Born on July 6th, 1974, Ranma would be thrust into the spotlight right from the beginning of his life, what with all the news tabloids writing up about him being a premature birth, (even though it simply wasn’t the case) not to mention all the pictures people were taking over and over again. One could say he was a celebrity from day one.
Although he would be too young to understand in the first few years of his life, Ranma knew he was recipient of a lot of happiness, as well as sadness. He always had his parents around when he was just an infant and a toddler, having them coddle and love him whole-heartedly without hesitation. Yet around the age of two, Ranma realized there was a great sadness amongst the family, the nice girls down the street, and especially his daddy. And he had more than noticed that the other nice redheaded lady besides his mommy had disappeared.
After what would be remembered as a time of tension and sadness for everyone there, Ranma would go on to continue harboring such feelings himself. His father seemingly disappeared one day, leaving him with just his mommy. Sure, he was able to hear his daddy on the phone, and he wasn’t lonely, what with his mommy being around, as well as the other two sad little girls to bond with... but he couldn’t help but miss his father, the one he loved and looked up to.
And things would prove to be difficult as for all of his youth. His father would be constantly, CONSTANTLY working. Ranma would be able see his father when the old man could fit into his busy schedule, being home a few weeks of the year, and Ranma was very appreciative of it. But in the end, Genma just didn’t have the time. As Ranma’s father told him, he was ‘assuring his future’, but Ranma felt they should be living more for the now. It even irked him how even when his baby sister was born, his daddy was STILL on the run, doing this and that. The young child knew then and there that his baby sister might be worse off and never get to know her father either.
Still, in those fragile years of learning and growing, Ranma did have a male role-model. As he got older and started to interact more with things around him, Dr. Theodore Diggers played a role in raising him, a good turn in how Nodoka was helping Theo with his own daughters. These two girls would become Ranma’s closest friends, especially Britanny. She might have been two years older than him, but they had more similar interests than he and Gina did. Still, Ranma did spend a good amount of time with both Diggers sisters, as his mother was adamant on it, and Ranma really didn’t mind Gina.
And of course, things continued like such for years and years to come. When his sister was old enough to start playing with him and the Diggers girls, Ranma invited the little redhead in on the games they would play as he never wanted his sister to feel lonely like he had. Yet he couldn’t help but notice how she seemed more adjusted to how Genma was rarely around than he was. It made Ranma wonder if maybe there was just something wrong with him...
It was around 1985 that things started to change greatly, and it all started off with one firm sharp twist. Ranma’s best friend changed. Physically! He couldn’t help but think how awesome it was when Britanny took on her hybrid form for the first time, and Ranko really loved hugging onto the werecheetah’s tail. It was nice and long and fluffy. All of which were very good things in Ranko’s humble opinion.
The second important change was that Ranma finally stopped looking forward to being able to spend time with his father. His dad was home for only THREE DAYS that year. Only three out of three-HUNDRED and sixty-four! And his father had spent two of them with the Diggers rather than coming home to his own family, because of a ‘promise’ his father said he’d made to himself. While later on, Ranma would understand the bond of friendship Genma had to Julia went deep, at the time it hurt Ranma. A lot.
It was then that Ranma stopped looking up to his father after feeling that the old man had more or less abandoned his family to pursue greater ambitions of fame and fortune. Now more than ever, Theo felt like a father to him, being there for him more than Genma ever was. Theodore was the one who spent time with Ranma, doing all the things fathers and sons were supposed to do together while the boy’s real father was off making a movie or being famous somewhere else.
This resentment for his father brought on the third and greatest change in Ranma. He asked his mother if he could start taking up the martial arts. Nodoka was more than happy to help her son in this, viewing her son as being manly for taking on such a noble and just endeavor, (and giving Ranma more of an idea of HOW his mother could stay by his father’s side all this time).
As soon as classes at the local karate class were opened for the season, Ranma would go three days a week to learn the basics of karate. Choosing only three days after school was Ranma’s choice as he didn’t want to become like his father and be away from those whom loved and cared about him, even if his father seemed to fall to its allure.
