Ranma's interest in mechas had begun as it usually did with boys, with mangas and toys...And video tapes: There were Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor to foreigners), and Mazinger Z, and Gundam, and a whole slew of other recordings, as the training monetary his old man had purposely left him at was so remote no TV signals could reach them in the mountains. Lucky for him and the other boys, the abbot had been so old he was in his second childhood.
Yes, "the other boys". Ranma hadn't always been a girl. How he became one comes later in her story.
Ranma considered his time at the monetary one of the best times in her life. There, he had had real playmates, of boys mostly around 6-years-old, like himself. And their favorite games had involved recreating the action of the mecha episodes. But doing them with miniature, toy versions couldn't match up with the "real" giants in their imaginations. As Ranma remembered it, it had been his idea to turn a tree house into a mecha. The other boys had made him feel like a genius for thinking of it. Anything to break up the discipline and routine that had been the rest of their life.
They had gathered all the scrap metal, wood, and plastic they could scavenge around the rustic complex, and in the village miles away. They then had nailed, tied and glued all of the pieces together around the tree until it had looked like a reasonable facsimile of a riding robot. Well, it hd been good enough to satisfied very young boys.
The old abbot had inspected their labor of youthful exuberance, saying he was pleased they had respected the life in the tree by attaching its "armor" without injuring it. He had then blessed their creation, finishing the rite with, "And may Alphonse continue to serve and protect."
" "Arufansu"? That ain't a Japanese name, is it? Why do you want us to call it that?" Ranma had asked.
He had never received an answer, for at that moment his stupid, blowhard pop had shown up, and yanked him out of there. He hadn't even stayed to mooch off the monks for a while.
"So, we're off on another one of our training journeys," the six-year-old had said moodily.
"Only, if the cave doesn't contain the TREASURE."
"Treasure!?" That had intrigued him.
The "Treasure" had turned out to be a warehouse-sized horde of booze of all sorts and from many places. Ranma had been told that it belonged to his pop's old master. He had gotten the impression the man had recently died, so it was okay for his student to take possession of it. " ' Can't let it go to waste!" his old man had grinned. He had immediately started putting it to "good use".
He had become so loaded that he had insisted that Ranma call him "Genma". Then it got worse. "What!? You don' wanna be frien'ly? Wha kind of a man are you, lettin' a man drink alone? Wha', you're too good to share my hooch? That's cause for a fight!"
"I'm only six!" Being only six, Ranma had been overpowered by the huge adult and had alcohol forced down his throat.
When Ranma had woken up from the drunk, he had become a girl. It had been a terrible shock when she had gone to take a leak.
When she had come screaming back to the cave, she had arrived just in time to see her pop lift a cask labeled Jusenkyo to his mouth. "{Groan} What a hangover. I need some of the hair of the dog that bit me." He spit the liquid out. "That's water!" Those had been the last intelligent words he, as a panda, could say before they had discovered that hot water could turn them both back. Even then, Ranma had never called the idiot "Old Man" or "Pop" again. The nicest thing he could call him was "Genma".
"I shall never drink water again," Genma had vowed, when, to his relief, he had his humanity back.
"Wha'chya should give up is the booze!" the boy had struck the idiot in the public bathhouse.
"Let somebody else enjoy the fermented fruits and grains of life? Leave all that treasure?"
"It's not a treasure!"
"Not a treasure?" A sheen from inspiration had gone across Genma's glasses.
And that had been how the Saotomes stopped taking extended training journeys and had settled down with a liquor license. The shop had even been a mild success; more so when Ranma's mother had tracked them down and taken charge.
Everything had been working okay for Ranma; even when he had been a girl, it didn't really matter except to some perverts who would look at her too hard, wishing. Then puberty had hit. Not only had it become easier and easier to tell when he had been a girl, the temperature to change her back to a guy had become hotter and hotter. He had to draw the line at scalding. At least she had the satisfaction of seeing Genma stuck as a panda.
"Well, since you cannot any longer consider yourself a man among men, Ranma, I shall have to train you in how to be a woman among women," Nodoka had pronounced sentence.
Ranma's dreams, then, had turned more and more to the happier time when she had been a boy, and especially the time when she had felt their camaraderie at the monetary. The tree house would become the mecha he had wished it could be, with him as its heroic pilot.
"Why is your name Alphonse, I wonder?" It hadn't surprised the dream him when it talked.
"I am a gaijin who came to Japan to study its ways. I wanted to become a fighting monk. I died defending the temple from marauders. I was buried with honor, and a tree was placed near my grave. Your tree."
"So your spirit is in the tree?"
"And in the patlabor you will use to protect and serve."
And that had been how young Ranma found her destiny.
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(Posted Thu, 07 Dec 2006 04:56)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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