#and there is no ultimate happy ending where she goes home and is uncursed and remembers everything and gets her face back

[owleics-fr]

Cant stop thinking abt doe she truly lives rent free in my mind I gotta talk abt her more to reflect this. Shes like hands down my fav dragon/fr character and I have no idea why my brain latched onto her so bad. Like shes not especially pretty or special, i bought her just to go with the skin but holy fuck. I love her? Her king who she was loyal to shot and killed a sacred deer with an arrow and she took the blow of the curse for him. But the blast killed the hunting party anyways and she slumbered for an indeterminate amount of time just to awaken, transformed beyond recognition, with limited memories of her past life, to find all she had sacrificed for dead anyways. She cant even remember her past name or face! She has nothing! *explodes*

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 6-Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Hey ho person reading this blog. I am continuing my journey through Ranma 1/2, this week on the sixth episode. This one looks to be the end of this little two-part story arc, something I knew without having to look at the episode guide because I’ve never forgotten what happens in episode seven. I...legitimately don’t know what’s going to happen with this one, aside from Ranma learning about Tofu’s thing for Kasumi, and getting to see the two interact. Next paragraph, I’ll have rewatched the episodes and will be ready to regale you with what occurred.

As expected, this episode starts right where the last one ended. Though unlike I was expecting, Akane just flat out tells Ranma it’s Kasumi that Dr. Tofu likes rather than drawing it out further. Ranma isn’t sure how she knows that, but then the doctor himself shows up and starts helping Ranma with the baseball injury that sent him there. Dr. Tofu jokes about the injury clearly being from Akane, only for her to say something to confirm the idea. She’s clearly bothered by the implication of it, that she isn’t a very feminine person, but Dr. Tofu clearly doesn’t mind that she’s more of a tomboy.

Then Kasumi shows up, and the old lady waiting her turn in the lobby books it. As she leaves, she runs into an old man who was going to see Dr. Tofu, and tells him that Kasumi is there. It’s clear that Kasumi’s effects on Dr. Tofu are common knowledge to his patients. What are those effects? Well, she enters the room with him, Ranma, and Akane to give him back that book mentioned last episode and to give him a present.

In a millisecond, Dr. Tofu goes from being a kind, seemingly wise doctor to an utter buffoon. Any iota of good sense in him vanishes when Kasumi is in his presence, causing him to do things like addressing his panda assistant as Ranma or mistaking a present’s wrapping for being a mask. Akane leaves right away, and Ranma ends up following, but not until the silly version of Dr. Tofu has bent Ranma’s neck in a weird direction.

Akane is out on the edge of the water of a...river? Stream? Reservoir? I never know what to call those things. Anyway, she’s tossing rocks when Ranma shows up, and he’s clearly trying to cheer her up, following her around to try and help. It’s then that Akane perks up, asking Ranma if he actually likes her. He denies it, but she seems to be in better spirits, tricking Ranma into activating his curse by abusing the fact he tends to leap without looking where he’ll land. There’s a moment when he sees her laughing that the show focuses on, something Ranma really takes notice of.

Instead of heading home, Akane asks Ranma to lend her money for food, and they get some fast food together. Not long after sitting in a park to eat it, Akane’s mood sours again. She can’t help comparing herself negatively to Kasumi, and tells Ranma more details about how badly Dr. Tofu loves her, how it makes him act. This is when Ranma says the wrong thing, making an idle remark about her heart being broken, and that is it for Akane. They start arguing, Akane clearly hurt by Ranma’s cavalier words, but after Akane shuts down his attempts to offer comfort, Ranma bluntly tells Akane she’s going to have to get over it. She tells him that he has no clue what she’s going through, which seems to strike a nerve for Ranma, who asks how she knows that’s the case. Akane leaves, telling Ranma not to follow her.

Ranma goes to see his dad for hot water, and he uncurses himself with it as well, asking what’s gone on between Ranma and Akane. Genma makes it clear that the problem at hand is that sometimes one of them says something that hurts the other without them realizing it, and that he knows that pain. For an example, he tells a story about some girl who he was dating when he was young, who he broke up with. In the process, younger Genma talked on and on about how much better his new girlfriend was, getting him conked in the head in the past and the present.

Still, with that idea in mind, Ranma heads home. Akane is training, trying to settle her mood, when Ranma starts lightly sparring with her. When she gets annoyed he isn’t taking it seriously, and defending the fact that she likes to be angry sometimes, Ranma tells her she’s actually really cute when she smiles. This stuns her enough for him to poke her, and we cut from her getting annoyed in the moment to her ruminating on it all afterwards, in the bath. Akane seems surprised at the idea that anyone would find her attractive, or that smiling helps, even smiling in a mirror afterwards in her room. Ranma appears in the window, makes a snarky comment, Akane punches his lights out, end of episode.

