Title: Ranma ½ Volume(s): 38 Creator(s): Rumiko Takahashi Format: Flipped; Left-to-Right Publisher: VIZ, LLC. MSRP: $9.95 Genre(s): Action/Comedy/Romance Rated: Older Teen (16+)

If you want a romantic comedy that is more crazy then your yearly family reunion, then look no further then Rumiko Takahashi's wildly crazy and hilarious manga "Ranma ½."  "Ranma ½" is the story of a boy who changes into a girl, who falls in love with a tomboy who hates his guts, who has a rival that changes into a pig, who has a dad who changes into a panda, and...well, he also has a bunch of other weird friends and what not.  "Ranma ½" actually has so much crazy stuff in it, that it's almost impossible to describe the story with a straight face.  The story opens with a dad telling his three daughters (from oldest to youngest, Kasumi, Nabiki, and Akane) that an old friend of his is coming to their home, and with him he is bring his son Ranma with him, who is to be engaged to one of the three girls.  However when Ranma shows up at their house, they discover that since he fell into China's cursed "Lake of Drowned Girl," Ranma turns into a girl when cold water is poured on him, and then he turns back into a boy when hot water is poured on him (it should be noted that Ranma's dad also fell into a cursed lake known as "Lake of Drowned Panda").

The youngest of the three girls, Akane, doesn't want a boyfriend because she doesn't want to feel inferior to a man.  Because of this, everyone figures that Akane would be the perfect fiancee for Ranma since Ranma can turn into a girl at any time and won't make Akane feel inferior to him.  However both Akane and Ranma don't like being told who they are to be engaged to, and they spend most of their initial time hating each other's guts and trying to make each other feel bad about the other.  However as time goes on, will these two discover that they may actually have more in common then they initially thought they did?  Will they grow to become such good friends that they will eventually fall in love with each other and get married?  Is water wet?  The answer to all these questions is yes, and no, I'm NOT spoiling the story by saying this, as you just KNOW these two are going to end up falling in love with each other, so I’m not really spoiling anything there as far as I’m concerned!!  However the romance is not the only thing that is being developed in this book.  Oh no, there's a LOT more going on in this book, and if you think that this book is going to be your standard "boy meets girl" story then you don't know Rumiko Takahashi very well (if at all)!

Aside from the romance, a bunch of new characters and love interests pop up to get in Ranma and Akane's way, almost every other male wants to defeat Ranma for one reason or another, and then there are even some story arts that actually delve deep into what exactly IS the cruse that Ranma and his dad have...oh, and every man is this series wants to marry Akane!  And for the first 10 books, "Ranma ½" is classic manga that has interesting characters, lots of humor and action, and a great story.  However there are a few problems that drag this series down, with the main problem being that this series is just simply too long.  There are 38 volumes in this series, which in my mind is about 8 volumes too many.  You see, this series goes from being classic, to being great, to being good, to being okay, to being tedious.  I think Rumiko Takahasi originally planned for this series to be a medium sized series (meaning the series would not be too short nor be too long), but most likely the wild success of this series (and the great TV show that spawned from this manga) kept it going on much longer then it should have.  In fact, after the 9th book I think it's safe to say that Takahashi simply ended up recycling old jokes and stories for future volumes, and after awhile everyone got sick of the repetition the series was offering.  The fact that the series gets worse as time goes on makes this one of the weirdest classic's you'll read, and I'll touch upon that later.

Another problem with this series is the treatment the series has received from Viz.  The translation provided by Viz is questionable, the excellent artwork is flipped (while flipped artwork isn't enough to kill a series, it IS annoying because the flipped artwork causes lots of easy to spot glitches in the artwork that otherwise wouldn't be there), and while Viz did a good thing by releasing the first couple books in larger then usual sizes (about 300 and 250 pages each), after the first couple books the rest of the series was released in smaller then usual books (about 150 pages each).  In fact, when you get to the grade at the bottom of the page, just keep in mind that a main reason why the grade is so low is because of the shoddy treatment from Viz, and the other reason is because this series goes from being classic to being annoying.  When people tell you that "Ranma ½" is a classic manga (or anime, either one is fine) then they aren't lying to you, "Ranma ½" IS a classic manga!  HOWEVER (and here's the catch), it's also a classic that offer's up too much of a good thing!  After all, there are only so many jokes you can make about Ranma's gender problems and still make them interesting and funny.  In fact, everyone else even seems to have a certain character trait that you would think they'd give up after several years (assuming these people get older and more mature and time goes on), but the characters at one point seem to stop changing, and then they all get stuck in their daily routines and gimmicks that they don't seem able to escape until the very end of the series.

On the other hand the first several books are defiantly classic works of comic book literature, with just the right amount of humor, action, romance, and drama that makes it look like Takahashi is telling other author's "Hey, THIS is how you make a REAL manga!!"  So am I recommending this series or not?  I'm ultimately going to recommend it, but I'm going to recommend that you only buy 1 or 2 books a month, and only read about 1 chapter a day.  Because if you spread the series out a bit then you might not get tired of it until about book 26, but if you read too much of the series at a time you'll find the series overstaying its welcome a bit.  In a way this series is half classic and half mediocre, but in the end its defiantly worth checking out.  On a final note I would have given this series a B grade, but thanks to Viz's lousy treatment of the series I am forced to drop the grade from a B to a C+. Sorry Takahashi-san.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -