Character · Ranma 1/2
Ranma Saotome
Cold water makes him a girl, hot water changes him back, and his father turns into a panda, which nobody planned.
In Otakana the clue reads: Martial artist who becomes a girl in cold water
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Ranma 1/2
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Ranma Saotome trained at Jusenkyo in China, a valley of springs where every pool drowned something once and now curses whoever falls in. He fell into the spring of the drowned girl. His father landed in the panda one. Neither of them mentions this when they arrive at the Tendo house to complete an engagement arranged years earlier, and the reveal happens by kettle.
The curse is permanent and temperature-triggered, so the comedy writes itself for about nine years. Rain, tea, baths and open drains all count. Ranma fights as either form, wins mostly on speed and improvisation, and treats the transformation as an insult rather than a subject for reflection, which is exactly the kind of restraint that lets a gag survive thirty-eight volumes.
Rumiko Takahashi began the series in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 1987, having already written Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, and it made her one of the best-selling comics artists in the world. Ranma is engaged to Akane, pursued by several other people, and pursued in girl form by a few more, and the plot machinery mostly consists of everyone arriving at the same house at once.
Spelling RANMA
RANMA is five letters and the NM pair is the only place to slip. Written 乱馬, the characters mean chaos and horse, which is a fair description of him. The game wants the given name rather than Saotome. Two A's around a hard middle, no long vowel, no doubled letter, and the R stays a real R instead of turning into one of the L swaps this game keeps throwing at you.