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I said it before, a couple of years back now - I think that if I'd begun watching Ranma 1/2 knowing nothing of the manga, or the characterisations therein, I'd never have taken to Akane or the series in general. Manga Akane is, generally speaking, a complicated but ultimately rational and realistic character whose primary difficulty is that she finds herself arbitrarily thrust into an unrealistic universe with the arrival of Ranma at the Tendo dojo. She is - or rather, could be - a real girl, dealing with an unreal life, and she responds accordingly.

Anime Akane is more a caricature and a parody of her manga counterpart than a character in her own right. She retains little of her manga counterpart's complexity, but instead alternates between being comic relief and damsel in distress. The violence she inflicts on Ranma is more frequent and less reasoned, and she frequently needs rescuing simply because she refuses to accept her weakness relative to the rest of the cast. She is, as has been previously noted, frequently stupid and entirely irrational, and worse, her character is given a kind of eccentricity that comes from the frequent interjection of original plotlines (in which her behaviour is markedly less sympathetic) into the manga originals.

Tyoria: Well, what is a 'legitimate engagement', as opposed to an illegitimate one? Legally, no engagement is legitimate that is without the consent of the engaged parties; consequently, at face value, only Akane can be called legitimate because she is the only fiancee that has been acknowledged by Ranma as such (back in the skating rink story). That being said, the substantive point which all legitimacy debates really miss is that that Ranma really doesn't have to marry any of the girls if he doesn't want to. None of them can ensure that Ranma marries them with nothing more than the claim of engagement. This being the case, none of the girls' claims can really be said to be legitimate.

In the case of Shampoo, we are told that she is legally married to Ranma under her tribe's laws, but no law is real that exists without consequences attached for the breaking of it. In Shampoo's case, the consequences for not marrying Ranma are never really properly explored, but there is reason to believe they are not all that severe. Mousse hails from the same village as Shampoo, and is bound to be acquainted with their customs. He is nonetheless entirely taken in by Shampoo's pretended acceptance of the inevitability of Ranma's marriage to Akane - obviously, the punishment awaiting Shampoo can't be as severe as some fanfiction authors might have you believe, if Mousse could so easily believe that she was willing to suffer them.

Ukyo can claim that Genma took something from her, and thus owes her something in return, but she lacks any capacity to insist that that something be Ranma's hand in marriage. Legally, the agreement was illegitimate to begin with - even putting the fact that Ranma was already engaged aside - and Ukyo lacks anyone who would be willing to support it. Her engagement is only legitimate if Ranma says it is, and because he doesn't, it isn't.

Akane's engagement is as legitimate as any arranged marriage in Japan can be - that is to say, it is incumbent on Ranma and Akane's desire to go through with it. It has the backing of their families, and hence, comes with the same pressure to go through with it that most Japanese arranged marriages do, but ultimately, if either party refuses point blank to go through with the marriage, it is as illegitimate as Kodachi's claim. The fact, however, is that Ranma and Akane do want to go through with it, and have both publicly referred to one another as a fiancee. This is the only legitimacy that Akane's claim really needs.

This is a lovely post that I hate to respond to because I can't do it justice. It is merely that I think that Akane, Shampoo and Ukyo are on the same level playing field WRT "legitimacy" -- they all have a CLAIM and I wouldn't elevate any of them above the others. However, the only true love is between Ranma and Akane. I think there is some lingering attraction from him to Shampoo, and he is affectionate toward Ukyo as a friend should be. Just not romantic.

This is basically my point, though - I hate legitimacy debates because there's a suggestion implicit in them that considerations apart from affection would (or, at least, should) decide who Ranma marry. If Akane, Shampoo and Ukyo all have a claim, what does that mean?

As to the consequences regarding Shampoo, I disagree that we should assume they AREN'T severe. Shampoo was "re-trained" by Cologne over Jusenkyo springs for failing her tribe, and dunked into the spring of drowned cat. It stands to reason that Cologne knew full well what would happen and this was in part "punishment." There's no PROOF of this at all -- it's just speculation. But I think you can't say the consequences are negligible just because of Mousse. Since when is he rational at ALL? Cologne seems to think he has no claim at all because Shampoo already rejected him -- "but that was when we were THREE!" "It makes no difference!" We just don't know officially what the consequences are at all but there's every bit as much reason to think they're horribly severe as there is to think they aren't. Their tribe doesn't seem to be of the particularly forgiving type.

