Konatsu, Ryōga, and even Kodachi, are still more extreme. The former uses a sword made of paper, and the two others regular pieces of cloth.
  • 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"
• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Ranma and some other martial arts-adept characters can cut perfect holes in stone walls using air pressure, ki, vacuum blades...
• Abusive Parents: None of the parents would necessarily win any prizes, but Genma Saotome and Principal Kunō both stand out — the former for his extreme martial arts teaching techniques and overwhelmingly selfish behavior, and the latter for using his children as pawns for his own amusement and blatantly dodging any questions related to his parenting. Ranma's mother Nodoka allowed Genma to take Ranma away for training on the basis that he would turn their son into "a man among men," a statement too vague and subjective to truly be a valid measure of character, and even let him sign a seppuku oath to that end — which was the only reason she let him take Ranma away in the first place. Her absolute devotion to this duty, both before and after finding out about the curse, constantly keeps Ranma on edge (especially since she was willing to go through with it once) and would be considered an even greater sort of emotional abuse even if Ranma himself weren't desperately willing to make her proud of him (and his manliness.) This dynamic is typically Played for Laughs, with no one batting an eye at it in-story, until the Values Dissonance sets in for the audience.
• Accidental Marriage: Ranma and Shampoo; Kodachi's behavior is similar.
• Acquaintance Denial: A quick gag has Genma and Soun making fool of themselves on the street with their usual hammy antics, just as Nabiki, hanging out with some other girls from the school, is passing by. One of her friends asks her if that isn't her father, while Nabiki is ignoring them and pretends she'd never met them.
• 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/blue. 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 Shōnen 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.
  • The "Japanese Nanniichuan" story arc is expanded in the anime version to covering three episodes; whilst Ranma and Ryoga's "spring" still turns out to be a busted water pipe, in the process, they unearth a mysterious pot. In the next episode, they take it to Cologne, who informs them that it can be used to locate and create the real Japanese Nanniichuan — but they need to retrieve two more pots first. The second episode focuses on the group trying to retrieve the second urn from the Kuno estate. The third episode sees them then having to retrieve that pot from Happosai before making their way to the Japanese Nanniichuan. The trilogy ends with Ranma and Mousse bathing in the Japanese Nanniichuan... only to find out that the transforming magic has been deactivated for years due to lack of interest.
  • The "Martial Arts Tea Ceremony" arc is a strange example. In the manga it was single-book, once-off story. In the anime, it's instead broken up into four episodes across different seasons; one story in which Sentaro abducts female Ranma and coaxes her into fighting his grandmother so he doesn't have to undergo an Arranged Marriage, one story in which Akane fears the Miyakoji have kidnapped female Ranma, a third story in which Satsuki Miyakoji finally makes her appearance, and a fourth story in which Sentaro and Satsuki require Ranma and Akane's help.
  • The OAV adaptations of the cursed doll that steals Akane's body story and of the Egg of the Immortal Phoenix story are expanded to include Ukyō and Shampoo, who are absent from the original manga versions.
  • Inverted in the first Pantyhose Taro story; the anime version cuts out a sequence where Ranma and his friends attempt to use mind-altering incense and a play act to convince Happosai to change Taro's name, instead having Taro carry Happosai off to China immediately after he is captured following Taro's defeat.
  • The OAV version of Ms. Hinako's introduction is an inversion, cutting out the subplot of Shampoo, Ukyō and Kodachi going after Hinako because they believe she's trying to seduce Ranma.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Some of the tweaks to the anime version of stories result in questions being leveled, especially compared to the original manga version.
  • In the Tsubasa Kurenai arc, a plot-point is that when they compete to sell more Okonomiyaki and prove who's cuter, Ranma is forced to use a disguise because the guys at Furinkan know "Ranma-chan" is actually his transformed state, so they prefer Tsubasa, who they believe is a real cute girl. This same sequence is adapted in the anime version, but in the anime, Ranma's curse is a secret to the rest of Furinkan at that point in time, so the guys just prefer Tsubasa to the non-disguised Ranma for no real reason.
  • One time Ryoga is searching for Akane and finds her in a waterfall. Except she's actually female Ranma who switched clothes with her. In the manga both have black hair so the trick works. But in the anime female Ranma and Akane respectively has red and blue hair so the trick was clearly visible to Ryoga and the viewers. Furthermore the voice also gives it away to the viewers early.
  • A version caused by translation issues is the issue with Pantyhose Taro's name. In the English language, the audience invariably asks why, if he hates his name so much, he doesn't just ignore the Pantyhose part and introduce himself as Taro, acting like he only has a single name. The reason is that, in the Japanese language, Pantyhose Taro's name is a single word, being the Japanese for pantyhose with the 'taro' name suffix, in the vein of Jotaro, Kentaro, etc. Introducing himself as "Taro", then, would just make his name sound awkwardly sheared short.
• Adaptational Badass: Satsuki Miyakoji of the "Martial Arts Tea Ceremony" Arc. In the manga she's a Yamato Nadeshiko who was so nervous about meeting her future husband she sent her pet monkey in her place. In the anime she's still a Yamato Nadeshiko, but in "Battle for the Golden Tea Set," Satsuki's the only person able to inflict significant damage on the thief trying to steal the aforementioned tea set. This is especially noteworthy as the thief was Satsuki's own grandmother as part of a Secret Test of Character set up by her and Sentaro's grandmother to judge their respective skills. And Satsuki did not know this until after their fight ended.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Shampoo. Her manga self is violent and treacherous and it's difficult to imagine why Shampoo could be taken seriously as a possible "fiancée". The anime, however, made Shampoo's character significantly nicer and gave her a lot more Pet the Dog moments.
  • Kodachi Kunō actually gets Pet the Dog moments in the anime (including an entire episode that showed her willingly bequeathing her fortune to Ranma so the Anything-Goes school can have a dojo), compared to the manga's depiction of her as a one-dimensional loon that would fit right in at Arkham Asylum.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the anime, Akane comes across as more of Jerkass than in the manga. However, some of her more extreme acts of Comedic Sociopathy from the manga are also cut out, meaning the trope is zigzagged when applied to her.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: In the Joketsuzoku, strong martial artists are considered prime husband material, with it being the tradition of their female warriors to wed any man who can beat them. Naturally, this is Shampoo's primary reason for wanting Ranma.
• All-Cheering All the Time: Mariko, though we only ever see her when she's actively being a Combat Cheerleader so she might not talk that way in civvies. Then again, this is Ranma ½.
• All Love Is Unrequited: According to Rumiko Takahashi, this is because all the side characters in the Love Chart were merely obstacles to Akane and Ranma's eventual hook up. Yes, even Mousse. The only reason Ryōga became the lone exception was because the fans demanded his happiness.
• All There in the Manual: A "Ranma 1/2: New Edition" version of the manga first released from November 2017 to June 2019 contains, alongside interviews with the author, a number of inserted "files" that provide extended details about the various fighters, describing their skills and weaknesses, alongside with providing official "power levels" for the cast as a whole. Some of the more notable elements stated by these files are that Ranma Saotome is hands down the best fighter in the series, with consistently well-rounded scores in all fields, Ryoga is actually only slightly stronger than Ranma but is much tougher and drastically less skilled, and that Shampoo is the strongest of the female characters, with speed almost approaching Ranma's level and a skill level that exceeds his, but also one of the worst durability levels. Sadly, this version has only been released in Italy.
• Altar Diplomacy: Attempted to be Invoked by the fathers. The father of Saotome Ranma has arranged to board with the father of Tendō Akane so that these two young people can become acquainted and eventually marry. Saotome Genma sees a huge advantage in Ranma inheriting a working dojo to maintain his martial arts training, and to thwart all of Ranma's other suitors as well. Tendō Sōun would like to see Akane marry someone with a strong interest in martial arts, so that the dojo he founded won't be neglected or sold off.
• And Call Him "George": Azusa Shiratori has a habit of snatching anything she deems 'cute' and giving it a cutesy name.
• Angst Nuke: The Shi-Shi Hōkōdan.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: There exists Played for Laughs and at least one Played for Drama versions.
• Animation Bump:
  • The OVAs to the show, which beats out even the movies for slick animation.
  • Episode 34 has noticeably better animation than the rest of the second season. Rather suspicious, given that it's called "Assault on the Girls' Locker Room"...
• Anime Theme Song
• Anticipatory Lipstick: Ranma discovers Kodachi on the roof of the Tendo household, clearly intent on criminal mischief. Kodachi blows "paralysis powder" on Ranma, which renders him unable to move. She bends to kiss him, then realizes she'd better use lipstick first and stops to fix her makeup. Akane kicks Kodachi away from Ranma before the kiss is planted.
• Anti-Hero: Sōun, Konatsu, and if you feel charitable Kunō, are Classical Anti-Hero; Kumon Ryū is either a Pragmatic Hero or an Unscrupulous Hero. Ranma and Hinako are both heroic with flaws, but both have a mostly positive mindset, so they do not really fit, such as Ryōga and Akane who are are somewhat Knight in Sour Armour. Ryōga, while ultimately a chivalrous and good-natured person, has also personality traits of a Byronic Hero.
• Anti-Mentor:
  • Ranma's father Genma is a played with example. Most of the time he is actually a very competent teacher of martial arts who does know how to instruct and motivate (although he is a jerk, morally speaking); albeit in a sink or swim, spartan way, style. However, there is the case of the "Cat Fist" technique which was a fiasco that left Ranma mentally traumatised for life and where he didn't bother reading the full manual on how to teach that technique which warned that it was dangerous and stupid.
  • Happosai, the grandmaster of Anything Goes Martial Arts. While a very formidable martial artist, he's a terrible teacher who makes Genma look proficient in comparison. All of the flashbacks of him with Soun and Genma show him forcing his students to steal food and underwear for him, rather than teaching them any proper martial arts. When he returns in the present and takes Ranma in as his student, he also adds in groping Ranma-chan's breasts and making her wear girly outfits. It's little surprise all his students try to get rid of him and at times attempt to murder him whenever given the chance.
• Anywhere but Their Lips:
  • At the end of Painting-panda's "date" with Ranma, she (it's female; the painter just did a poor job at it) asks him for a goodbye kiss (Akane is jealous over it). Ranma reluctantly agrees to it but can't bring himself to initiate it, so Painting-panda does it... by headbutting him on the lips, before returning to her scroll. It turns out she meant for Ranma to kiss her on the forehead.
  • When Ranma, Akane, and Konatsu are taking care of Ukyō's food joint while she is ill, customers are about to leave because, well, Akane is cooking, so Konatsu pulls a special ninja move and kisses all the all-male customers so fast the cute kunoichi cannot be seen. Akane is appalled, since, well, Konatsu is a guy, but he reassures her: "Don't worry, I avoided any vital spots". And none of the customers has been kissed on the lips.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When he's about to go on a trip seeking the Musk Dynasty descendants, Ranma asks Akane about his chances fighting against them, and Akane responds flatly:
  Ranma: [...] But still... Hey. Are you actually thinking I might lose?!
  Akane: Oh no. I know you'll win.
• Arranged Marriage: The driving force of the series. Three times in the original manga (the Tendō promise, Ukyō, and Picolet Chardin,) plus an extra two time in the anime, once to serve as the justification for a Villain of the Week's Martial Arts and Crafts challenge and the second time as a gag at the end of the episode.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the episode "Curse of the Scroll", a painter showcases 3 magical scrolls whose entities would come to life should the talisman placed on said scroll become loose. The first 2 entities in scrolls are horrible enough (the painter claims his grandfather and his father each made one and died within years afterwards), but the third one — made by the painter himself — quickly ends up with its talisman loose before the content within is shown because of a scuffle between Ranma and Genma. What's in the third scroll? A badly-drawn female panda, whose wish is to have a night out with a "boyfriend" before going back to the scroll.
• Art Evolution:
  • The anime starts off with a soft rounder look for the characters, reminiscent Maison Ikkoku. Then the characters become more angular, with wider faces and longer necks as the series progresses.
  • Shampoo was given green hair in Season 1's intro, which makes her similar to Lum Invader.Till it is settled down to purple by her introduction.
  • Happosai. In the Season 2 intro, Happosai was pale skinned and wore black. Then darkened his skin tone and dons red by the series introduction. Also in his introduction episode, he wears a green kosugi underneath in his till he loses it in the later half.
• Artistic License – 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 Magical Device Did It.
  • Basically, the series consists of 36 volumes of Magic Curses that cause your body to transform into different creature in a split second, broken bones that heal in a week, Megaton Punches with Invulnerable Knuckles, Charles Atlas Superpowers, 300/100-year old, two-foot-tall old people (one of which was sealed in a cave with no food or water for ten years,) Ki Manipulation, de-aging mushrooms, a woman who ages by Life Energy Absorption gaining and losing mass without explanation, not to mention the giant wildlife 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 frozen in gigantic blocks of ice, and people breaking the laws of physics and 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 Tarō's monster form, and Happōsai, Sōun and Genma's Battle Aura manifestations. Not to mention the Dojo Destroyer, in the manga.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Hinako Ninomiya in child form has an extremely short attention span, tending to forget about whatever she's saying or doing when presented with an enticing distraction, much like the child she resembles.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Ranma. All the guys at school cheer whenever Ranma suffers a Mode Lock as they seem to like 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, Herb. Ranma's popularity as an ogling target might stem less from the fact s/he is attractive (though it's undeniable that s/he is) and more from the facts that Ranma has a tendency to suffer Clothing Damage due to his opponents often wielding blades or bombs, doesn't wear bras (for obvious reasons) and, most importantly, lacks "feminine modesty" and so is far less likely to get pissy/violent at them than any of the normal girls.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Ranma and Akane. There is also one moment of this in the second movie between Shampoo and Mousse.
• Badass Bookworm: Ranma is more likely to look at books for answers and to read for entertainment at least in the manga. We see Ranma turn to books for answers such as when Dr Tōfū hurt his neck we later see him reading a book on chiropractics, during the reversal jewel he turned to dating magazines for advice on dating, turned to a scroll to counter Miss Hinako's draining, picked up the diary to find out why no one was at the island with the Hawaiian virus, etc. We also see him reading at other times as to what he was reading at those other times is unknown he was reading something while waiting for Ryōga prior to the Shi-Shi Hōkōdan, read something while going to sleep when Miss Hinako stayed at the Tendō's, etc.
• 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 Tendōs could theoretically count, but only two of the four members are fighters, and rather weak ones compared to the other cast members (though not to anyone else).
• Badass Longcoat: Shinnosuke. A janitor's coat, yes, but Shinnosuke makes it very badass; Mousse (for all of three panels)... he's pretty much a subversion from then on; right clothes, right skill level, wrong antics.
• Bad Future:
  • Parodied. In the manga, during the Pantyhose Tarō arc, Ranma conceives of a plan that will surely get Happōsai to change Tarō's name (Happōsai being the one who gave him his name and the only one who can): show him a future (actually a play)where, thanks to his name, "Demon Lord" Tarō has an vicious addiction to pantyhose and has taken all of the pantyhose in the world for himself. Naturally, Happōsai is devastated. But, when given the chance to make things right in the past, Happposai opts to murder the child rather than, say, just change his name.
  • Also parodied in the anime. Ranma, Genma, and Happōsai use Happōsai's time-traveling hand mirror to go ten years into the future, where Akane is married to Ryōga (with children), Genma and Happōsai are very old and tired men who are virtually the children's playground, and Ranma is nowhere to be found. The time-travelers are not happy, especially Ranma, who then provides one of the page quotes. Made more interesting when the entire episode is revealed to be Ranma's dream.
