#thanks for sending kuno :pleading:

[blaiddllodi]

 There had always been a certain level of reliance they all placed on their children. Lambert and Rodrigue had easily broken from that trend, yet Matthias had found himself lodged within it.   When Lambert first passed he had done his best, Dimitri was still young, he still had so much of his youth to enjoy. He had been content to let it pass as it would. Dimitri was already aware of so much when it came to his duties, how people relied on him. He wanted to assure him he wasn’t alone, that he wasn’t the only one who had to carry that weight…at least not now. In the midst of everything, he had forgotten that role, allowing himself to rely too much on the boy. The image of the king he hoped to see had overtaken the young man in front of him. It was evening, early enough to turn in, yet not to be asleep. He gave a gentle knock on Dimitri’s door.   “Your highness?” He could hide behind this for now, at least as he sorted out what it was he needed to say.   “I apologize for the disturbance at such an hour. I haven’t been fulfilling my obligation to you, neither as Margrave…nor your uncle. You’ve been so strong in these past years that even I have come to rely on you at times when it’s I who should be paving the path for you, protecting what few years you have left to enjoy before you must undertake the problems we’ve not been able to handle.” The wooden knight in his hands feels so heavy. It had been a gift, one of the few he had been able to give the boy personally and one left in Rufus’s haste to prove something to the people of Faerghus.   “It may seem crass of me to say, but you are still a child Dimitri. I know how much you want to see it all found out…but Lambert would have wanted you to enjoy yourself. Knowing him…his biggest regret in dying was not being able to watch you grow up…to see you play until the day you were ready to surpass him and take the crown. As your nobles, we’ve utterly failed to protect you…but rather than sulk over it…I want to ask that you enjoy things now. I cannot hope to know nor accomplish all it is you’ve set out…but even if just for a moon or two, I ask you to let me handle things while I am here…and for you to simply be a boy your age. You aren’t yet king Dimitri, you have your entire life to be so for now…please allow yourself to be a spirited prince.”

He hadn't been asleep anyway.

There were some nights where it was possible that Dimitri might genuinely have been abed - possible, but still not terribly likely - passing the night in a sleep that might have been restful, restless, or some odd space in between that left his eyelids flickering the following day, flashing glimpses ever clearer of the bright flames that licked around him.

No, merely the sun, merely the candlelight that dampened the hallways, merely the smiles that shone from the faces of his classmates.

He didn't mind visitors, if they didn't mind the scolding, though the face that presented itself past his door was not one that even Dimitri felt that he could, in all seriousness, scold effectively.

"Ah, Profess- Margrave, please, excuse me. If I had known you were coming, I might have - "

The sentence needed itself cut short there, unsure what he might have done. Might have put on a pot of chamomile, the better to pretend they both wanted to get some sleep - might have tidied, as though his dorm room was not already immaculate.

But the surprise of his presence was superseded immediately by what he had to say - normally, Dimitri was content to listen to what Matthis had to say to him with the intense focus it deserved, those life lessons of a Faerghan boy - knight, prince, king - needed ingrained into him, but the longer Matthias spoke, the warmer Dimitri felt his cheeks become.

"I - Margra- I apologize, I had - " Disgruntled, somewhat, Dimitri felt his hands instinctively reach to take the little knight figurine - he knew those lines, the smooth grain of the wood, and he was certain that if he looked just beneath the geaves he would find a set of initials and a year, one not too terribly far gone but impossible to reach all the same.

His brow furrowed, all the false starts swirling in his mind in his confusion as he considered what to say.

"I...do not feel that you have failed me. You had done everything that you could, that you needed, to prepare me for the trials ahead." Clearing his throat, he shook his head, setting the knight gently into a nook on his desk, overseeing the tomes and treatises that he had been studying - and turned to face Matthias fully, eye to eye, man to man.

"I know that I am still...terribly inexperienced. I have much more to learn, and more room to grow. If..." The words thickened here, and Dimitri was loath to force them from his throat; "If it is your wish that I cede responsibility to you, then...I suppose I have no choice. I will be thankful of whatever assistance you wish you give."

[ranma-rewatch]

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

Hey there, hope you’re doing well, whenever/wherever you’re reading this. We’re on the fifth episode of the Ranma Rewatch, and I just realized that you can pretty clearly delineate the last three episodes into one arc, all about introducing Kuno. This episode and the next few, judging by the title, look like they’ll be focusing on Dr. Tofu and Akane’s crush on him. I...really cannot recall a lot about these episodes, so it’ll be interesting to look at them with a fresh perspective. See you all again in a second, once I’ve finished watching the episode!

Wow, uh...I am finding my memories of this show are definitely blurred in ways I hadn’t expected. Or rather, when I saw it as a younger person, I didn’t notice the same things I’m noticing now.

The episode starts with Ranma brooding over how often Akane gets angry and violent at him, which ties into Akane training in the dojo with her dad. For a second, she remembers Ranma’s rude comments from the day before, and the anger makes her hit her dad so hard he’s left pretty hurt. Kasumi, the eldest of the Tendo siblings, tends to his injury, but pleads with Akane to reign in her violent tendencies, even if the exact specifics of that promise change from the Sub to the Dub.

Later, Kasumi sends Akane out to get meat for dinner, at the same time Ranma is brooding in the same area. They run into each other, and Ranma provokes Akane so much that, even after trying to restrain herself to Kasumi’s promise, she gives up and clobbers Ranma so badly she has to take him to a doctor. Specifically, Doctor Tofu.

This is actually the good doctor’s first time seeing Ranma as his uncursed form, so they’re formally introduced. Tofu reasons out that Akane is responsible for the extensive damages, looking serious...only to happily point out that the injuries make that clear, since the way she fights is so distinctive. To Ranma’s surprise, Akane is in a hurry to leave once Ranma is okay, and before they go Tofu tries to tell Ranma that Akane’s actually a pretty nice person, which Ranma is skeptical of.

Seemingly to prove his point, Tofu hit a pressure point on Ranma’s back just before they left, so that halfway home his legs would go out. Despite the fact they’d just been arguing, Akane immediately offers to carry Ranma home, something he only accepts after being splashed with water, thanks to his pride as a man. It’s there, being carried piggyback style, that he considers whether Tofu may have been right after all, but just isn’t sure.

This whole time, their dads have been trying to think of some way to make them get along, since things are only getting worse between them, but it seems they don’t have any ideas. At breakfast the next day, Kasumi asks Akane if she can take a book she’d been borrowing from Dr. Tofu back to him, only for Akane to refuse. When Ranma questions why she’d do that, about to spill the beans on her crush, Akane hurries to school with Ranma in toe, not even noticing that Ranma gets splashed as they sprint down the street.

Once there, she realizes the curse has activated as she starts chastising Ranma for what he did, namely by opening up Ranma’s shirt...revealing his breasts in front of all the guys who usually fight Akane. Not that they seem to notice. They’re not about to fight Akane anymore, telling her that they’ve decided to honor her engagement to Ranma, since he beat Kuno, their best fighter and biggest pervert.

Not that Kuno himself is going to honor that agreement, even if he’s still covered in bandages from all the hits Ranma got on him, and can barely seem to stand. But when he notices Ranma there in his cursed form, he goes from toting the virtues of Akane to his red-headed love in seconds. Ranma is annoyed, and that only gets worse when Akane pretends to support the two getting together, in the hopes that maybe that would maybe get Kuno to leave her alone. For a few seconds, Kuno is struck with indecision...only to once again reiterate that he’s in love with both of them.

During gym, a few guys in Ranma’s class hassle him over his luck in being engaged to Akane, and needle him over whether they’ve ‘done anything’ yet. Just when he’s about to mention that Akane already loves someone else, she hits a softball right in his face, though it’s unclear whether this was on purpose or not.

This means another trip to Tofu’s clinic, though this time they run into his newly hired assistant: Ranma’s dad in his panda form. Tofu laughs to hear that this panda is apparently Ranma’s dad, but it’s unclear if he actually believes that or not. Ranma is getting more and more curious about why it seems like Akane is trying to avoid the person he knows she likes, when the phone rings. Akane answers and talks to that person, before finally telling Ranma that Dr. Tofu already has someone he’s in love with, and that woman is one the way to the clinic, that’s who Akane had talked to on the phone. After a fake out, it’s made clear from how the scene cuts to her that the woman Akane’s talking about is Kasumi.

There are a few things this episode has really brought to mind for me. To start with what I alluded to earlier: when I have thought about Ranma 1/2, for the longest time, I’ve thought of it as a very episodic storyline. Throughout it’s very, very long run, I mostly remembered it being unrelated little stories, aside from the small arcs that populated the various seasons, cropping up from time to time. I do remember enough specific episodes to come that I do know there are one-off episodes later on.

