The young man known as Saotome Ranma will be called many things in the future. His uncute fiancée Tendo Akane will label him as a pervert due to the perceived fact that the young Saotome ‘enjoys’ his other fiancées lavishing attention onto him with physical contact and food. She will also called him a jerk for insulting her both inside ‘training’ and outside in real life. These descriptions stem from two sources. The latter is from Saotome Genma’s upbringing of Ranma who thought insulting someone was the same as a rousing pep talk. The former comes from the girls wanting to grab Ranma’s attention in a show of ‘affection’ in order to one up each other into getting him to choose her as the ‘true’ fiancée. In addition, Akane forgot about the simplest natural rule about the dynamic between teenage boys and girls: girls are supposed to attract boys. This fact refutes her claim that Ranma is a pervert deviating from natural behavior.
Because of the number of women after him, some have called Ranma a ‘womanizer’ or ‘Casanova’ that is so far from the truth it’s funny. Seriously, Ranma’s knowledge on what to do with a girl is about as refined as an innocent 10 year old. At most, the young Saotome would hang out with a girl, hold her hand, and MAYBE, if he worked up the courage, kiss her. So a better term for Ranma would be ‘sexual repressed’. That is not to say this doesn’t come with some advantages. After all, since he doesn’t consciously try to hunt down the ladies for dates or stare at them as if he is mentally undressing them most girls assume he is a better catch then all the horny young boys they normally interact with day in and day out. This leaves Ranma stuck with three women, who would be glad to be his first any way he wants them, and one that constantly berates him for his ‘deviant’ ways. Cursed boy indeed.
To complicate things further there is the fact that while Ranma was born into Japanese society he doesn’t seem to fit in. Ranma only identifies himself with martial arts and the idea of death before dishonor both of which seem archaic to many modern Japanese men and women. He wears mostly Chinese Kung Fu clothes; he speaks the Japanese language with a rough slang, writes it atrociously at best, and doesn’t conform to any social group or clique in particular always standing apart from his age group and peers in one form or another. In short, Ranma stands out too much and another good word for describing him would be ‘alien’.
This would explain why, in the grand design that is the multiverse, someone thought to make this descriptor more prominent in his case. Thus the reason for Ranma’s trajectory being altered by a few meters after taking a hit from Genma panda. This resulted in the young man dropping into the spring of an actual extraterrestrial. It is also good to note that Ranma was slightly different in this dimension; after all if we just removed the gender curse the Ranma we all know would be quite a different fellow. Therefore, it was through a combination of luck, stubbornness, and general dislike of Genma’s narrow-minded teachings that Ranma got a better mental and social education thanks to the martial art teachers who stressed developing the mind along with the body. This gave Ranma a bit more logical and courteous bent then what he had before.
“Dammit Oyaji! AHHH!” Ranma yelled indignantly as he fell into the pool. Well at least he was logical and courteous to anyone other then Saotome Genma whom Ranma still thought of as a stupid moron outside of the Art.
The guide and Genma panda slowly approached the pool. Suddenly a form burst from the bubbling waters and hovered several meters above the spring. “You kalnorf! I am going to put on the hurt so much you won’t be able to genuflect much less sit down!”
The form was humanoid having two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head, but beyond that it was easy to see the being as anything but human in origin. His skin was orange not pink, tan, nor dark brown but actually a citrus orange color. His eyes and hair was radically different too. Where there was once a black hair blue eyed youth was now a young man with fiery red hair and blazing green eyes that almost certainly hinted to some righteous butt whooping about to be unleashed as they bore into the panda.
Sufficed to say Genma panda nearly decided to empty his bladder at that look. Quickly looking left and right he pointed behind the hovering boy and tried to mouth a fake warning that came out as a series of growls. Ranma didn’t bother looking behind him and cocked his right hand back as if to punch the panda were he not hovering several feet away from it. The hand began glowing green causing the panda’s eyes to bulge. Ranma then quickly thrust the hand forward and a bright green ball of energy slammed into Genma panda knocking him several feet back as his bulk dragged a ditch across the loose soil.
The last thing Genma panda thought before he blacked out was, “When the heck did the boy learn to throw ki blasts?” The sight of his father being hit by the ball and his knock back stunned Ranma long enough for him to realize his situation. “What the heck?” The boy exclaimed as he brought his right hand closer to his face to examine it. “Why am I orange?” he asked before looking down to see himself hovering in the space between two springs. “And how the heck am I flying?”
Ranma saw motion to his left. Looking in that direction, he saw that the guide waving and calling for him to come closer. Slowly but surely, as if he had been flying under his own power his entire life, Ranma moved toward the guide and landed gracefully before him.
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(Posted Thu, 12 Apr 2007 02:54)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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