• Barbell Beating: In the story introducing Ryōga Hibiki, the Tendō sisters hear a fight in the garden, at night and under the rain, between Ranma and someone else. Thinking it's a burglar, Akane is ready to attack the intruder with a shinai, but Kasumi dissuades her and hands her instead a small training barbell. Akane throws it and hits Ryōga behind the head; despite being Made of Iron, the Hibiki lad is still briefly stunned and let go of his umbrella, with the rain triggering his Jusenkyō curse.
• Barehanded Blade Block: Or, if their hands are full, barefooted blade block.
• Barely-There Swimwear: Kasumi's skimpy bikini in the anime Beach Episode "Battle for Miss Beachside" comes as a shock to her sister Akane, as this isn't what you'd expect from a Yamato Nadeshiko like Kasumi. It still isn't as small as the one worn by Kodachi,◊ however, to her brother's desperation.
• The Barnum: Nabiki to an extreme degree.
• Bash Brothers:
  • Mikado Sanzen'in and Azusa Shiratori, the Golden Pair of Martial Arts Ice Skating.
  • Ranma and Akane can occasionally pull this off, like against a duo of dojo destroyers, but are more likely to fail epically because of their constant bickering.
• Bathhouse Blitz: Subverted when the family, with Ryōga in tow, goes to a hot spring resort. The usual antics occur, but a strange presence lurks about, eventually kidnapping Akane. Ranma ultimately defeats the strange intruder by luring it in using his girl form as bait, only to discover that the person preying on the resort guest is the owner himself. The resort is rundown and has fallen out of favor. By attacking guests from the shadows, he guarantees they will go back with wild stories of monsters and ghosts, attracting more curious tourist and warriors looking to test their mettle.
• 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 (long story) and all of them do this at once. In one arc, Happōsai and Genma keep one-upping each other...until they both faint from exhaustion.
  • Moreso in the anime, but Genma and Sōun can both become kaiju-sized, although Genma is always in his Panda form when he does this, and Sōun is always dressed as a samurai. This is regardless of whether or not Genma was human at the time... and Sōun just seems to keep his armor, spear and bow in Hammerspace in case he needs to make a quick costume change.
• Battle Baton: Martial Arts Cheerleading uses a cheerleader's baton as one of its associated weapons.
• Battle Harem: Ranma's Unwanted Harem is full of Action Girls. Not surprising, since he lives in a world where everybody gets their own style of martial arts.
• Beach Episode: Ranma 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.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Tendō sisters — Kasumi (Beauty), Nabiki (Brains) and Akane (Brawn).
• Beauty Contest: An episode has Ranma-chan, Akane, Ukyō, Kodachi, Shampoo and Tsubasa enter a (beach) beauty contest organized by Nabiki for various reasons. The winner? Kasumi, who was acting as the assistant and not actually taking part in the contest.
• Beautiful All Along: Inverted — Mousse is first introduced as what appears to be a stoic Bishōnen... and then he puts on those incredibly stupid-looking Nerd Glasses and proceeds to make an idiot of himself.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Konatsu, raised by a psychologically abusive family, latches onto Ukyō because she treats him better than they did. Not by much, still better.
  • This is the entire reason that Maomolin tries to "help" Ryōga win Akane's heart in the anime-only story "Ryōga's Proposal".
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Ranma and Akane — the Trope Codifiers for anime.
• Bemoaning the New Body: Young Saotome Ranma fell into a cursed pool while training in China. The curse causes him to become a girl when doused with cool water; warm water undoes this effect. Ranma's girl form causes no end of trouble for him, especially when meeting his host family, the Tendos. At the end of chapter one, Ranma is willing to swim all the way back to China to seek a way to break this curse.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Shampoo, and indeed, all of the Chinese Amazons.
• BFS: Being that the show is more a comedy than anything, it doesn't allow many blades of any size to get in.
  • Shampoo still manages to get away with swinging around a massive sabre in her first appearance, even if she does trade it for Carry a Big Stick afterwards. How big is it? The blade alone is roughly the same length as the distance between the bottom of Shampoo's pelvis and the top of her head. And she swings it around in one hand. While carrying a chui (a long-handled mace with a basketball sized solid steel head) in the other.
  • The anime-only character Kiini is a Giant Mook wielding a huge Chinese sword for devastating effect, including some physics-defying feats like using it like an helicopter rotor to fly.
• Big Bad: There isn't one, but Happōsai, Pantyhose Tarō, Ryū Kumon, Herb and Saffron have fit the role in long single story arcs.
• Big Damn Heroes: Quite a few times, but the best is when Ranma (who has all his strength taken away) is 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 Ryōga, who had stepped in the way and defeated all four of the foes.
• Big Eater:
  • Ranma and Genma, the latter more than the former, are regularly seen snacking at any opportunity and consuming large portions of food when they can. A minor recurring source of problems is one or both of them stealing other peoples' food.
  • The Chardin family practices a form of Martial Arts and Crafts based on this, Martial Arts Dining, which revolves around devouring huge amounts of food in extremely short spans of time.
  • Kurumi "Tendō" in the OAV eats with the speed and velocity of a Martial Arts Diner. She's such a glutton she can even eat Akane's food without complaint!
  • Nabiki Tendō 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 Kunō 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.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • Jusenkyō, the famous Valley of Cursed Springs, is capable of bestowing either Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck upon those who receive its magical touch- it all depends on what spring, specifically, a person falls into. Some springs provide definite superpowers, but these often have a drawback. Ones that give you a cursed form that may have some advantages go under Cursed with Awesome.
  • Anime-only Villain of the Week Kin'nee is a hulking brute of a fighter, but his Spring of Drowned Priest not only makes him a skinny little weakling barely half his true size, but also messes with his mind, making him timid, cowardly, and a devout pacifist.
  • Ranma accidentally ate Dragon Whisker Porridge while in China. This causes his hair to grow and grow, making it a genuine and perfect cure for baldness. As Ranma already has hair, however, if he doesn't keep it under control by using another Dragon's Whisker to tie it up, his hair will keep growing until he uses it up. A lifetime's supply of hair, burnt through in about a week, tops. His self-centered father couldn't care less when he finds out, immediately trying to steal the Whisker so he can cure his own baldness.
  • Ryōga's Shi Shi Hōkōdan is one of the most powerful attacks in the series. The downside? It's so powerful because it's powered by his depression... then again, with the aforementioned curse, the fact he has No Sense of Direction, his inability to confess his romantic feelings, the obliviousness of his desired one to said feelings, and the fact he has never been able to beat Ranma Saotome, it's no wonder that he's so depressed.
  • A story arc centers on Ryōga getting a special mark on his stomach that made him unbeatable in battle. Unfortunately, not only does the mark look ridiculous, but the only way to remove it was to defeat him in battle. Worse yet is that the mark shows up on his piglet form too, compromising his identity. He only got out of it by flexing his stomach muscles so the mark distorted and Ranma could defeat him.
  • Rouge hovers between this and Cursed with Awesome. As an Ashura, she can fly, has multiple arms, several faces, can breathe fire and hurl lightning... but, all those arms means she gets horrific backache. How bad is it? When Pantyhose Taro steals her magnetic backpain relievers, she goes on a rampage and chases him all the way from China to Japan to get them back, it hurts that much.
• Blind Without 'Em: Mousse
• Blow You Away: Ranma's most frequent Finishing Move is the Hiryū Shōten Ha, which creates a tornado. He's also fond of modifying it on the spot to beat the more serious enemies.
• Book Dumb: Ranma Saotome. He's known for his success with on-the-fly solutions, though he's also capable of coming up with intricate plans, such as the one he used to get Happōsai to change Pantyhose Tarō's name. He's attentive and smart, to the point where he can reproduce a martial arts move after seeing it only once and then find its weak spot. Too bad he's kind of Book Dumb in certain areas.
