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Let's Keep It Friends
I am, for some inexplicable reason, re-watching the Ranma 1/2 anime for the first time since, oh, 1996. A friend of my sister's bringing some Ranma tapes, and a tape of AMVs from a local con, over to our house was really my first exposure to modern-day fandom in a community sense, (and also the first manga/anime I ever encountered) so it's been interesting going back to my roots, in a way.
Things I have learned so far (Note that I only just finished season 1, and have forgotten most of what happens later, if I even finished watching them all):
a) I am totally on Team Nabiki right now. And team Nabiki/Kuno (pairing order relevant). I don't even remember her from way back when.
b) Ranma is actually full of really interesting things about identity/embodiment/gender/sexuality, especially as various people get more comfortable with changing forms, even filtered through the adolescence metaphor. And also I could stare into Ranma's personal working gender theory for hours. I did, back when I first watched this fifteen years ago and had never seen anything like it - I mean, literally stared into space pondering Ranma's personal gender theory - but I was half-expecting it to be disappointing in retrospect now that I've spent all this time in fandom and learning about RL gender theory and growing up and not being adolescent any more and things. Not... so much. It's still fascinating.
c) None of the fic I can find explores any of this, not even anything that seems to really look at Ranma in a genderqueer or gender theory way, beyond just "he turns into a girl" (and Ranma is so very genderqueer in canon, the way he's so awkward with boy-ness and revels so in the girl form, and the way she's so... comfortable with Akane when she's being herself.)
d) The animation, on the other hand, is a lot crappier than I remember it being. Alas. I taught myself to draw half from Rumiko manga (which probably still shows.)
e) The anime is also saying a lot more about class than I remember. I think the subtitles in the version I'm watching are making that a lot more clear than in the manga or the one I watched ages ago. Partly, the way the martial-arts kids are sort of a class of their own, but also: Ranma. Who travels the world with his father, who seems to have no concept of a home of his own, who never, ever turns down a chance at food, who has spent more time out of school than in it (I'm starting to watch carefully to see how much evidence there is in canon that he can even read, or read well.) I'm also kind of wanting to go find out if there's an ethnic Travellers tradition in East Asia like the European/American ones that I keep trying to mentally slot him in to.
f) Still damn racist though. Sigh.
g) Where is the queer/genderqueer/poly Ranma/Ryouga/Akane OT3 epic of love and fluff and asskicking? Just... they love and respect each other down all three corners of the triangle, and they're all screwed up in such complimentary ways, and they work together amazingly in a way that speaks of instinctive trust (on the odd occasion when all three of them are actually working together). (I pair them up within the OT3 mostly as boy!Ranma/Ryouga, Girl!Ranma/Akane, Akane/Ryouga - a whole sedoretu in three people! - but I could entertain other possibilities.)
h) OT3 aside, I totally see why the manga keeps wanting to go on my retrospective list of "works that helped me as a wee!asexual"
i) Fine, I am rewatching it because someone requested a DF crossover on the prompt meme. Now I want tiny!redheaded!girl!Harry sparring with Murph while Kincaid watches and goes crosseyed with lust. IDEK.
j) ...probably a bad idea to be switching between Ranma rewatch and Te's latest genderqueer!Tim Drake epic. Oops!
Things I have learned so far (Note that I only just finished season 1, and have forgotten most of what happens later, if I even finished watching them all):
a) I am totally on Team Nabiki right now. And team Nabiki/Kuno (pairing order relevant). I don't even remember her from way back when.
b) Ranma is actually full of really interesting things about identity/embodiment/gender/sexuality, especially as various people get more comfortable with changing forms, even filtered through the adolescence metaphor. And also I could stare into Ranma's personal working gender theory for hours. I did, back when I first watched this fifteen years ago and had never seen anything like it - I mean, literally stared into space pondering Ranma's personal gender theory - but I was half-expecting it to be disappointing in retrospect now that I've spent all this time in fandom and learning about RL gender theory and growing up and not being adolescent any more and things. Not... so much. It's still fascinating.
c) None of the fic I can find explores any of this, not even anything that seems to really look at Ranma in a genderqueer or gender theory way, beyond just "he turns into a girl" (and Ranma is so very genderqueer in canon, the way he's so awkward with boy-ness and revels so in the girl form, and the way she's so... comfortable with Akane when she's being herself.)
d) The animation, on the other hand, is a lot crappier than I remember it being. Alas. I taught myself to draw half from Rumiko manga (which probably still shows.)
e) The anime is also saying a lot more about class than I remember. I think the subtitles in the version I'm watching are making that a lot more clear than in the manga or the one I watched ages ago. Partly, the way the martial-arts kids are sort of a class of their own, but also: Ranma. Who travels the world with his father, who seems to have no concept of a home of his own, who never, ever turns down a chance at food, who has spent more time out of school than in it (I'm starting to watch carefully to see how much evidence there is in canon that he can even read, or read well.) I'm also kind of wanting to go find out if there's an ethnic Travellers tradition in East Asia like the European/American ones that I keep trying to mentally slot him in to.
f) Still damn racist though. Sigh.
g) Where is the queer/genderqueer/poly Ranma/Ryouga/Akane OT3 epic of love and fluff and asskicking? Just... they love and respect each other down all three corners of the triangle, and they're all screwed up in such complimentary ways, and they work together amazingly in a way that speaks of instinctive trust (on the odd occasion when all three of them are actually working together). (I pair them up within the OT3 mostly as boy!Ranma/Ryouga, Girl!Ranma/Akane, Akane/Ryouga - a whole sedoretu in three people! - but I could entertain other possibilities.)
h) OT3 aside, I totally see why the manga keeps wanting to go on my retrospective list of "works that helped me as a wee!asexual"
i) Fine, I am rewatching it because someone requested a DF crossover on the prompt meme. Now I want tiny!redheaded!girl!Harry sparring with Murph while Kincaid watches and goes crosseyed with lust. IDEK.
j) ...probably a bad idea to be switching between Ranma rewatch and Te's latest genderqueer!Tim Drake epic. Oops!
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