After three years of training and getting to the level of black belt, Ranma decided to broaden his horizons and around the age of fourteen, he went to another martial arts class, and started studying Korean Tae Kwon Do. It didn’t last as long as his karate training did, as it was more or less a lot like karate, but with a hell of a lot more leg actions, more varied katas, and a small addition of aerial maneuvers. Ranma’s next logical choice would have been to study Kempo, but life had other plans.
Ranma was sixteen years of age and his best friend, Britanny Diggers, was eighteen. The girl would be finishing up high-school soon, and by now had blossomed into a healthy and beautiful woman. He always felt a certain attraction to the younger Diggers sister for years, (especially since as Gina got older, Ranma’s always felt inferior around her genius) and he wanted to take the time to get to know her better.
Unfortunately, Ranma would be torn as for the first time Ranma could truly remember in modern time, his father had taken a break from movies. No projects seemed to be floating around at the time which interested him, and Genma wanted to spend time with his family. Although he had been angry with his father for a long time, Ranma was thrilled at the chance to finally get to spend time with his father. Still, deep down he and his twelve-year-old sister, Ranko felt similarly worried about their father returning. He was like a stranger to them, and it took them quite a bit of time to get adjusted to actually being around the man.
Things were tense for the first quarter of the year, as everybody was getting used to being around each other for more than a few days or weeks at a time. Ranma was still angry with his father for missing out on most of his life, but it did give him some inner peace to know his father seemed to feel guilty about it, and wanted to make amends.
Of course, any inner peace Ranma had gotten was gone during one particular event. Ranma still felt he would’ve been more comfortable and had more fun at Britanny’s prom as her date if his father hadn’t been one of the adult chaperones. The event turned from a celebratory dance of the students soon to graduate and join the real world into a GenMania Convention. His old man was just living up to the attention from all the students that turned out to be Genma Saotome fans, and he felt his old man ruined what was otherwise Britanny’s night. The selfish old bastard...
What the young man decided to do may have been a bad idea, but at the time, Ranma felt it was the right choice. He felt his father just didn’t care for his family and only for his career... well, Ranma was going to become the biggest thorn in his old man’s side as HE would try to break into the movies. Even with no previous experience, Ranma was positive that with such credentials as ‘son of Genma Saotome’ on his resume, he’d be able to get something!
And in 1991, he did. Already having been chosen as the star of his latest film project, a former World Karate Champion, (which he was only able to get once Genma retired) Dolph Lundgren was asked to look over the credentials and choose a ‘supporting actor’ to play his partner in the movie “Showdown in Little Tokyo”. Upon seeing the name SAOTOME in the stack and reading over it, Dolph couldn’t help but feel Ranma was the right choice.
Ranma also decided to try and one-up his old man by inviting his family and friends to be on set for his first film role, where he would be starring alongside Dolph Lundgren. It was also something his father had never done before. A Buddy-cop ACTION movie set in Los Angeles, California, as one of two police officers attempting to take down a new and deadly Japanese drug gang. So while it had some martial arts sequences, the whole point was gun-play.
Sadly, no one was able to show up for the set. Nodoka and Ranko didn’t feel like traveling, his father was working at another studio to make “The Hitman”, and his friends Gina and Britanny were busy at the time. Gina picked up archaeology as a pastime out of the blue, and she and her sister were off to find the ‘Stairwell of Genghis Kahn’.
Ranma felt he should quit after what he felt was a mediocre performance, but he had acted so well on such a bit part, that Director Dwight H. Little went to Ranma first thing, asking him if he wanted to be in the STARRING role for his next picture, “Rapid Fire”.
Ranma, still on the idea of trying to outdo his father, decided to go with it. Filming started in 1992, a month before his 18th Birthday, and he was able to have Britanny visit him on set. She would have been heading to Ireland soon on an expedition with her sister to find the fabled Time Raft of Merlin, but she wanted to show the guy she considered the closest thing to a boyfriend her support; and he appreciated it!