  Akane: Ranma, you do know what Romeo and Juliet are to each other, don't you?
  Ranma: Father and daughter, right?
• 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.
• Brainwashed Bride: Ranma suddenly falls head over heels in love with Shampoo after she ties the magical Red String of Fate around his finger, leading to a marriage proposal. Akane, not finding this situation amusing, foils Shampoo's plan by cutting the thread while pretending to be a helpful witness at their wedding.
• Brawler Lock: Ryōga does this with Girl-Type Ranma in the last bit of the Golden Pair arc (in the anime at least)
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In "Me is Kuno's Daddy, Me Is," after a dreary conclusion, Ranma pointedly asks...
  "Speaking of which, what was the point of this episode again?"
  • The manga had one moment where Mariko uses several moves reminiscent of young Goku in Dragon Ball (extending baton, standing on a "cloud" made of pompoms). Ranma demands to know which manga she thinks she's in.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Sometimes played for laughs, others for drama.
• Brought Down to Normal: When Happōsai uses moxibustion to rob Ranma of his prodigious strength, to the point where a toddler can beat him up.
• Bully Hunter:
  • Ranma does this occasionally, for example when she stops 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 Nerima Wrecking Crew.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The craziness of the Ranma world gets summed up in this exchange:
  Cologne: Master versus pupil... Father versus son... Oh, what horrors the Dragon's Whisker brings...
  Akane: Seems like a typical day with Ranma...
• 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.

C to D

• 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.
  • There's also The Crouch of the Wild Tiger — a "maneuver" that has the martial artist dropping on all fours and begging for mercy from the "target".
  • 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...
  • There's also the Carp on the Cutting Board... preluding the Cradle of Death.
  • Attack of a thousand clubs!!... it looks like she's using 10 or 20 clubs, because she IS using 10 or 20 clubs.
  • Then there's both the Yamasenken and Umisenken, which have some seven attacks each, with Ranma and Ryū calling each attack when they're used.
• Canon Foreigner: Sasuke Sarugakure, the Kunōs' Ninja servant, in the anime.
• Can't Catch Up: Akane and the Kunō 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.
• Capture and Replicate: Akane Tendō is captured and replaced with a double via Jusenkyō Spring.
• 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.
  Happōsai: Fool! Have you forgotten who I am? In my entire rotten life, have I ever once learned a technique that could actually help anyone?!
• Cartoon Juggling: Ranma-chan juggles in the shower variant in the season 1 eyecatch.
• Cast Full of Crazy: Starting off, about half the cast has curses that change them into different creatures. That aside, just about every character has one or more character flaws that are exaggerated to the point they ought to be committed.
• Character Catchphrase: 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!" Akane in particular typically uses both of her catchphrases at least Once per Episode.
• 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) seeing Ranma for the first time (but wearing girl's clothes,) hugging him, and suddenly standing in proper seppuku attire.
• Characterization Marches On: Rumiko Takahashi 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 as well as having an implied boy-crazy side.
• Character Development:
  • 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.
• Chef of Iron: Ukyō, 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.
  • 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.
  • Akane serves as a Dude Magnet, attracting a large number of male characters. Ranma's female form also qualifies as this.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Ukyō 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, 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.
• Children Do the Housework: The eldest of Soun Tendou's daughters, Kasumi, assumed the maternal role in her family after her mother died. Therefore, she handles most of the housework. The youngest daughter, Akane, looks up to Kasumi for her abilities in cooking and cleaning.
• Chocolate of Romance:
  • During Valentine's Day Akane ends up having to give some chocolate to Ranma as a favor. She spends the entire chapter trying to figure out how to make sure it's not from her. Ranma is cautious about her in case they're homemade while also nervously looking forward to it. Eventually Ranma gets the chocolate, but is dissapointed to learn the truth about it. Later that day it turns out Akane bought a tiny heart shaped chocolate, which Ranma gladly accepts.
  • Not chocolate but a reverse situation happens in a later story when Ranma has to give Akane what appears to be an engagement ring.
• Christmas Episode:
  • In the OVA episode "Tendo Family Christmas Scramble," Kasumi holds a Christmas party, and everyone is invited. All the characters are up to their usual antics - Akane, Shampoo, Kodachi, and Ukyo fight for Ranma, Ryoga and Kuno fight for Akane, Mousse fights for Shampoo's affections, and Soun and Genma try to engage Ranma with Akane.
  • In the regular episode "An Xmas Without Ranma," Ranma goes missing while Christmas shopping with Akane.
• 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, Tōfū 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: Akane, Shampoo, Ukyō and Kodachi.
• Clockwork Prediction: In one story, Ranma visits Doctor Tofu's office for treatment of some bokuto whacks delivered by an irate Akane. During treatment, Ranma concedes that their fathers have chosen them for an Arranged Marriage, but that he loathes the idea of a violent, "un-cute" wife. Doc Tofu advises Ranma that there's a more gentle side to Akane, and cleverly smacks Ranma above the sacrum as Ranma departs. After a few minutes, Doc Tofu eyes his clock, and counts down the seconds to zero, at which point, Ranma suddenly loses the use of his legs. Akane offers to carry Ranma piggyback to the Tendo home.
• Clothing Damage: Pretty much every time Ranma fights as a girl. Whenever Ranma saves Akane there's about a fifty-fifty shot of him accidentally damaging her clothes in the process.
• Cobweb of Disuse: Happens within minutes to the Tendō household when they temporarily lose all their money due to shenanigans involving Nabiki.
• Cold Touch Surprise: the episode "A Cold Day in Furinkan" sees Ranma putting his icy hands on Akane's face, causing her to squeal in protest.
• 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 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.
• Combat Parkour: Kodachi Kunō. Ranma Saotome uses this sort of fighting style in that he's prone to using a lot of flips, jumps, handstands, rolls and tumbles, all to either evade attack or beat on his opponent.
• Combat Pragmatist: Ranma and Genma. They've turned cheating, cheap shots, and taunting into an art form. Fear the mighty Crouch of the Wild Tiger! Beg for your life! Saotome Ultimate Technique! A special skill that relies on withdrawal, concealment, and deliberation. In other words, run away and hide until you can come up with a better idea.
  Genma: Hey, it's harder than it sounds!
• Comedic Sociopathy: The manga's comedy relies on the immediate cartoonish retribution for the selfishness and hubris from its characters, to the point that most of the gags fringe on Can't Get Away with Nuthin'. Behaving like a jerkass will exact a justified and hilarious punishment.
• Comedic Spanking:
  • In the manga, when Female Ranma disguises as Ryōga's (non-existent) little sister Yoiko, she once falls out of character and makes a rude comment to her "brother" before Akane. Ryōga doesn't approve of such language for a young lady, and thus give his "sister" a spanking. Note that Ryōga is super-strong, and as tough Ranma is, the ass-warming clearly hurts.
  • In another chapter, Ranma and Ryōga are age-regressed due to magical mushrooms. Ranma, the older at the moment, pushes Ryōga, and gets a spanking from Akane.
• Comedic Work, Serious Scene: There are a few serious moments in the series billed as a "martial arts sex comedy".
  • When Ryouga has to teach Akane to help her defeat a pair of girls claiming to be Soun Tendo's illegitimate daughters, he realizes that he would sabotage her if he remained, so he walks off sadly, but with the knowledge that at least he got to be the hero.
  • Ranma being cursed with the "Full Body Cat Tongue", which kept him from being able to resume his male form. Ranma is near tears when he realizes that unless he can beat Cologne, he may be forever stuck in girl form.
• The Comedy Drop: In an early episode, Ranma, in girl form, is clinging to a tree branch by her bare legs, trying to retrieve a kettle of hot water to return to male form. Kuno lands headfirst atop the kettle, which Ranma still manages to hold aloft. Kuno, who is unaware of Ranma's Gender Bender curse, asks the "pigtailed girl" if she's seen Ranma, which she denies. Kuno declares that Ranma is a coward who is not a man. Cue girl-type Ranma dropping Kuno in a fit of pique.