This episode was a lot better than I expected going into it. I hadn’t forgotten any of the Dr. Tofu stuff, which I’ll just say right now I’m not a huge fan of, but the Ranma/Akane aspects of the episode were very strong, at least for me. I feel like there’s definitely a lot of Ship Teasing, though considering the rest of Ranma’s harem hasn’t been introduced yet, that’s to be expected.

This was the second time so far, that I can remember, where Ranma jumped without looking, only to realize he’d be landing in water. It’s a gag, sure, but it reinforces the character trait of Ranma’s that he’s a literally ‘leap before he looks’ kind of guy. It’s easy to then tie that in to his behavior that makes their argument worse, the same thing he often does to set Akane off: he leaps without looking. Ranma has a tendency to just say things without thinking through how the other person might feel about it first, and that often leads to him touching other people’s vulnerable spots without realizing it.

There’s also a bit of symmetry between the two of them: Ranma taking in that moment of the happy, smiling Akane, and Akane thinking back to Ranma telling her she looked really pretty when she smiled. Even as it becomes clear they have a lot to get past, there are more hints that each is starting to grow to like the other.

More fodder in that department can be seen when Ranma gets annoyed that Akane assumes he has no clue how she’s feeling. While one can read it as general indignation, it can also be seen as him getting annoyed that she has noticed he is feeling the same kind of thing. Namely, that Akane is so in love with Dr. Tofu that she isn’t really noticing him. I could be pulling that interpretation out of my shipping ass, but it’s just something I saw this time around. Sorry that most of my content for this one was about Ranma/Akane stuff, I can’t really control my inner shipper.

For this week’s character spotlight, I decided I might as well get Dr. Tofu out of the way now. I feel like I’ve kind of made it clear already, but I don’t really care about Dr. Tofu that much. He’s a fairly bland character, especially for this show, and the fact that, as far as I can recall, he basically slowly fades from the anime over time makes sense to me. I get what they were going for, and he does elicit some interesting development from Akane, but as a guy in his own right, he doesn’t do anything for me.

Still, this is his spotlight, so let me look into his voice actors. In the English Dub, his voiced by Ian James Corlett, who...did a lot of 90’s stuff? Honestly, not a lot there that peaks my interest. Oh, wait, what? His daughter Claire Corlett, who is a voice actress, is Sweetie Belle? ...that is pretty cool. Technically speaking, he was only the voice of Dr. Tofu for the first six and a half seasons, after that someone else took over, but I genuinely don’t recall that happening so we can discuss that when we get to it. In the original Japanese, he’s played by Yūji Mitsuya. In contrast to his American counterpart, Yūji has been in a billion things, including once again Japanese dubs of American media. In Yūji’s case, he was Marty in Back to the Future, Jack in Will & Grace, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from Amadeus.

What are they like as this character? Well, to compare and contrast, Ian plays Dr. Tofu as more warm and kind, but otherwise normal sounding, even when he’s in Kasumi-induced silliness. Yūji instead gives him a higher voice, and when he’s being ridiculous, that adds a lot to the idea that he’s now just a blundering buffoon. Their performances actually do feel rather distinct, and trend that character towards slightly different readings. I’d say I mostly prefer Ian’s, but that’s just because I don’t get a lot out of the humor of Dr. Tofu anyway, so the more silly Yūji performance doesn’t do a lot for me.

I should also say here that, to my amazement, Tofu is not his last name. His name is apparently Tofu Ono. This kind of baffles me. When people, at least here in America, talk about a doctor, they use the last name after the Dr. prefix. And in the Japanese version, I thought they were calling him ‘Tofu’ a lot, but as his personal name rather than his family name, wouldn’t they be more likely to call him ‘Ono’, since that’s generally what people do in Japan? Am I missing something? I’m probably missing something.

Name issues aside, the thing I will say I appreciate about Dr. Tofu is that, well, I get why Akane likes him. Aside from being a marital artist (though that quality of his remains mostly told and not shown), he helps people, and he doesn’t try to tell Akane she’s wrong for being who she is. As much as Akane is down on the fact that she has more masculine hobbies and doesn’t always act ladylike, Dr. Tofu calls her ‘spirited’ and compliments those aspects of her personality. The very fact Akane’s oldest sister is the ultimate picture of traditional femininity probably hasn’t helped her, and Dr. Tofu’s overt affection for Kasumi probably just makes that worse. Nonetheless, the doctor appreciates Akane for who she is, rather than who she could be.

Going into this episode, I was expecting to set it down at the bottom of the pack, but I’m such a sucker for the chemistry between Ranma and Akane that I have to put it higher. How high? Well, I’d say it’s the second best episode so far, only topped by the second episode because that one was just so dang delightful. That puts the current rankings as:

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

The odd numbered episodes haven’t been faring as well, that’s for sure. I don’t think that streak will continue though, because next week is episode seven, “Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’”, and oh boy I cannot wait for that! See you all then!