There had been a lot of friction between the "California culture" and the more traditional Japanese.
Prior to WWII, there had been the census abroad that Hollywood and the Jitterbug were indications of the soft indolent life of Americans and their decadent culture. For a time at least, California was not the only face they put forward.
The Japanese embraced many aspects of Western culture then did a "return to their roots" in the late 50s and 60s, which gave "retro" an entirely different meaning.
Several sub-cultures began to spawn during the mid to late 60s, which meant that they were firmly in place by the time Ranma and his father arrived.
Retro sorts were still in place, especially in certain areas like Sendai. These areas were an odd mix of wanting the tourist dollars but also not wanting foreign influence. There were places closed to "gaijin" - which had been broadened to mean anyone not of pureblood Japanese descent and at least moderately able to divest themselves of the Western influences.
There were also groups like the Roppongi Girls and other discrete groups of conforming nonconformists.
The mix was made even more odd with the various asian wars between Communist states and other, mainly American backed, forces. Refugees funnelled through Japan to eventually end up "mainland" began to swell the groups of Asian ancestry there - putting a distinctly different face regarding the debate on "illegal aliens" from the 1950s on into Ranma's time.
Due to all the martial arts styles and its wide acceptance, Ranma found more fights than he might otherwise have. Also more friends, more allies, and more girls.
This last both confounded and oddly pleased Genma. Without the Tendo alliance to fall back on, he had to come up with alternative schemes. That Ranma was getting more food regularly and from a different nutritional mix meant he was growing up taller and more broad-shouldered, which definitely had a number of young ladies his age noticing as he developed.
Hence Genma's plans as he introduced Ranma and the training journey and various aspects of their existence to the various dojo he encountered, and the talk of joining schools and the like.
He didn't make nearly so many direct engagements as he hinted broadly at the possibility and let the fathers fill in the blanks however they were inclined.
Ranma learned martial arts. He tended to focus in on that rather than deal with a number of confusing things around him. In Jamaica he learned capioera, in China there were twelve styles of wu shu he became familiar with, in Korea hwarang do, in Okinawa he studied Tae Kwon Do and Jeet Kun Do, in the Phillipines it was escrima, in Thailand - Muy Thai, in Japan it was kendo and kempo and karate and shotokan and bando and several different schools of each. On the "mainland" he studied with students of US Marine Style Commando Fighting, and he brawled alongside practitioners of Dirty Streetfighting Martial Arts, he got a scar on one cheek at age six while learning Apache Style Indian Wrestling and a dreaded manuever (proving that while it was a different universe, it was still more or less a Ranmaverse) known as the Sidewinder Fist. ("SNAKES! WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES!") (Which also pretty much ended the comparison between the Nekoken and this, since he was phobic but never retreated into a snake mentality - just went darn near catatonic. As a side effect of this botched training, he was almost completely immune to a wide variety of poisons and recovered very quickly from them.)
None of which was running through Ranma's mind as he followed his father to a military base where:
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(Posted Fri, 06 Aug 2004 10:31)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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