Editor’s Note: In editing this piece, we struggled to find a way to talk about the series’ conceit in a way that was trans-inclusive, given that it derives from an essentialist concept of gender being immutably connected to genitals. Eventually, we decided that for readability, it would be best to discuss the series in the terms it defines for itself: that the main character is about a boy who “becomes a girl” when splashed with cold water.
Content Warning: Discussions of transphobia, dysphoria, gender essentialism, queerphobia, toxic masculinity, and abusive parenting.
Anime fans under 25 are unlikely to be familiar with Ranma 1/2. A screwball martial arts comedy by the same author as Inuyasha, the manga ran from 1987 to 1996, with a 161-episode television adaptation that was one of the first anime series licensed in the US. It follows a sixteen-year-old martial artist named Ranma Saotome as he deals with a wild and wacky assortment of love rivals, magic curses, and truly ridiculous fighting styles.
Ranma 1/2 has its fair share of highs and lows (some of which have already been discussed at AniFem), but the most famous aspect of the series is that Ranma turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and then turns back into a boy when splashed with hot water. This “magical sex-change” is often the only thing people know about the series. Yet while Ranma 1/2 is officially the story of a cis boy dealing with a body-morphing curse, the series also accidentally provides a resonant allegory for transmasculine identity.