The dunking, it should remembered, is actually construed as an accident rather than a part of the punishment itself. The training is similarly rationalised as being necessitated by Shampoo's weakness relative to Ranma. She is being retrained so that the next time, she will be strong enough to succeed at her goal - not as punishment.

I am not quite sure on what grounds you are questioning Mousse's rationality, but he seems perfectly lucid to me - his actions in freeing Shampoo from Kiima's enchantment demonstrate that. The point regarding him, in any case, is that he knows the Amazons and he knows Shampoo. If the Amazon laws had made marrying Ranma an all-or-nothing proposition for Shampoo, one would think that Mousse would recognise that she would not be willing to give up as easily as she appeared to at the end of tankouban 38.

The other reason I don't generally give much credence to the idea of severe repercussions is that Shampoo goes to visit home in the Moxabustion story line, husband less, and yet apparently perfectly at ease. We assume that her tribe must be strict because their laws seem to be indicative of an overly militaristic, zealous society, but apart from the retraining and the dunking (which weren't supposed to have been punishments), what is there to suggest that they punish transgressors harshly?

If the Amazon laws are so strict, why does Cologne let Mousse go on his date with Shampoo? Why doesn't she take more trouble to eliminate Akane, who she must know is a huge threat to Shampoo's romantic aspirations?

OUTSIDE OF THE READERSHIP, maybe. But WE, THE VIEWERS know that the cart was given as her DOWRY. Genma TOOK this and broke his end of the verbal agreement -- which IS legally binding in court. The only thing that complicates this is the idea that the betrothed should have some say in who he is married to. Sure, in our modern society Ranma can marry whoever he wants, but a lot of his problems come from the old-fashioned traditions he can't break away from.

Legally, Genma broke his word and is therefore in the wrong. However, this does not mean that Ukyo can legally demand that Ranma marry her in return. At best, she could receive monetary compensation from Genma or have him incarcerated. She could not, in any wise, demand Ranma and expect to be given him by the court (moreso because she doesn't have any evidence that events transpired as she related them). Which really makes her claim fairly worthless as a claim of engagement, except insofar as Ranma feels the need to honour it.

With regards to these 'old fashioned traditions' you mention - why can't people break traditions? Simply because if or when they do, they know they can expect condemnation - - or, at the very least, disapproval - from society as a whole. The aspect of a tradition that renders it binding is society's estimation for it, and willingness to uphold it through its behaviour. Nobody except Ukyo is going to be looking at Ranma disapprovingly if he doesn't marry or compensate Ukyo.

Not even Ranma himself. He makes no effort whatsoever to make up for what his father did for Ukyo. His attitude is that bygones are bygones, and hence, that she should just forget that the whole thing happened. Nowhere in the manga does he display any hesitation that comes from a sense of obligation to her - as far as we can see, he never gives her claim any serious thought at all.

Which brings us to the question: if Ranma doesn't feel obligated to Ukyo, his parents don't feel that he is obligated to Ukyo, and nobody is going to condemn him for not marrying Ukyo, in what sense of the word can she be said to have a claim?

That Ranma's in a fine pickle, is what it means. ::grin:: C'mon, seeing our boy squirm is part of the whole appeal! True love (+ destiny) triumphs over all the other considerations, but it's nice that Akane has "legitimacy" backing her up alongside it. The fact that Shampoo and Ukyo have equally "legitimate" claims means that it's really just plain irrelevant, it exposes the "forced" engagement for the farce that it is -- that is to say, Akane and Ranma would want to marry even if their parents WEREN'T throwing them at one another, but they like the excuse to whine and complain. The children doth protest too much.

I think the engagement actually works against Ranma and Akane - a LOT of their problems stem from the fact that after initially rejecting one another due to the fact that theirs is a 'forced engagement', they find themselves incapable of demonstrating that they have reconsidered simply because they do not know that their desire is a shared one. Throughout the course of the manga, we see that whenever either of the two is given any indication that their feelings are reciprocated, the whole dynamic of their relationship is radically altered. Their engagement denies them the certainty of reciprocation they need; far from bringing them together, it actually conspires to preserve their combative routine.

I don't know, I didn't get that impression. The Amazons know about the magical properties of Jusenkyo (so much so that Herb would come to Cologne as an expert) and chose to have Shampoo "trained" over the pools because... why, exactly?

I always pose this question in answer to the one you asked: why is Jusenkyo renowned as a training ground if it isn't used for training?

They didn't bother to rationalize it, really... they didn't really explain her curse much at all. Shampoo comes back and immediately blames Ranma for her body. To me that suggests it was punishment because she failed to kill female Ranma.

Unfortunately, I left my manga collection back in Australia, so I cannot check, but IIRC, Cologne tells Shampoo that she needs further training - not that she needs to be punished. The idea behind training someone is to enable them to accomplish something they could not accomplish before, not to give them a disincentive to abort a mission a second time.

As for Shampoo blaming Ranma - a friend of mine has had an ongoing vendetta for years against a girl we went to school with, because he was so busy staring at her legs that he tripped and broke his ankle, ruling him out of a fencing tournament he ought to have competed in. He believes that it's her fault that he was injured. Does this mean he believes that he was being punished for staring?

On the grounds that he's a moron -- same as most of the rest of the cast, really.

Point. However...

He grows a bit of a brain at the end of the series, sure. For all the good it does him. (Okay, okay, that was sweet what he did.)

... We are talking about his capacity to rationally consider Shampoo's reaction to the news of Ranma and Akane's pending marriage, and that is an incident that comes at the end of the series, where he has grown a bit of a brain.

I get the impression he's more willing to assimilate into the Japanese culture and turn his back on his roots. Maybe he thinks Shampoo's going that direction herself. They can't beat the laws, but they can emigrate to a free society where the archaic rules can't be enforced.

Speculative, but I won't argue. Accepting your interpretation, though, this effectively means that the hypothetical consequences of failure are not inevitable for Shampoo - she does have the option of avoiding them by simply eschewing the Amazon lifestyle altogether.

IMHO there is every bit as much reason to think they're harsh as to think they aren't. This isn't a really forgiving track record we're drawing from. I think people are too hard on Cologne -- who is certainly not "evil" -- but we're given several examples of Amazon culture being harsh but no examples of them being merciful. Any assumption we make, one way or the other, is just that -- an assumption. There's no proof of the consequences whether they're nil or capital.

I would argue that we have proof that the consequences of failure are either (a) negligible or (b) avoidable from Mousse's and Shampoo's behaviour prior to Ranma and Akane's wedding. It doesn't make sense for Mousse to have acted the way he did if it were otherwise.

As for the harshness of the Amazons - we have evidence that they are harsh to outsiders, not that they are harsh to one another.

I think because that would probably be a breach of her personal brand of morality. As I've said, Cologne isn't evil, and I think that while she'd regard Akane as a threat, killing her would be uncalled for. She really hasn't done anything wrong even by their standards. Cologne, like Mousse, also seems willing to assimilate rather than enforce Amazon traditions above all else.

Not evil, no, but she is an elder of a society renowned for its harshness to outsiders, and one which not only mandates the killing of foreign women but actually demands it. Shampoo gave Akane the kiss of death; quite apart from that, Cologne has got to know that so long as Akane's in the picture, Shampoo doesn't really have a chance. Ranma's attachment to Akane aside, she has the support of Ranma's family, and he is actually living with her. Why should she balk at killing her, or at least permanently incapacitating her, especially if some horrendous fate awaited Shampoo for failing to snag Ranma? Yet Cologne never even tries to remove Akane from the equation. Are we to suggest that her care for Ranma and Akane exceeds her care for Shampoo?

But the readership knows, which is really the important part. No, she has no claim in the sense that Judge Judy wouldn't hear her case, but the viewership knows the story, and we're the ones weighing the decision.

This is the part I don't get. What decision do we, as fans, have to make, and how is the legitimacy debate pertinent to it? I doubt that anyone decides that they prefer a specific fiancee as a match for Ranma because 'she has the most legitimate claim' - legitimacy debates most often are merely a means whereby fans justify their selection, and claim it as a possibility.

Again, if we accept that Ukyo has a valid claim for Ranma, where does that leave us? What does it all actually mean?

So can I sign you up for the weekly "Ranma is a dick" newsletter? Seriously. He strives to be honorable but he can be a total insensitive !%*%*%% too, and the fact that he is so completely dismissive of Ukyo speaks more to that aspect than anything else, IMHO.

Yup. Do you take yearly subscriptions?