Temple of Ranma's Sailor Senshi Seifuku

This is just something that I've been wondering... any fanon that has fanfiction quickly devlops a number of tropes and cliches (the former basically being a less stale version of the latter- see the TvTropes website for a better explanation). I was just wondering: what are the various cliches & tropes of Ranma 1/2 fanon, and what basis in reality (if any) does each have?

For example:
Akane hits Ranma with a mallet
Ryoga always ambushes Ranma shouting "Ranma, prepare to die!"
Soun & Genma are always scheming to get Ranma & Akane together, and tend to give their plans dramatic names

Anyone want to list the ones they're aware of?

Here's some cliches that jump to mind.

The "chase scene" is a commmon cliche in fanfiction. It never happens in the manga, and in the anime only at the beginning of the first movie. Yet despite this, I've seen dozens of fics that begin with every major and minor character in existence attacking, glomping, or chasing Ranma is a crazy, over-the-top stampede all over Nerima. It got old after the first one.

Ryoga getting lost on every major continent in the world is another cliche. Yes, he _can_ cross the Sea of Japan without realizing it, but he's always limited his wanderings to Asia.

Kuno spouting poetry is a fairly common one. Especially Shakespeare. I'm not even sure where this one comes from. I can't remember him ever doing it in the manga.

Akane hitting Ranma for a dozen imagined slights a day is a really annoying one. She only hits him when he insults her or another girl glomps him. Her reactions may be overblown and aimed at the wrong target half the time, but she never just hits him out of the blue for no apparant reason.

Akane's cooking coming to life, or melting the dinnerware, or drawing the interest of military scientists, or... well, you get the idea. Akane's cooking tastes terrible, and can cause stomache pains. That's all. It is not a chemical weapon, it has never hospitalized someone, and the process of cooking for Akane is not a dark ritual that summons horrors from beyond the veil. She has also improved (a bit) over the manga. By the Ryugenzawa arc, she can cook a decent curry. Assuming that she continued improving at that slow rate, by the end of the manga she could probably could 3 or 4 simple dishes normally.

Akane being kidnapped twice a week by foreign royalty. Apparantly, every freakin' magical prince from a forgotten kingdom in the world has heard how wonderful she is, and they have to set up appointments to come kidnap her (I guess they all heard about her from Ryoga. It's the only possible explanation). Seriously, doesn't anyone realize how stupid this is? I blame the anime for starting this retarded cliche.

Shampoo is a dumb bimbo who only thinks about seducing Ranma. Shampoo does talk stupidly yes, Takahashi knows why, but most of her plots are actually quite clever. And seducing Ranma only takes up the majority of her thoughts, not all of them. She also likes to watch language learning programs on television, play video games, and beat up Mousse. XD

Ukyo and Ryoga are the best of friends and will hook up with each other as soon as they give up on Ranma and Akane. Wrong. Ryoga and Ukyo only spend time together in the manga when planning to break up Ranma and Akane, and they never speak again after Ukyo's failed Tunnel of Lost Love plot. The tunnel apparantly worked as advertised when Ryoga and Ukyo exited together, and their friendship (if you can even call it that) ended on rather bad terms. This pairing has virtually no support in canon whatsoever.

Soun and Genma are always drinking and going out to bars. Not in the manga. Genma, at least, probably did drink a lot in the past. He taught Ranma Drunk-fu afterall. But I can't remember seeing them drinking in the manga. So at the least, it's fairly rare for them to do so.

Soun is a lazy bum who doesn't have a job. WRONG. Someone pays the bills at the Tendo residence, and it's not Nabiki, Kasumi, or Akane. Soun is a member of the city council. During the arc where Hinako stays at the Tendos, he stays out late at town meetings several times. Soun dresses up in a business suit, grabs a suitcase, and claims he has to go on a business trip when he needs an excuse to escape during the arc where everyone thinks Kasumi gets angry, and I'm pretty sure that he does it once to get away from Happosai as well. That would be a pretty pitiful excuse if he didn't have a job. The dojo surely gets paid for all of the monster and criminal hunting the city asks them to do. And the Tendos have rented out the dojo to a gathering of local ladies during the Mark of the Gods arc, and there is nothing that implies this was a one time thing. It really bugs me when people assume that Soun just sits around the house all day because the manga doesn't show what he does while Ranma and Akane are at school.

To be fair about it, Akane does get kidnapped (or menaced) by foreign princes in the anime. That's the basic plot of both movies, and I think Herb and Saffron both count. (Not sure about Herb - haven't read that far, nor viewed that far.)

