Review of Ranma ½
Ranma 1/2 is one of the most well known works from the talented and creative author, Rumiko Takahashi. She's mainly known for creating works like Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Inuyasha and obviously Ranma. Currently, I have watched all of these except for Yatsura which I'm only halfway done (100+ episodes) with but I have enough knowledge to discuss and refer to it here. Also, I'm going to refer to these works in the review in order to do some comparing but won't spoil anything major for them but will of course review the entirety of Ranma's anime. Finally this is a review for the entireanime series along with the OVAs, however not including the movies which the quality is notably lacking compared to the main series.
Story: 5
Ranma 1/2 is a very Takahashi series which is a good aspect to have but unfortunately comes with some of her major flaws as a writer. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume many fans agree with me that the beginning/first season of the series is easily the best. The majority of season 1 (first 40 episodes), mainly focus on character introductions and explaining some key story details. Takahashi across her series have many fun and interesting ideas and concepts to mess with and for Ranma the main gimmick is for him to turn into a girl, while his father, and other side characters turn into animals after making contact to a certain amount of water. The main goal of the series is for Ranma to find a cure for this curse while also being engaged to his father's friend's daughter and deepening his relationship with her.
The concept is great as a starting point but unfortunately the series does little to nothing to add to this besides giving some side characters some of these curses such as Shampoo, Moose, and Ryoga. Any story details about the cast trying to fix this curse ultimately ends the same way which is them failing to lift the curse which sucks. This is one of the main problems, if not the biggest that the series has which is its lack of progression. As I've said, Takahashi has a lot of creative and interesting ideas but her weakness as a writer is that she never does any sort of progression with her story and even her characters. Besides the addition of some more minor side characters later into the series, you could pretty much watch these episodes in any order after Ukyo's introduction episodes which are around episode 40. This fatal flaw is seen throughout Urusei Yatsura, and in a unique instance in Inuyasha. It's very questionable why Takahashi chooses to write her series like these. She has the skills to write a story with an overarching plot, in fact her previous series Maison Ikkoku, (which is easily her best work) had a great story that had little to no filler.
Speaking of filler, the anime has around 45% of filler which is a LOT. It's just as much as Naruto and Bleach but fortunately the filler isn't that bad which is mainly due to the series being episodic. Its not easy to distinguish filler and canon episodes but more likely than not some of the bad or meh episodes are most likely going to be filler rather than canon due to them not coming from Takahashi herself. As for the quality of the episodes, it was very consistent for a surprising amount of the show's run. I'd say throughout the first half of the series (80 episodes) there may have been a small handful of episodes that weren't too good or meh, maybe about three to five if I had to guess. Unfortunately the second half takes a notable nosedive in terms of quality. I'd say this is a mix of me just getting somewhat tired of the series' flaws and length, while also being the quality itself dropping in some of these filler episodes. If the first half of Ranma had very solid and fun episodes with a decent amount of great ones, then the second half was mostly "good" episodes, with some great gems, but also with a lot more just alright and meh episodes. It's nothing bad by any means but for a series to be 161 along with a handful of OVA episodes its obvious that the quality was going to drop sometime.
If the series ended halfway through I'd most likely give it a mid - high 7 but because of the show just lasting way too long along with having its quality drop its sad to see it go down quite a bit. The last major problem with the anime is its ending or lack there of. The original 161 episode run ended 3 years before the manga ended so there was really nothing they could do about it unless they did an anime original ending or if Takahashi gave them her concept for how she wanted the series to end. Unfortunately the final episodes to the anime is the 3 episode OVA labeled Ranma Super which while being fine episodes on their own, definitely have no reason being the final episodes. Whether the studio and staff knew it would end with the OVAs or not I'm not entirely sure, but in the end we get an incomplete work which I'm used to but it's even more frustrating the longer the show is. It's extremely disappointing and irritating to watch over 150 episodes of Ranma just to get no conclusion of out it unless you read the manga but I'm not going to try that for a good few years. I'm expecting its going to be roughly the same just with the lack of non canon episodes along with an ending, and hopefully a good one too.
Despite having major flaws in its story, Ranma's episodes overall are good, there will be some misses here and there, more in the later episodes, but overall I'd say the episodes themselves are typically quite good and fun.