• Comic-Book Time: The whole damn series. Ranma and Akane are forever 16, despite several Christmases passing and one episode even referencing the three-year anniversary of Ranma's arrival at the dojo.
• Compressed Adaptation: Unusually for a manga to anime adaptation. Starting with the show's second season, while the anime has a lot of Adaptation Expansion with copious filler episodes, the episodes directly adapting manga stories tend to shorten those stores to a bare minimum for reaching the plot's conclusion. The "Hot Springs Obstacle Course" story arc, for example, cuts half a manga volume's worth of gags in order to fit the story into one episode.
• Congruent Memory: Kunō once learns an absolutely devastating Tornado Move that can beat even Ranma after some Training from Hell. Problem is, it is intended purely as a watermelon-cutting move, and Tatewaki is only able to use it if there are watermelons around to target.
• Continuity Nod:
  • To Akane and [male] Ranma's first encounter, twice: Shinnosuke running into Akane in the bath (confirming his identity to her) and Kiima posing as Akane walking in on Ranma in the exact same pose and angles as in the introductory chapter.
  • Remember how Akane can't swim to save her life? Rumiko Takahashi did when she dropped her in a Jusenkyō spring.
• Contrived Coincidence: Played for Laughs. Albeit she spent quite a while chasing Ranma to kill her, having multiple encounters throughout, Shampoo wouldn't realize that Ranma is a him until she zeroed on Ranma in Japan. On all those previous encounters, Ranma was somehow always in girl form.
• Cooking Duel: Practically every third episode, at least two involved actual cooking. See Martial Arts and Crafts for some examples.
• Cool Old Lady: Sentarō Daimonji's grandmother, the head of the Orthodox School of Martial Arts Tea Ceremony. In the anime she comes across as one of a few adult characters who isn't an incompetent, pompous buffoon. While her first meeting with Ranma starts off rocky, she develops a genuine liking for him that doesn't involve underhanded tactics, and often apologizes whenever Sentaro drags Akane and himself into situations Sentaro's too incompetent to handle himself. In return, Ranma actually seems to like her back! The anime-only story "The Matriarch Takes a Stand" has Ranma willingly go and give the old lady a leg massage when he's asked, and he is genuinely happy to do so, although he mentions he'd like to have a rematch with her as a result.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Akane Tendō. For reasons that are probably understandable only by herself, the girl seems to consider any recipe as always being in need of improvement... and her choice of extra ingredients is always deleterious. In her first attempt at cooking that we see, she mixes up wine and vinegar when making curry — then "fixes" the mistake by adding sugar, mayonnaise, and wasabi. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, even she finds her concoctions to be thoroughly inedible, if she ever tastes them. Her main problem is that she never actually tastes the food before she serves it, occasionally being offended if the subject is even raised. Needless to say, nobody except Ryōga Hibiki is willing to even touch her food unless intimidated or guilted into doing so. Later in the manga she does make edible curry and tries it prior to serving it. In the anime she also learns to prepare Tōfū and boil water.
• Counter-Attack:
  • The Hiryū Shōten Ha, allows Ranma to use his enemies attack energy to create a devastating tornado uppercut.
  • Almost all the techniques in the Umi-Sen Ken style are specific counters to the Yama-Sen Ken.
• Covert Pervert: Akane and Ukyō 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.
• Cover Version: During the OVA episode "Tendo Family Christmas Scramble", the female members of the Saotome-Tendo household (aka DoCo) since a cover of Equal Romance, the 2nd ending theme by CoCo.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Most of the male suitors.
• Crippling the Competition: Kodachi Kunō tries doing this to Ranma before their big match. However, Akane thwarts each effort. Ryōga also tries to beat up Ranma before the match, but the fight lasts the entire night without a winner.
• Crosscast Role: The school play is the first time Akane is ever actually asked to play Juliet instead of Romeo.
• Crossdresser: Ukyō, 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).
• Cross-Popping Veins
• Curse: The keystone and main plot driver of the series.
• Curse Escape Clause: Shampoo is captured by Maomolin to be its bride. She easily beats him up and tries to leave, however a curse is already put on her. With more beating up and a threat of her commiting suicide, she manages to force it to create a way to break the curse: a kiss from her true love, specifically with Ranma in mind. Later when Mousse and Akane learns about this they are not happy about it.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Ranma's Jusenkyō curse, according to some people, though he would not agree. The theory that Ranma is under some curse that makes him a Weirdness Magnet counts if you believe it — though in this case it would be an example of Ranma not minding the curse.
  • Ranma does utilize some awesomeness from his curse, including eating sweets that would normally be unmanly, and using his alternate form as a secret identity, and even distracting his more perverted enemies.
  • Ryoga's pig form is a great disability in most situations, but he does get to cuddle up with the woman he loves every night. And when he gets a new love interest, she loves pigs.
  • Canonically, Pantyhose Tarō and Rouge; both of them have Jusenkyō curses that cause them to transform into super powered, if bizarre, alternate forms. Pantyhose Tarō becomes a kind of flying minotaur that later gains Combat Tentacles. Rouge sprouts four new arms and two more faces while gaining the ability to fly, hurl lightning bolts, and breath fire.
• Cut Short: Two-fold:
  • The anime as a whole was officially ended after the introduction of Nodoka, and whilst some of the multi-chapter story arcs were converted to OAVs, it never reached the manga's "failed wedding" finale.
  • Certain anime episodes adapting multi-chapter story arcs from the manga would also cut down on content, usually because otherwise these would not reach the span of a third episode without Padding. The best example of this is Taro's first story, which ditches the entire segment of the Nerima Wrecking Crew taking Happosai back to Nerima and trying to use Mind Control to coerce him into changing Taro's name, only to fail and require a final battle before the storyline ends; the Anime simply has them catch Happosai after Taro's defeat and give the old pervert to him.
• Cute Little Fangs: Ryōga, primarily, though Rumiko Takahashi's art-style allowed virtually every member of the cast to acquire them during at least one rant through the course of the manga. Ryōga's name means "good fang", so in his case it's a Meaningful Name.
• A Day in the Limelight: Nabiki's "Ten Yen Bet" arc. It allows her to have her own set of wacky adventures, and "love interest", with Ranma and Akane as the 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 Jusenkyō has acquired this reputation.
• Deadpan Snarker: Nabiki of course, though most of the cast have their moments in occasion.
• Death by Cameo: The Inuyasha cast appear as corpses in Ova 13.
• 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:
  • Sōun, whenever he needs to jolt Ranma into doing something that he wants, usually involving swallowing his pride and being nice to Akane.
  • Kasumi and Nabiki also pull a Demon Head during the Chardin arc.
• Depending on the Artist: The TV series has 161 episodes, styles will depending on the Animation Directors.
  • Atsuko Nakajima. Being the series character designer, her episodes are the most consistent and detailed among the animation directors.
  • Asami Endo. The characters eyes and faces are rounder with wacky expressions used on occasion.
  • Masako Goto. The hair are drawn bigger while the faces are more narrow.
  • Hiroko Kazui. A handful of scenes make use of strong lighting and shadows.
  • Satoru Isono. The style sports more triangular features with fairly tame expressions.
  • Katsumi Hashimoto. The characters are drawn noticeably looser. The faces expression tend to be more squiggly when the characters are distressed.
• Determinator: Just about every martial artist in the main cast has pulled this act off at least once.
• Deus Angst Machina: Ryōga Hibiki. This, Wangst, or neither?
• Didn't Think This Through: This is the bread and butter of all the mishaps in the series.
  • In the Martial Arts Figure Skating Arc, Ryoga diving in a pool to save Akane from drowning. For split second, he forgot about his pig transformation.
  • In Ranma is stuck as a girl for his fight against Mousse. However he didn't account that his limbs are shorter as a girl. Even more so as he's still shorter than Mousse as a boy.