As a bonus, her cooking lays out Prince Kirin. Mind you, the food looked good, it didn't move by itself, and Kirin had been on a restricted diet all his life.

Jupiah wrote:Ryoga getting lost on every major continent in the world is another cliche. Yes, he _can_ cross the Sea of Japan without realizing it, but he's always limited his wanderings to Asia.

Not quite true. One time in the manga, he is shown with Russian onion-domes in the background, in a place that is reminiscent of Red Square. But that's the only time he's shown as having gone farther than various Japanese islands or China.

Kuno spouting poetry is a fairly common one. Especially Shakespeare. I'm not even sure where this one comes from. I can't remember him ever doing it in the manga.

He makes allusions to classical Japanese poetry. The Viz translation had him quoting Shakespeare in an attempt to make the habit comprehensible to folks in the western hemisphere. With his pretensions to being samurai, a knowledge of historic Japanese poetry would be required.

Akane hitting Ranma for a dozen imagined slights a day is a really annoying one. She only hits him when he insults her or another girl glomps him. Her reactions may be overblown and aimed at the wrong target half the time, but she never just hits him out of the blue for no apparent reason.

To be fair, she does have a very light trigger. But that leads to the mallet, and the idea that it comes from nowhere. When Akane hits Ranma with anything, it's almost always an object that can be clearly seen in panels leading up to the hitting incident. IIRC, her favorite thing to hit him with is actually a shinai, not a mallet.

Ukyo and Ryoga are the best of friends and will hook up with each other as soon as they give up on Ranma and Akane. Wrong. Ryoga and Ukyo only spend time together in the manga when planning to break up Ranma and Akane, and they never speak again after Ukyo's failed Tunnel of Lost Love plot. The tunnel apparantly worked as advertised when Ryoga and Ukyo exited together, and their friendship (if you can even call it that) ended on rather bad terms. This pairing has virtually no support in canon whatsoever.

Or any other pairing with Ryouga, for that matter. The only girl who ever takes a canon romantic interest in Ryouga is Akari. Period.

The idea that Akane is completely oblivious to his interest in her is also not true. During the Waterproof Soap arc, he managed to ask her out on a date, and she accepted. He ended up scaring the bejeebers out of her on that date when he assaulted her in an attempt to get a hug, and irrevocably killed any chance of her falling in love with him. From that arc on, she never thought of him as anything other than a friend. The real situation was that she knew he liked her, but had no interest in him. He, on the other hand, never admitted that he hadn't a prayer of a chance with her until the Jusendo arc... despite all the things she said to him that made it crystal clear. (During the stories where he and Akari were getting together, when she found out about Akari, he hoped she'd be jealous. Instead, she congratulated him, saying that she'd begun to think he'd never find a girlfriend.)

Ryoga blames everying on Ranma with a loud"

"Ranma this is all your fault!"

Oh and the whole Ranma killed a god by himself.
Last I checked he had quite a bit of help from Ryoga, Mousse and Akane.

lwf58 wrote:Not quite true. One time in the manga, he is shown with Russian onion-domes in the background, in a place that is reminiscent of Red Square. But that's the only time he's shown as having gone farther than various Japanese islands or China.

Wasn't that when he had the Kinjakan though? I didn't count that, since he normally doesn't have access to a very fast magical transportation device.

lwf58 wrote:He makes allusions to classical Japanese poetry. The Viz translation had him quoting Shakespeare in an attempt to make the habit comprehensible to folks in the western hemisphere. With his pretensions to being samurai, a knowledge of historic Japanese poetry would be required.

That makes sense. I understand that it does it occasionally. My complaint was more towards fanfics that have him quoting poetry as if it were his normal method of speaking.

Necavit wrote:Oh and the whole Ranma killed a god by himself.
Last I checked he had quite a bit of help from Ryoga, Mousse and Akane.

This is another common cliche (if you can even call it a cliche. I'm pretty sure that cliches have to have some basis in fact).

Ranma did not kill a god.

No where in the manga is Saffron referred to as a god, a demi-god, a half-god, or even god-like. He is a phoenix. A powerful mystical and legendary bird, but not a god.

It's debatable whether he's even immortal. He is reborn as a child when he dies, but does this cycle repeat endlessly? Saffron's followers spoke of a royal family, of which Saffron is the last, so probably not. I'd say that he's extremely long-lived and very difficult to kill, but not truly immortal.

