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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Ranma 1/2 - TV Series Set 6 Limited Edition Review


Ranma 1/2 - TV Series Set 6 Limited Edition
As of writing this $39.29 on Amazon

Ranma 1/2 you continue to be more entertaining than most anime out today and you don't involve aliens, just the occasional ghost. I'm also sad that this is the last set before the final season of Ranma; there is always all the OVA's to be collected and three feature films.

Set 6 about the boy who becomes a girl when cold water is splashed on him and the love triangles surrounding him and his future bride, Akane, don't stop for a minute being the strangest soap opera with martial arts. This season does take away from Ranma learning any new techniques or any real martial arts training, save for a game of ultimate kick the can. These episodes of zany random occurrences, much like Regular Show, just without 80's movie references, have more of supernatural twist that occurs much more with the creators later work of InuYasha. There's even a predecessor to Inu-Yusha sword technique in an epsiode, this one has Kuno, the air-head samurai wannabe, slicing watermelon with ease.

The strangest episode of the set is "Curse of the Scribble Panda," which even for Ranma standards takes you out of the episode when characters grow as big as Godzilla to battle monsters that come from ancient Chinese wall scrolls. The giant monsters are merely background characters as a living Panda drawing comes to life too. The only way to stop the assault of the monsters is for, of course, Ranma having to date the scribbled, poorly-drawn Panda girl.

The best episodes of the set were "Tendo Family Goes To The Amusement Park," which has the whole cast entering a go-kart race to earn a dinner when they're all flat broke; the two-parter "Ukyo's Secret Sauce," where Ukyo starts living with Ranma as a devoted wife to the chagrin of Akane.

From there on you have "A Teenage Ghost Story, " where a teenage ghost girl moves into the Tendo home;done with so much ease it's funny. Their lives are so strange, a ghost moving in is almost normal for them. We follow that with Ranma having to battle a snow man in, "A Cold Day in Furikan," and a bull-swan-snake hybrid monster that suffers from the same splash of water problem as Ranma. This fiend who uses pant-hose as a weapon takes Akane in the two-parter "The Demon from Jusenkyo." * Special thanks for the 2nd episode featureing Shampoo wearing nothing but tied together panty hose.

As usual this set comes in an extremely nice box with a guide book for all the epsiodes and a large card featuring Akane. It fits nicely if you have the rest of the collection so far.

On visuals and audio, this show wasn't stretchered out for HD, but the quality from video is still high and has been reworked to look a nice as possible. Audio remains clear. From previous installments I noticed less background chatter. Background characters gave a lot more little anecdotes you could overhear in class and quick shots. Those are all gone in these episodes.
Twenty-three episodes of well dubbed yelling at each other with a main character with a personality in sort of harem, love triangle anime isn't bad to tide you over for Anime Expo or to get at Anime Expo, happening a few days as of posting this review.

Will be saying bye-bye to the Ranma revival in a few months so get caught up and watch.