  • In the Happo Fire-Burst Scroll Arc, when Ranma and the others couldn't read the scroll, they've decided to force Happosai to read it for them. However, Akane points out that Happosai can use it against them to get revenge.
  • In the Paper Dolls of Love Arc, Gosunkugi attaches a paper doll on Akane to go on a date him tomorrow. Except that he did not specify what day is tomorrow. Which means Akane would always be waiting for tomorrow.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: 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 & Lung-lung's hypnotic music tape, Yuka and Sayrui sing it karaoke style in one filler episode, and there's plenty of other times it shows up, sometimes as actual background music to what's happening on strings.
• Diegetic Visual Effects: When Kodachi Kuno's childhood rival, Asuka Saginomiya, is first introduced, she is wreathed with a bunch of white lilies, which is supposed to reflect her beauty and elegance, and her nickname. When she stands up, it is revealed that she actually has a white lily bouquet tied on her back.
• Different for Girls: Explicitly lampshaded.
• Dirty Old Man: Happōsai.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Many characters have done this on whim, usually Played for Laughs. However, Shampoo, Happōsai, Saffron, Nabiki, and Herb are easily the most extreme cases.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: Technically speaking, Akane is the fiancée of Ranma who has the most valid claim:
  • Akane was promised to Ranma as per agreement between their parents to marry the boy to one of the Tendō sisters in order to inherit the dojo. It's in a formal status to boot with cohabitation, and it's repeatedly shown that Akane is the only girl Ranma recognizes as his fiancée;
  • Shampoo is applying the rules of her village, which dictate that Ranma is her fiance by virtue of having defeated her in combat. Thing is, Ranma does not have to abide to said rules, nor he recognizes her as a fiancée;
  • Ukyō is unfortunate at the fact that Ranma was already promised to one of the Tendō sisters when Genma tricked her dad into appropriating his okonomiyaki cart as part of a dowry of a betrothal with Ukyō that Genma did not intend to honor. As it was Genma's offense, Ranma doesn't have to honor the betrothal if he doesn't want to, which he doesn't. Albeit Ukyō basically dropped the claim for the offense, she wants to be Ranma's fiancée out of her own mere desires, which constitutes a lesser claim than Akane's;
  • Kodachi simply has no claim and is only superficially infatuated with him, to the point that Ranma both doesn't have to, or want to, give their "betrothal" even a smidge of consideration.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Arguably, Happousai's only weakness is he is easily distracted by girls' underwear or girls in various states of undress.
• The Ditz: Azusa, Hinako. To a lesser extent Rouge and Konatsu.
• Divided into Disaster: episode 62, the Nerima Wrecking Crew attend a game show with a chance to win a trip to China. At one point, contestants are handcuffed together. Groupings include Ranma and his romantic rival, Ryoga, Shampoo with her Abhorrent Admirer Mousse, Genma with his bullying master, Happosai, and the Kuno siblings, who despise each other, together.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • Ryōga, through and through. It's played up much more in the original manga, but in either version when his mind wanders, he tends to destroy everything he's touching.
  • It's possible that Shampoo might also be an example of this... or simply that she gets a kick out of proving how strong she is by demolishing everything in her path.
  • Akane occasionally does more damage than she intends, most commonly to Ranma.
• A Dog Named "Cat": Kodachi's pet, Mr. Turtle, is actually a crocodile.
• Dogs Are Dumb:
  • In the second animated movie, the dog-man Wonton is the absolute stupidest of the three Half-Human Hybrids, though he is still a surprisingly capable fighter.
  • Averted with the actual canine, Shirokuro/Checkers, though, who is very intelligent and, in all honesty, probably smarter than Ryōga.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The 3rd ending of the TV series is sung by the voice actors, but outside of that this is more prevalent in the OVA's than the TV series.
  • In the Italian dub, the first opening (Jajauma ni Sasanaide) is sung by Massimiliano Alto and Monica Ward, the Italian dub voice actors for Ranma's male and female forms respectively.
• Domestic Appliance Disaster: Akane isn't just a Lethal Chef, she's a walking disaster in a kitchen, to Kasumi's dismay. The most stand-out example is the manga story (and corresponding OVA) introducing Nodoka Saotome. Akane is once again trying to make dinner to impress Ranma's mother, but she forgot to cook the eggs. So, pressed for time, she puts them in the microwave oven. The worst part is that even Ranma, who's been pretty much reared on the road, knows you should never do that, and try to warn Akane, who is clueless. Right on cue, the eggs explode from the microwaves, sending the oven door flying across the kitchen, hitting a hot water pipe — which result in everybody present getting drenched and the rest of the food being ruined.
• 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...
• Do You Want to Haggle?: To get back at Ranma for accidentally destroying an expensive concert ticket, Nabiki dedicates an entire day to making him miserable. At the end of the chapter, Nabiki manipulates him into thinking she took off all her clothes. Her family happens to come home at the same time and they both know he'll get in trouble if they're caught in such a situation. After he urges her to put some clothes on, they start haggling over her price for getting dressed.
  Nabiki: Fifty dollars.
  Ranma: Too much! Twenty dollars!
  Nabiki: Forty-five dollars.
  Ranma: Robber! Thirty dollars!
  Nabiki: Done! A pleasure doing business with you.
• Dramatic Irony: Had Sōun Tendō and Genma Saotome let Ranma and Akane's relationship develop at its own pace, they might well be looking at a happily married couple with children on the way. Instead, since Sōun and Genma are both desperate, and are constantly scheming and plotting to force the two teens together, Ranma, who rightfully hates Genma's guts for constantly trying to ruin his life since age 5, and actively endangering it thanks to the Seppuku clause with Nodoka, his mother, for his own amusement, and Akane who deeply resents her father arranging her marriage (basically selling her out) to a guy he never met, filial obligation or no, and bringing all of Ranma's problems into her life causes the both of them to rebel and lash out, and the more their parents try to push them together, the more they push each other away.
• Dramatic Wind: A frequent occurrence during fights and comedic scenes. Somewhat more noticeable in the anime, where you can actually hear the wind.
• Drives Like Crazy: The entire main cast (sans Nabiki and Kasumi) in episode 119. This is only slightly justified due to it being a race.
• Dysfunction Junction: Part of the sheer appeal of the series is just how crazy everybody is, and how dysfunctional they all are when put together.
  • Ranma and Akane are what you get when you combine a guy with deep-rooted insecurities and less than stellar social skills that means he tends to act pretty childish with a girl who also has deep-rooted insecurities, has a hair-trigger temper, tends to react with violence when angry, and resents the guy for a lot of reasons (some justified, others not).
  • Ranma & Genma's familial relationship is just as screwed up; Genma has routinely abused, fought with and stolen from his son his whole life, and as a result Ranma has no respect for him, leading to frequent shouted arguments and violent brawls.
  • Ranma's relationship with his mother Nodoka is equally screwed up; they haven't seen each other since they were kids, and in fact Nodoka has sworn a pact with Genma that she will force Ranma & Genma to commit seppuku if Ranma fails to be what she considers a sufficiently manly man!
  • Ranma's other "would-be girlfriends" consist of Shampoo (a girl who initially tried to kill Ranma for defeating her in battle, and still tricks and deceives him to try and get him to go on dates), Ukyō (whom Ranma didn't know was actually a girl until she came seeking revenge for Genma getting them engaged and then running off with her dowry), and Kodachi (the kind of girl who thinks paralyzing Ranma and trying to rape him is romantic).
  • Shampoo is pursued by Mousse; he thinks of himself as a Dogged Nice Guy who is only kept from marrying Shampoo by old-fashioned laws that compel her to marry Ranma. Shampoo, in return, makes it clear that she loves Ranma as well as being obliged to marry him and she thinks of Mousse as an annoying Stalker with a Crush she's had to put up with since they were kids, resulting in her showering abuse on him.
