Ranma 1/2 volume 3

Ranma and Akane put on their ice-skates to finally duel with the ‘Golden Pair”, Azusa and Mikaao. The victors of the battle win the pig P-Chan and the loser gets nothing. As always, the events get crazy and everybody is fighting for the love of someone else and by the end of it nobody is really sure what happened.

As I started reading this trade paperback, I couldn’t help but feel the series Ranma ½ was going nowhere. The transformation of the characters into different forms was unlike anything I’ve read before, but I was starting to think this premise was getting stale after about three trades. Rumiko Takahashi can write funny situations and her gag timing is almost perfect, but the stories were being told over again in different ways.

Ranma 1/2 volume 2

The adventures of Ranma, Akane and Ryoga continue in this second edition. This series is jam-packed with crazy love triangles; everyone is smitten with someone else but no one is able to get together. In poor Ranma’s case, he’s just trying to avoid the whole affair. Everyone seems to fall in love with Ranma whether he is a boy or if he’s turned into his female form.

Ranma 1/2 volume 1

Both martial artist Ranma Saotome and his father are cursed. They were training and honing their skills in China at a legendary place where they were surrounded by magical pools, sparring on the tops of bamboo sticks. Ranma’s father fell into the “spring of drowned panda” and who ever falls into that pool takes on the body of a big ole panda bear. Ranma, shocked by the transformation of his father and surprised by what happened, couldn’t fight off his panda dad and so he was tossed into a neighbouring pool, the “spring of drowned girl.” And if you hazard a guess at what happened next you’re most likely right. Ranma surfaces with a girl’s body, breasts and all. Boy was he surprised.