So filming for “Rapid Fire” began where Ranma as college student Jake Lo, witnessed a killing, and found himself caught between two feuding drug lords. Betrayed and set up by the federal agents protecting him, the only one he could trust was Ryan, a single-minded Chicago cop, (Powers Boothe). To clear his name, Jake agreed to help Ryan bring down the drug lords. From this came an odd take for Ranma, as where his father became famous for his fists, kicks, and greatest of martial arts action, Ranma would become famous for gun-totting and explosive martial arts action!
The film was a hit for Ranma, and seemed to have boosted him to a star status similar to his father. It was odd, enjoying such attention, but Ranma knew he couldn’t let himself fall to the same path as his father. He would not become self-absorbed into all the hype and glamour of Hollywood, and would spend time with his family. And when he heard his father was going to try and break from the movies for a bit, Ranma decided now was the time to try and get to know his father better.
So he took 1993 off from the movies, even with movie companies, producers, and talent agents banging at his door, pleading to see him for whatever reasons. He made sure to spend time with his family, his mother and sister especially as they were all close and he loved them very much. Sadly, Ranma was left disappointed in his father once again, as his old man was approached by CBS, only this time for a live action television series, “Saotome, Tokyo Samurai”. Ranma was getting fed up with his old man’s inability to truly be there for his family.
Still, there was much more to do. One important thing to Ranma was that he made sure to spend quality time with Britanny. At ages nineteen and twenty-one, they were adults, and Ranma knew he had to start taking things seriously with the woman. They’d gone out, but not on many outings that could be considered ‘dates’ for one thing, and Ranma wanted to see if there could be something between him and his oldest, closest friend.
That year would be spent on honing his skills and getting closer to Britanny as he went with the two Diggers sisters on what was Gina’s greatest expedition of the time. How many people had the bragging rights of being there at the discoveries of El Dorado, Atlantis, Shangi-La, Eden, AND get to save the world, ALL IN THE SPAN OF A SINGLE WEEK!?
Needless to say, they grew close that week, and would continue to grow closer as they had many more adventures that Gina just seemed to get them into. Ranma didn’t mind it all, it was interesting and kept him busy with his close friend Gina and one he was finally able to call his girlfriend, Britanny Diggers. It gave him such a thrill deep down whenever she called him something affectionate like her ‘boyfriend’ or her ‘muffin’.
Deciding he wanted to be able to support his girlfriend, (and what he was discovering were her expensive shopping habits) Ranma went back to the movies. He was given many different scripts to look over, but not much was catching his eye. And there was no way in hell he was going to play ‘Johnny Cage’ in “Mortal Kombat”, the movie. Seeing combat spelled with a ‘k’ reminded him too much of one of his father’s old and rather laughable animes.
However, there was one movie script that caught his interest and after reading it through and liking the mix of action, gun-play, and angst, he called up the studio and said he would accept the starring role of ‘Eric Draven’ in “The Crow” on two conditions. First, he wanted his girlfriend to be there for shooting, and he wanted to do something of an ‘ode’ to her, and wanted that the make-up his character used would based after the facial fur of his werecheetah love. The studio accepted both conditions and they began filming.
On March 31, 1994, the fiftieth day of a sixty day shooting schedule for “The Crow”, the scene being filmed was when Ranma’s character was to walk into his apartment and see his girlfriend being raped by thugs. This would subsequently lead to Ranma’s character being shot and killed, along with his fiancé. Actor Michael Massee, who played Funboy, one of the villains in the movie, was supposed to shoot at Ranma as he walked into his apartment.
Because the second unit team on “The Crow” were running behind schedule, it was decided that dummy cartridges would be made from real cartridges that had been brought to the set, earlier in production. They assured Ranma that the bullets would outwardly appeared to be functional, but contained no gunpowder, and hence, posed no threat to those on the set of the movie.