  • Ryoga Hibiki resents Ranma for always being the better martial artist, and also wants to steal Akane Tendo's heart from him... whilst Akane is totally ignorant of Ryoga's feelings for her. Ryoga also pretends to be Akane's pet pig, which he can frequently use to get Ranma in trouble with Akane, but which he knows is a deception that Akane would never forgive him for if she learned the truth.
  • Soun and Genma's master, who by extension is Ranma & Akane's master, is Happosai; a shameless old degenerate who is more interested in harassing women and bullying people than actually teaching.

E to F

• Easy Amnesia:
  • Shinnosuke, guardian of the Forest of Ryūgenzawa.
  • There's a pressure point technique that can not only erase certain facts from the victim's memory, but also prevents the victim from re-learning the fact in the future.
  • Kuno wipes out his entire memory after accidentally hitting himself in the head with a bokken whilst trying to smash a watermelon that had landed there. He then undoes the amnesia by repeating this exact same feat.
• Eating the Eye Candy: There are several scenes from the point of view of Ranma's various would-be lovers showing just why they consider Ranma to look good. In Akane's case, the girl most likely to get this (she's the other half of the Official Couple, of course she gets this the most), this almost inevitably prompts Ranma to say something that points out why "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" still references Jerkass.
• Ecchi: Mostly of the comedic misunderstanding variety, but that doesn't discourage skin from showing in the slightest.
• Education Through Pyrotechnics: In "School Is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga" the Chem Club students want to get their hands on Akane and decide to make bombs, which they of course accidentally set off in the chemistry lab (and wind up setting off accidentally during the battle when the mines fail to go off during Ranma and Ryoga's fight).
• 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, Ukyō 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 "Awesome Tarō."
• End-of-Series Awareness: The final episode of the anime ended with Ranma and Akane saying goodbye to the audience and running off.
  Ranma: We waiting for something, Akane?
  Akane: No. We're done.
  Ranma: Shall we?
  Akane: Yup.
  Ranma & Akane: [to the audience as they run off] See ya!
• Enemy Mine: Whenever some kind of greater threat arrives, Ranma will unite with any of his technical enemies to overcome them. Ranma himself mostly does this with Ryoga, but he also has worked with Mousse on occasion. The girls are much less likely to do this, but have on rare occasions teamed up as well.
• Energy Absorption: English teacher Hinako Ninomiya.
• Establishing Series Moment: A girl and a panda fighting in the rain, with the girl complaining about the panda picking out her fiance.
• Even the Guys Want Him: During the Koi Rod arc Ranma (in both his male and female forms) falls in love with Ryōga, causing much rejoicing from the shippers.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Anything-Goes insert-what-have-you-here.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Dojo Destroyer, Principal Kunō, (Kunō Kōchō in Japanese) whose given name was never revealed. The Jusenkyō Guide is only ever called "Mr. Guide" by the cast and "Father" by his daughter.
• Evil Feels Good: 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 is an altruist who frequently gets victimized for her sister's misdeeds, and is characterized by her perpetual frown in comparison to Pink's perpetual smile.
• Evil Old Folks: Happōsai, possibly Cologne.
• Evil Twin: Kiima, after she used the Akaneniichuan.
• Evil Versus Evil: Kodachi Kuno against Asuka Saginomiya in the manga, and what one would most likely describe Nabiki against Kinnosuke Kashao. The former is a battle between an Alpha Bitch and an Alpha Bitch over who has the best boyfriend, using tactics like paralysis power, explosives, and kidnapping. The latter involves Nabiki, who regularly cons unsuspecting boys out of their money through dates and blackmail, going up against a guy whose entire martial arts dogma is built on drowning opponents in debt. Their entire match escalates to a bill for over one billion yen, with Nabiki taking the time to foist some of her bills on Akane and Ranma. This bit of dialog between Akane and Ranma, after Kinnosuka plummets to the ground from a helicopter, sums up the two nicely.
  Akane: What a terrifying man... wouldn't spend 10 yen to save his life.
  Ranma: I'm more terrified of your sister, who wouldn't give him the parachute for free!
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Spring of Drowned Yeti holding an Eel and Crane while Riding an Ox.
• Exact Words: The episode "The Matriarch Takes A Stand." The matriarch of the Daimonji School of Martial Arts Tea Ceremony announces she plans to "take a stand" while her school is preparing for an important tea ceremony. This shocks the majority of the school, with the three elder teachers explaining to Sentaro the sort of horrible implications that could arise for the matriarch's new stand. The situation escalates to Ranma being kidnapped for whatever sort of thing the matriarch is going to do. It turns out she's taking a stand as in standing up. Her school's fighting style is based around being seated at all time, so she wanted to stretch her legs. Ranma was only brought in to give her legs a massage because they're numb.
• Expy: A surprising number of ties/similarities can be drawn between the characters of Ranma 1/2 and those of Urusei Yatsura.
  • Ranma himself combines the basic concept of Ryuunosuke Fujinami (to whit: badass attractive teenage warrior with artificially imposed gender issues) with Ataru Moroboshi's penchant for attracting weirdness and biological gender.
  • Genma Saotome is a toned down version of Ryuunosuke's father, and in the original Japanese dub he was voiced by the same actor who voiced Ataru Moroboshi's father in the anime for Urusei Yatsura.
  • Ukyō Kuonji is a direct translation of Ryuunosuke Fujinami (bifauxnen teenage martial artist), sans the gender issues and Abusive Parents. Her would-be suitors Tsubasa Kurenai and Konatsu both take similar inspiration from Ryuunosuke's fiance, Nagisa; Tsubasa is the closer translation, being as much of an annoying pervert as Nagisa, whilst Konatsu is a gender-flipped version of Kaede the runaway Kunoichi combined with Nagisa's Bishōnen Wholesome Crossdresser schtick and the Dogged Nice Guy angle of Inaba.
  • Akane Tendo is what Shinobu Miyake would have been if she was never Demoted to Extra.
  • Shampoo is essentially the Ranmaverse version of Lum; a beautiful exotic foreigner with unnaturally colored hair who is hellbent on wedding the male protagonist and whose foreignness to Japan is a source for comedic trouble. The primary difference (outside of species) is that Lum displaced Shinobu as the female half of the Official Couple and Shampoo didn't.
  • A bit of a stretch, but Ryoga and Mousse are a Decomposite Character version of Rei. Ryoga got Rei's status as a powerful and intimidating physical threat to his romantic rival, who is the male protagonist. Mousse is directly connected to Shampoo (this series' analog to Lum) and shares Rei's status as being an initially very handsome youth who is let down by physical flaws (in Mousse's case, his Nerd Glasses, vs. Rei's gluttony and Involuntary Shapeshifting). Neither is a Big Eater like Rei, but they share his animorphism trait via their Jusenkyo curses. Also, neither Ryoga nor Mousse is as stupid as Rei.
  • The Kuno siblings are literally the Mendou siblings, albeit Kodachi is more flamboyant and less manipulative than Ryoko, whilst Tatewaki lack's Shutaro's suaveness and instead blatantly wears the fact that he is a Handsome Lech. It apparently wasn't lost on Takahashi herself that the Kunos were Expys of the Mendous, as Takahashi had lobbied for Mendou's voice actor, Akira Kamiya, to voice Kuno, but Kitty went with Hirotaka Suzuoki —who had voiced Inaba!—instead.
  • Happosai is basically Sakuranbo with Ataru's perversion.
  • Soun Tendo combines elements of both Ataru's parents.
• Extreme Doormat: Konatsu has literally had most of the will to fight beaten out of him over years of systemic physical, verbal and emotional abuse by his stepmother and stepsisters. Consequently, he's about as good at standing up for himself as a wet noodle.
• Extreme Omnivore: Kurumi in the OAVs can eat six-course meals prepared by Akane and ask for seconds. Ranma supposedly gained this ability from a "noodle of strength" (which would come in handy with Akane), but it was never mentioned again.