Genma is a lazy freeloader:
Genma trains Ranma every day and even has a job (admittedly it a part-time job)

Nabiki is the sole breadwinner in the family:
This one goes hand-in-hand with the 'Soun not having a job' cliche listed by Jupiah. This has already been discussed in another thread and I'm too lazy to recap that discussion.

I've got an incomplete list of these on my blog (but only the ones that contradict the manga):
http://ranmarelated.blogspot.com/2007/12/fanon-vs-canon.html

Could have added more like:

fanon: Roof hopping common means of travel for Martial Artists in Nermia
Manga: most of the Martial Artists in Nerima do not roof hop. Kuno doesn't, Akane doesn't, Soun doesn't, Ryoga rarely does - he prefers to go through the walls, Ukyo rarely does, Mousse rarely does, Miss Hinako doesn't, most of the ones who show up for one arc don't, etc..

He is a phoenix. A powerful mystical and legendary bird, but not a god.

This is debatable some religions/myths consider phoenix's to be gods or aspects of gods. In China the Phoenix is the personification of the primordial force of the heavens.

Saffron's followers spoke of a royal family, of which Saffron is the last, so probably not.[/quote

Most myths/religions say there is only one phoenix in all of creation. This does make sense though since phoenix's do not procreate they clone themselves as they die (some animals like sharks can clone themselves as well -i.e. asexual reproduction).

I'm pretty sure that cliches have to have some basis in fact

nope a cliche is just a story element that is overused it does not need to have any basis with the source material and things within the source material can be cliche as well. Like Akane being kidnapped that is both a cliche and in the source material (she does get kidnapped fairly often).

Another cliche in the source material is people being attracted to Ranma. Ranma in the manga has attracted girls to him (young and old), guys to him( of all but little kids ages), and spirits (like the panda ghost).

She only hits him when he insults her or another girl glomps him. Her reactions may be overblown and aimed at the wrong target half the time, but she never just hits him out of the blue for no apparent reason.

Not true she has hit him for other reasons. For example in volume 34 she kicked him out of a window so that she can speak more privately (so he wouldn't over hear).

Shampoo does talk stupidly yes, Takahashi knows why,

Only in the English Translation in the Japanese version she spoke a mix of stereotypical Chinese person speaking Japanese and Archaic Japanese.

Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:To be fair about it, Akane does get kidnapped (or menaced) by foreign princes in the anime. That's the basic plot of both movies, and I think Herb and Saffron both count. (Not sure about Herb - haven't read that far, nor viewed that far.)

Herb didn't kidnap Akane. Lime grabbed her and dragged her to the Nekohanten, where Herb told him to get rid of her because they didn't have time to waste, and he violently threw Akane at Ranma when Lime hesitated. No one tried to marry her in that arc, and she had almost no screen time at all after that scene.

Saffron only had Kiima kidnap her to use her to get the Kinjaken back from Ranma. He didn't care what happened to her after that, and he certainly didn't want to marry her.

The only other person to kidnap Akane was Pantyhose Taro. He wanted to trade her to get the Jusenkyo guide book back, not marry her.

Only in the anime do foreign princes fall in love with Akane at first sight, kidnap her, and try to force her to marry them. It's the most idiotic cliche I've ever seen, and I hate the anime for starting it.

Akane's only been kidnapped twice in the manga, and it was never for romantic reasons. She was only ever kidnapped to use as a bartering tool to get something from Ranma. It's rare for her to get kidnapped, and it only happens at all because of her familiarity with Ranma. Truly, it's dangerous to be Ranma's favorite fiancee.

Jupiah wrote:Herb didn't kidnap Akane. Lime grabbed her and dragged her to the Nekohanten, where Herb told him to get rid of her because they didn't have time to waste, and he violently threw Akane at Ranma when Lime hesitated. No one tried to marry her in that arc, and she had almost no screen time at all after that scene.

Saffron only had Kiima kidnap her to use her to get the Kinjaken back from Ranma. He didn't care what happened to her after that, and he certainly didn't want to marry her.

The only other person to kidnap Akane was Pantyhose Taro. He wanted to trade her to get the Jusenkyo guide book back, not marry her.

Only in the anime do foreign princes fall in love with Akane at first sight, kidnap her, and try to force her to marry them. It's the most idiotic cliche I've ever seen, and I hate the anime for starting it.

Akane's only been kidnapped twice in the manga, and it was never for romantic reasons. She was only ever kidnapped to use as a bartering tool to get something from Ranma. It's rare for her to get kidnapped, and it only happens at all because of her familiarity with Ranma. Truly, it's dangerous to be Ranma's favorite fiancee.

