
Seeing this random panel in a short basically unimportant chapter made me think about Ranma fanfic tropes again.
Namely, after the chapter’s start of Ranma having a rather unpleasant dream the story cuts to Ranma explaining the dream to Akane. Notable, Takahashi decides to have them doing something else rather then just standing in a void. They’re training. Together.
You see, it’s a common fanfic trope that despite both being martial artists in terms of practice Ranma and Akane lead basically separate lives. With Akane often training straight up by herself. Heck, I’ve used this trope, and I will live with the shame over it.
This trope is, unlike a lot of Ranma fanon tropes, most often used in Ranma/Akane fanfics, usually part of Ranma’s Arc in the story being to learn to Respect Akane as A Martial Artist.
However, this single panel kind of shows the major hole in said trope. How so?
Well a common element of Takahashi’s storytelling is to have some weirdness start, then cut to the characters being focused on this chapter during their daily lives just before it gets interrupted by said weirdness. One can assume that most of the characters days are pretty normal, with the weirdness popping up occasionally over the vague timeframe the story takes place in to make things more complicated.
Since this chapter shows Ranma and Akane practicing together, just to give a more interesting visual as we cut to Akane getting told about the latest weirdness to infect Ranma’s life. This isn’t called out as something unusual so, presumably, that means that Ranma and Akane training together isn’t a big deal.
And honestly, this just makes more sense if you think about it. Here we have two people who like each other, enjoy each other’s company, and have a major shared passion in their life. Why wouldn’t Ranma and Akane train together?
So why isn’t it shown more often? Because Martial Arts training is boring to watch. It’s a lot of repetitive practice and upkeep. There’s a reason the only times Takahashi showed characters training for more than a panel or page it was some weird technique or style.
Ryoga toughening himself by practicing punching rocks? Boring. Ryoga toughening himself up by being tied up and slammed into a boulder until he learns how to shatter said boulder with just a finger? Entertaining.
So where did this fanon come from? Since I can’t explore the entirety of Ranma ½ fandom history I can only make guesses, so here’s mine:
Basically it comes down to a lot of fans assuming that if something isn’t directly mentioned repeatedly it probably doesn’t happen very often. Ranma and Akane aren’t shown training period very often, because it’s very rarely the focus of the story. Ranma’s shown having to learn new techniques in some arcs, so people assume he trains, but Akane’s never really shown to have any major leaps like that so a lot of people assume improvement and serious training never happens. (Though that’s a rant for another time.)
Then you add in fanon hammering in actions where everybody keeps using the same traits and actions and tropes over because other people used them so they must be right and you have “Ranma and Akane never train together” even though this is the exact opposite of how Takahashi intended this part of their relationship to be!
Also I checked and the anime adaptation of this episode had Ranma explain the dream in a completely different context not involving them training together at all. The bad anime altering character traits and relationships for the worse strikes again!