But as I look at the five episodes I’ve covered so far, I’m kind of staggered by the continuity. Each episode flows seamlessly from the last, even as we’ve kind of moved on from an arc about Kuno to one about Akane and Dr. Tofu. Now, whether this is something the show will outgrow with time, as it drifts farther and farther from the manga, isn’t really something I know for sure, so it’s a thing I’ll have to keep an eye on.

So much of this episode is devoted to Ranma and others thinking about his relationship to Akane. He’s clearly very skeptical about any idea that they might work out as a couple, already seeing the rough ways they tend to hit each other where it hurts when they bicker. Still, there are other moments where he can clearly see her better traits, such as when she immediately moves to help him when his legs fail him.

In that same vein, I was very much befuddled at first when Akane just opened Ranma’s shirt to check he really was in his more feminine body. Like, that just seemed out of character for her, but then I realized a better way to read that. Akane has no problems doing something like that because she considers Ranma a guy, for better or worse, regardless of what he looks like at the time. Unlike so many characters, who tend to treat Ranma differently depending on if he’s in his cursed form or not, Akane always sees him as Ranma. Here, that made things awkward, but on the whole it’s kind of a big plus from her. She validates Ranma for who he really is, in that way.

Oh, back when I was recapping things, I mentioned a couple of guys hanging out with Ranma at school. Well, fun fact, those are Hiroshi and Daisuke, and I think this is their first appearance in the anime. They become Ranma’s default two friends at school, and later on Akane will get her own similar pair of friends to match. If you’re not paying attention, they might seem like extras, but Hiroshi and Daisuke actually have consistent designs and personalities, which I find pretty neat.

This week, for the character spotlight, I thought I should round out the Tendo siblings with the oldest, Kasumi. After all, she’s getting more attention in the plot right now, and there really aren’t a lot of characters worth focusing on introduced yet.

Now, as best as I can tell, her voice actresses in the original Japanese and the English dub are doing the same kind of thing. Namely, a very sweet, if restrained, kind of performance. In English, she was played by Willow Johnson, another fairly minor Canadian voice actress who doesn’t seem to have done a lot of work recently, though she is also Kikyo from the Inuyasha dub. In a strange coincidence, she also played Lalah Sune in Mobile Suit Gundam, which I’m going through for the first time right now, and her character literally was just introduced a few episodes ago, so that’s cool. Her Japanese voice actress seems to be more well known and well regarded, Kikuko Inoue. She’s done a ton of roles, including more recent work. She’s even worked for Japanese dubs of American series, such as playing Blue Diamond from Steven Universe. And, like I said last week, she was a member of DoCo.

Of the three Tendo sisters, she’s definitely the one that’s gotten the least attention and development so far. Sadly, I’d say that’s also generally true throughout the entire series, as far as I can recall. Akane is one of the protagonists, after all, and Nabiki is a great source of conflict. In contrast, Kasumi is mostly...there.

That said, even if she isn’t the most well developed character, she’s at least clearly defined. It’s obvious already that she’s the one running the house, seemingly with more authority than even her father. She acts more like a mom than a sister most of the time, which from personal experience is definitely a thing that happens with oldest sisters sometimes, even without dead moms in the picture.

Kasumi cooks their meals, cleans their house, and just seems to be the one making sure everything gets done. She’s also very kind and accommodating, and comedically her strength is her nonplussed reactions to the madness going on around her. Kasumi is nearly always unphased by things like houseguests sparring in the yard. The exception did appear in this episode, however. When her father was injured, she did try to lay down the law on Akane, even bringing up their dead mom to try and make clear how serious this was.

That’s...really all there is I can say about Kasumi, at least so far. I can really only think of one really interesting thing they ever did with her character, and I’m sure other fans know exactly what I’m talking about.

Okay, so, what did I really think of this episode? On the whole, I’d say it was fairly strong. I appreciated seeing Ranma really thinking stuff over a little bit, and that scene with him and Akane at night was very cute. That said, I also do kind of find this Tofu plot a bit boring, since he as a character hasn’t really done a lot for me. So, in the end, I’d say this episode is middle of the pack.

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

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

But what will I think of the second (and only other) part to this small arc? We’ll see next week with the sixth episode, “Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know”. Man...I really do love these kinds of episode titles. See you then!