Art: 7
For a long running series that aired weekly episodes for a bit over three years, Ranma looks quite good, especially for the early 90s. It's colorful, characters are usually on model, backgrounds are good, fights are decent and sometimes above average and look leagues better than a majority of fights in DBZ. Also these are Takahashi's character designs and a lot of people, including myself, enjoy her designs a lot. Nothing mindblowing, but a continently good looking series.
Sound: 7
Ranma's first OP is extremely catchy and is probably the best song in the entire series. That's not to say the rest aren't great, in fact a lot of the EDs and OPs are pretty good too. The main OST I remember fondly of, but I need to listen to the entirety of it one day. A small complaint could be that due to its run, some of the tracks due tend to get used a lot in certain scenes so that is a bit of a bummer that the quantity is lacking in some areas.
I am someone who watches 99% of anime in dub and Viz's English dub I enjoyed a lot. It's not perfect obviously, but it's pretty well done. I had to listen to the 2008 OVA in sub and while I didn't have a problem with it, I still clearly preferred the English cast. To be honest, I think Akane's English VA is notably better than her Japanese's. She feels much more like a tomboy and hearing her being annoyed and irritated sounded much better in English than it did with her Japanese VA. Another thing I wanted to praise was that Shampoo's English VA sounds nearly identical to its Japanese voice which was really interesting to find out about. One weird detail in the dub though is that after episode 65 if I'm not wrong, Ranma's male VA changes which was very drastic and it took me a good amount of episodes to get used to it. They got the same VA as Inuyasha for him from there on out and I actually don't have a preference. I think both actors do a solid job at being Ranma.
Characters: 7.5
Ranma's biggest strength is its cast of likable characters. Ranma is a great protagonist, Akane is one of the better tsunderes in anime, and actually likable, but not lovable (I typically do not like tsunderes), and the rest are mostly quite good. Shampoo is easily my favorite then followed by Ukyo. Ryoga and Moose also make me laugh a good amount of the time. The only character who really overstays his welcome is Happosai. I enjoyed his stay at first but shortly after he just becomes very annoying and rarely seems to get punished for his actions. He isn't terrible, I don't hate him but he's clearly the worst and least likable character in the series. Luckily nearly everyone else is very fun to watch. The only other problem with Ranma's cast goes back to a problem with the main story: progression. In Ranma, characters get very little to no character developments. Sure there are episodes where Ranma and Akane seem to be getting closer to each other but it doesn't seem to affect the episodes that take place after. Ranma still clearly has feelings for her shortly after the series starts but nothing happens between them. Its all just fake and filler.
Enjoyment: 6.5
As I said before, the first half of Ranma was very consistent but unfortunately the series goes downhill shortly after. I would really like to give the series a 7 but due to the abundance of filler, lack of story progression, and lack of character development, its hard to really love Ranma where I can just like and enjoy it for what it is. That being said, a majority of the episodes are fun and it's a pretty fun show during those good episodes. I just wish the series wasn't so long and sort of a drag at times.
Overall: 6.75/10
Ranma 1/2 is a very flawed and way too long of a series that lacks a progressing story, an ending, and character development. That being said, for what Ranma is, its a fun show to watch. For what it lacks, it does include a cast of very likable characters along with being quite funny a good chunk of the time. Currently, I'd say Ranma is Takahashi's second best work being only slightly better than Inuyasha as a whole, Urusei Yatsura, while Maison Ikkoku is by far her greatest achievement.
The main question that I should answer is of course, should you watch Ranma?
It's not a simple yes or no, it all comes down to how much you enjoy anime, how much time you have clearly, and if this seems like something you'd enjoy. It's very difficult to recommend Ranma due to its large run time but if you just want to have fun then I recommend watching just the first 50-60ish episodes and if you really enjoy it then try out the rest and see how much you enjoy. Basically, if you want a good story along with deep characters then this obviously isn't the show for you; go watch Maison Ikkoku. However, if you just want to have fun then just try it. You might end up enjoying a good chunk of the series and then end up dropping it halfway or a quarter way through but hopefully you'll enjoy what you watch of it.