However, due to costs and studio cutbacks, there were no specialized gunsmith technicians. Instead, Bruce Merlin, an effects technician, dismantled the live cartridges by removing the bullets, emptying out the gunpowder, detonating the primer and reinserting the bullets. This rendered the cartridges inoperative, but real-looking in appearance. Merlin and his prop-master Daniel Kuttner took initiative to create some blanks. To create these, Merlin and Kuttner removed the bullets from live cartridges and replaced the gunpowder with firework powder. The bullets were not reinserted.
The dummy cartridges were used to film a close-up of the revolver firing. In an earlier shot, to produce a close up shot of the gun being fired, the trigger was pulled, and an unspent primer fired, propelling the bullet forward into the barrel. It remained lodged there, with no one taking notice. Due to inexperience with firearms, neither Merlin nor any of his technicians cleaned or prepared the weapon for later.
When the first unit used this gun to shoot the death scene, the chamber was loaded with blanks which had no bullets. However, there was still the bullet in the barrel, which was propelled out by the blank cartridge’s explosion. Consequently, Ranma was shot and severely wounded, as cameras rolled. Seconds after the director, Alex Proyas shouted ‘CUT’, and Ranma remained on the floor. Ranma’s girlfriend ran over to him with a paramedic, to see if he had hit his head on the door when he fell, and knocked himself out. They discovered a thin bleeding slit, an inch below his right nipple, but this didn’t hold any clues as to what happened. They removed Ranma’s jacket and spotted a bloody hole in his t-shirt. An ambulance was called, and Ranma was rushed to a hospital...
...with his fiancée holding his hand all the while. Being Ranma’s only close friend on the set, and not being family, they paramedics weren’t going to let her ride with him. Seeing the worry on her face, Ranma was able to force himself to mumble out, ‘she’s my fiancée’ before he lost consciousness. Britanny was surprised to be proposed to in such a fashion, but she wasn’t about to say ‘no’!
Ranma underwent five hours of surgery upon which they discovered a bullet that had been the cause of the damage. He would’ve died had a certain arch-mage not gotten into the operatory, (he was a doctor) and used some low-class healing spells as to not alert any of the doctors present.
In what was considered a medical miracle that Ranma pulled through such a damaging blow to his internal organs, but the doctors told the studio it would be time before the actor truly recovered. The studio respected the advice and finished the movie using Ranma’s stunt-double as not only did they not want to make the basis for a lawsuit, but they did not know when Ranma would wake up from his coma, and they really didn’t want to have to bother him to go back.
When he finally came out of his coma three weeks later, he had Britanny by his side, whom was very happy and relieved to see he was all right. A quick phone-call and everyone was on their way to the hospital to see him, even his father...
...who told him he’d ‘never work in this town again.’
And so what should have been a happy occasion was turned into a screaming match once Genma explained to his son that, with the weight he still had around Hollywood, there was no way in hell Ranma would ever be in the movies again. Of course, Genma was only looking out for his only son’s safety, but after being mostly ignored by his father for so long, and then having this done, it felt more like sabotage to Ranma than the actions of a concerned parent.
So thanks to Genma’s blunt explanation of things, and Ranma’s injured and agitated state, Saotome male pride butted heads with one another and made for a scene which would make the tabloid newspapers and magazines for weeks to come. The only one allowed to visit him for the rest of his hospital stay was Britanny...
...And when Britanny brought up what Ranma had told the ambulance paramedics before he slipped into a coma, the pigtailed martial artist agreed to it and asked her if she would like to get married. It was the first thing he felt that went right in the longest time, and Ranma made sure to get his fiancée an engagement ring the first chance he got.
Mid-1994, Ranma decided it was time for him to move on. His movie career may have been smashed thanks to his old man, but he wasn’t going to take it quietly. After much talking with his mother and sister, (he didn’t even bother talking to his old man) Ranma moved out of the Saotome estate in Decatur, and moved into Atlanta proper. He was able to get a good deal on a condo and moved in with his fiancée, where they could take the time to live without any sort of interference from either of the families and give Ranma the peace and quiet he needed to heal.
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(Posted Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:11)
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