Ranma ½ (らんま½), Japanese pronunciation: Ranma Nibun no Ichi) is a humorous anime and manga by Rumiko Takahashi (高橋 留美子) about a boy named Ranma Saotome (早乙女 乱馬) who was trained from early childhood to age 16 in the martial arts.
The manga was serialized in Shounen Sunday beginning in 1987. Takahashi has stated in interviews that she wanted to produce a story that would be popular with children. Ranma's main audience was girls from elementary to junior high school age.
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At the introduction of the story, we learn that on a training journey in China, Ranma and his father, Genma Saotome, fell into the cursed springs at Jusenkyo. Each spring is associated with a story about someone or something that drowned in it hundreds or thousands of years ago, and anyone who falls in a spring is cursed to turn into whatever drowned in that spring whenever they come in contact with cold water, although they keep their original minds, personalities and skills in the new form; hot water reverts the cursed to their original form. Genma fell into the Spring of the Drowned Giant Panda, and Ranma fell in to the Spring of the Drowned Girl...
Upon returning to Japan, Genma informs Ranma that he's been engaged... to a girl that he's never met... when only a few blocks away from that girl's house. At the same time, Sound Tendo tells his three daughters that one of them is to marry Ranma (who they've never even heard of) in order that the Tendo dojo might be carried on. When they meet him, and find out that he becomes a she upon application of cold water, the two older sisters push the engagement on the youngest sister, Akane, since she "hates boys, and Ranma is half girl"; thus begins the love/hate relationship between Ranma and Akane that lasts for the rest of the series.
This, combined with multiple suitors for both Ranma and Akane, many bizarre forms of martial arts, and the various curses of many of the cast members makes this a weird, but very funny, series.
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