• Eye Catch: The first season had Ranma (girl type) juggling things, and Genma (panda type) eating things, but starting in the second season the eyecatches changed to chibi versions of Akane and Ranma, which would be used for the majority of the series. The first has Akane swatting at Ranma (boy type) with a broom but landing on P-chan, while the other has Akane (with P-chan on her head) practicing martial arts on a retreating Ranma (boy type), who backflips into a tub of water held by panda-Genma, transforming into girl-type Ranma.
• 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.^note With one exception. Ryoga eventually walks away from the Love Dodecahedron. Of course, this happens in the final chapter
• Fake First Kiss: Officially, Ranma and Akane don't kiss (at least in the anime), but the first attempt was when both become the protagonists of the Romeo and Juliet against their will just to unify them. Finally the last scene when they both kiss comes true for all the rest, except for these two since Akane ducktaped Ranma before kissing him◊.
• Familial Chiding: Shortly after Shampoo arrived and started pursuing boy-type Ranma romantically, Akane is very put out. Soun tries to suggest to her in a loving and fatherly way that she should just admit her true feelings for Ranma. this backfires horribly, as Akane shouts at him, "No way!" Soun ends up crying to his eldest daughter, "Kasumi, she yelled at me!" Akane in turn silently chides her father, "He doesn't have to cry about it."
• Fan Disservice: Genma is sometimes nude when he changes back from panda form... Fortunately, usually averted — he seems to have eventually mastered the art of magically appearing clothing. Plus some of his fans wouldn't object too much.
• Fanservice:
  • 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)
• Fat Bastard:
  • Genma isn't exactly father material as he's incredibly selfish and willing to dump responsibilities on Ranma.
  • Also the Dojo Destroyer.
• 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 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 Leg Swish: In the first episode, Nabiki is shown in a pair of short shorts absently kicking her legs back and forth when her father, Soun, comes to call her to be prepared to meet Ranma. In this instance it is used to show off the attractiveness of Nabiki's legs, as we quickly learn she has no feminine charm whatsoever.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Kasumi's defining trait and a source of major angst for Akane; this is also Ukyō'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: More than one story arc/episode involves spending at least some time at a festival.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Although all three of them are fighters, the main three male characters can be fitted to this archetype: the strong, tough, straightforward Ryoga is the Fighter, the tricky, deceptive and physically less-adept Mousse is the Mage, and surprisingly it's the cunning, agile, devious Ranma who is the Thief, despite being the protagonist and generally accepted as the overall strongest of them.
• Fight Unscene: Played Straight more and more often over the course of the Anime.
• 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.
• Fire/Ice Duo: Ranma vs. Saffron. Ranma's Finishing Move is the Hiryu Shoten Ha, a tornado technique that requires the user to have a icy cold Battle Aura to contrast the hot angry aura of the opponent. This is taken to full effect with Saffron who is a humanoid phoenix that specialises in fire attacks. During their battle, Saffron and Ranma also wield the Kinjakan and Gekkaja, Legendary Weapons that generate extreme heat and cold respectively. This allows Ranma to amplify his Hiryu Shoten Ha with the heat of Saffron's literal flames to lethal levels.
• First Girl Wins: Played with. The underlying ethos of the manga is that, yes, Ranma met almost all of the girls before he met Akane, and Akane herself tends to lag behind them in terms of girlyness and martial prowess, but he was promised to Akane first, so he honors that promise first and foremost.
• First Kiss:
  • Ranma's first kiss was forced upon him by a guy he hated: Handsome Lech Mikado Sanzennin. While he was transformed into a girl. Poor Ranma runs away screaming and crying, and Akane doesn't blame him at all.
  • Ranma's first kiss in his guy form is from Shampoo, much to Akane Tendō's ire.
  • If one counts the time Akane kissed "P-Chan" on his snout, then her first kiss was unintentionally with Ryōga. (No wonder Ranma was furious.) Due to being unaware of P-chan's true identity, Aakne herself considers her first kiss to have been with Ranma while he was under the Cat-Fist.
• Flanderization: Outside of Ranma, Akane and Ryoga, the characters get a lot more simplified and one-dimensional over the course of the manga. One of the more prominent examples is Ukyō, who was introduced as the non-violent fiancee who wanted to harmlessly get Akane out of the way so she and Ranma could be together, going on to try to kill Nabiki to take Ranma for herself, then to tearing down Ranma's family home, and then finally to attacking Ranma & Akane's wedding ceremony as a Mad Bomber. Less prominent examples are Nabiki, who went from merely an amoral but clever opportunist to being so greedy that she sold wedding invitations to Ranma's would-be fiancees and love rivals, and Kasumi, who went from a standard Yamato Nadeshiko who had her limits to a ditzy living saint.
• Flirty Voice Ploy: If Ranma needs something from someone, and he can't get it by brute force, count on him to use his girl form and a flirty voice to try and get it. Particularly if the target is Ryoga.
• Flung Clothing: Kodachi, more than once, changing to her leotard.
• Fool's Map: One episode has Ranma and Ryōga trying to find some artifacts that would cure their Jusenkyō curses using a map that Cologne has deciphered for them. It leads them all around Nerima before ending up back at Cologne's ramen shop. Ranma naturally thinks this is in effect and attacks, but in the process uncovers the very thing he was looking for.
• Forged Message: In the anime episode "Genma Takes a Walk", one of the pushes to end the petty fight between his and Akane's fathers is Ranma having written a pair of insulting letters of challenge on behalf of both parties to each other, off-screen. Akane realizes this on-screen, while enraged fathers fall for it not without throwing in some remarks about opponent's bad handwriting, etc.
• Forgot I Couldn't Swim: During the Phoenix Pill arc, Akane sees Ranma getting pounded to paste by Cologne in a duel at the beach (which has now moved to the ocean). She valiantly dives headfirst into the ocean to assist her fiancé... leaving Kasumi and Nabiki to wonder if she had ever learned to swim. And now Ranma has to rescue her too on top of everything else.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Ranma, Akane, Ryoga are definitely Conflicted, and Soun counts as a Conflicted as well. Nabiki is a textbook Cynic and Genma is highly Apathetic, while Kasumi is an eternal Optimist. Ultimately, Ukyō is a Realist.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Ranma and Akane are both between Sanguine and Choleric: Ranma is pretty much Fun Personified and cheerful most of the time, but he has an arrogant and cocky Sore Loser side; Akane is a friendly Nice Girl most of the time but is overly touchy and has a Hair-Trigger Temper. Kasumi is Phlegmatic, Soun and Ryoga are melancholic, while Genma and Nabiki are, ironically, a combination of Phlegmatic and Choleric (while rather calm, they're actually selfish and greedy jerks, especially Nabiki). Ukyō can be considered as a Sanguine/Choleric as Akane and Ranma.
• Freaky Is Cool: "So, when is Ranma gonna turn back into a guy?" "Hey, fine by me if he stays a girl."
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In this screen shot◊ taken from the anime Nabiki can be seen reading a volume of the Ranma manga. It also counts as Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
• Friendly Enemy: Ranma and Ryōga, after the first few stories. Much as Ryōga is fixated on beating Ranma (which becomes more simply being the Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy then revenge pretty quick), he is perfectly willing to help Ranma out, Ranma has no qualms about helping Ryōga, and the two are generally quick to make alliances of convenience. Of course, they're equally quick to fall out again, but what do you expect? Shampoo and Ukyō have some elements of this... in the manga, this usually results in one of their more villainous moments.
• Fruit of the Loon: The loon is Principal Kunō, the fruit is pineapples. Any questions?
• Furo Scene: A fair amount of action occurs in and around the Tendō home's furo as well as public baths elsewhere in Nerima. Considering the cast's involuntary transformations are caused by exposure to hot/cold water, scenes in the furo are almost always because of the need to turn back to their usual form. If it's not, they'll end up changing before the story is over.