Well, I did say "kidnapped (or menaced)". Love is an interesting extra-cost option.

Jupiah wrote:Akane's only been kidnapped twice in the manga, and it was never for romantic reasons. She was only ever kidnapped to use as a bartering tool to get something from Ranma. It's rare for her to get kidnapped, and it only happens at all because of her familiarity with Ranma. Truly, it's dangerous to be Ranma's favorite fiancee.

Definition of kidnapping: the taking away of a person against the person's will

Akane's been kidnapped more than twice:

# Mousse abducted Akane to lure Ranma into a trap involving spring of the drown duck water.
# Pantyhose Taro flew off with Akane and held her hostage in order to get Happosai to come to him.
# Lime kidnapped Akane because he wanted to drink tea with a girl.
# Kiima had crows bring Akane to Jusenkyo to use Akane to get at Ranma.
# A cursed doll switched places with Akane to use Akane's body to get at Ranma.
# Cologne kidnapped Akane to make her a prize for the winner when Ryoga and Ranma were fighting.
# Gonsunki tried to kidnap her during the Romeo and Juliet arc (used chloroform) but she was too heavy.
# Principal Kuno kidnapped her during the time where they were trying to find the coconut that the map on Kuno's head lead to (Used Rope and brooms to tie her up near the ceiling Akane freed herself).
# Evil kunoichi women kidnapped Akane (put her in a bunny suit and hung her from a tree).
# Shampoo took control of Akane through the use of pressure points to try and get the water proof soap from Ryoga.

I think I got them all.

Well, I guess if you include all the minor slapstick incidents then there is a lot. I was only counting the serious ones, and I admit that I overlooked Mousse kidnapping her and threatening her with duck-water.

Can the mind-control accupressure and the body-stealing doll really be considered kidnapping?

Anyway, I didn't want to get this technical. I was attempting to debunk the fanon cliche that foreign princes regularly come to Nerima looking for a wife and kidnap Akane because they fall in love with her at first sight. I think that I've succeeded at that.

Jupiah wrote:Can the mind-control accupressure and the body-stealing doll really be considered kidnapping?

I count them because they fit the definition of kidnapping i.e. taken against your will.

Fall in love at first sight happens to Ranma more than to Akane and he *has* been kidnapped with the intention of marriage in the manga.

Some I can think of:

Ranma is a saint: He's probably closer to being one than most of the cast, and he doesn't deserve alot of the crap he gets, but he's hardly the poor innocent some fanfictions make him out to be.

Ukyo and Shampoo treat Ranma better than Akane does: They can be every bit as possessive, violent, selfish, and unpredictable as she is. The only difference is that they are not around him as much which puts them at an unfair disadvantage and are far more expressive of their desire for the engagement.

Ryoga is the single biggest cause of Ranma's problems: Not even close. He may like to think he is but trust me, he's far too pitiful to be much of a threat.

Cologne will stop at no lengths to get Ranma to marry Shampoo: With the exception of the Cat Fist, which is far from the "kidnap Ranma and kill off Akane" method she's portrayed as doing in fanfictions, she generally, if ever does anything, tends to keep towards more diplomatic methods such as pairing Akane with Ryoga (Breaking Point) or trying to get Ranma to admit his feelings for Shampoo (Reversal Jewel). And even then, it's quite rare. I get the impression that while she thinks it would be nice for Ranma to marry Shampoo, she seems to get the idea that it's not likely to happen and has decided to just stay in Japan and retire.

Ranma is the single best fighter in the series: Cologne, Happosai, Taro, Herb, and Saffron, to think of a few are all consistently able to completely outclass him. It's just that Ranma has at times had a great moment of luck or had help from others.

FriendlyEL wrote:Ranma is the single best fighter in the series: Cologne, Happosai, Taro, Herb, and Saffron, to think of a few are all consistently able to completely outclass him. It's just that Ranma has at times had a great moment of luck or had help from others.

Isn't this a matter of opinion and how you define best. He doesn't have the most raw power or experience but I would rate him the best in a jack of all trades sort of way. Ranma gets one over Happosai fairly often, Ranma was able to sneak up on and often surprises Cologne, Ranma did defeat Taro even while in monster form, the Saffron battle was sort of like a ping pong battle with who was winning at any particular moment changing (example Ranma was winning when he cut off Saffron's wing, Saffron was winning when he blasted Ranma into the mountain), etc... Now Herb he was the one who really outclassed Ranma far more than the others did.