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This article pertains to the Ranma ½ anime series.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
(早乙女 乱馬 Saotome Ranma)
Japanese Seiyuu: Kappei Yamaguchi (male), Megumi Hayashibara (female)
English Voice Actor: Sarah Strange (male, #1), Richard Ian Cox (male, #2), Brigitta Dau (female, #1), Venus Terzo (female, #2)
The main character, sixteen year old heir to the Saotome School of Indiscriminate Grappling, otherwise known as "Anything Goes Martial Arts", Mutsabetsu Kakutō in Japanese; he is the best martial artist in the series, save for Cologne and Happosai. His greatest strengths are the amazing speed at which he learns new techniques, and his ability to come up with new tactics and new adaptations of old techniques, even in the heat of battle; his greatest weaknesses are a huge ego which doesn't let him back down from any challenge, and an almost complete lack of social skills. He doesn't seem too interested in girls, much less in getting married, yet he is constantly pushed and pulled in multiple directions by people who want to marry him (or her), who want him to marry a specific person, or who want him to not marry a specific person.
Towards the end of a ten year training voyage, Ranma and his father, Genma Saotome, went to Jusenkyo, a cursed training ground in China, to practice their Martial Arts. When Ranma fell in a spring there, he came out as a busty teenage girl (who, in the anime, also has red hair). Now whenever he gets splashed with cold water he becomes female. With warm water, he turns back to a male.
The name "Ranma" means "disorderly horse", a good description of his personality. The name "Saotome" means "quick maiden/virgin", a reference to his female half (the commonly used "rice planting girl" is a mistranslation which has now become fanon).
(早乙女 玄馬 Saotome Genma)
Japanese Seiyuu: Kenichi Ogata
Ranma's father, and master of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts. He too got cursed at Jusenkyo, and becomes a giant panda when exposed to cold water. Genma is the direct cause of many of Ranma's problems, not the least of which is that he decided to go to Jusenkyo even though he didn't know a single word of Chinese; he only cares about Ranma to the extent that Ranma is his heir, and to the extent that he is a living monument to Genma's skills as a martial arts instructor.
The name "Genma" means "black horse", a good description of his personality.
(天道 あかね Tendō Akane)
Japanese Seiyuu: Noriko Hidaka
English Voice Actor: Minami Takayama
Akane's sister, seventeen years old, a shrewd businesswoman. Nabiki is very greedy, and is willing to sell out almost anyone, inlcuding family sometimes, for money. She occasionally likes to go out with boys, and not spend a single yen, instead getting the boy to pay for everything.
The name "Nabiki" means "to bend or yield to a power".
(天道 かすみ Tendō Kasumi)
Japanese Seiyuu: Kikuko Inoue
English Voice Actor: Ryunosuke Obayashi
Akane's father, and old training parter of Genma's who agrees to marry one of his daughters to Genma's son before he really knows what's going on. He is very emotional, and can easily be reduced to tears of joy or sorrow, or be induced into states of frightening anger.
The name "Sōun" means "fast cloud".
(響良牙 Hibiki Ryōga)
Japanese Seiyuu: Koichi Yamadera
Ranma's foil, and the only recurring character who can defeat Ranma in a fair fight (besides Cologne and Happosai); he is incredibly strong and tough, and swings around an amazingly heavy bamboo umbrella as if it weighs nothing. He was cursed at Jusenkyo to turn into a small black pig, he uses this form to become P-chan, Akane's pet pig; Ranma knows that Ryoga is P-chan, but is honor-bound not to tell Akane about it. Ryoga is in love with Akane, but is much too shy to ever do anything about it.
Ryoga's other main characteristic is a terrible sense of direction, sometimes exaggerated by fans but also by the anime's writers.
"Ryōga" means "good fang", referring to Ryoga's fangs. "Hibiki" means "to echo or resound".
(九能 帯刀 Kunō Tatewaki)
Japanese Seiyuu: Hirotaka Suzuoki
The self-declared "Blue Lightning of Furinkan High", a kendoka and samurai wannabe with delusions of grandeur. When Ranma enters the scene, Kuno considers himself to be the front-runner for Akane's affection, despite the fact that she is repulsed by him. He falls for girl-Ranma, however (without giving up on Akane), and never figures out "her" identity.
The name "Tatewaki" means "bringing a sword", referring to him always carrying around a shinai. "Kunô" means "nine abilities", a reference to how talented he believes himself to be.
(九能 小太刀 Kunō Kodachi)
Japanese Seiyuu: Saeko Shimazu
English Voice Actor: Teryl Rothery
Kuno's sister, "The Black Rose", falls for boy Ranma, and is the only one of his suitors without some official or semi-official claim on him. A master of "Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts", she ambushes her opponents before their match and disables them, thus winning by default (though she calls it "fighting in all fairness before the match"). She is fond of using paralysis gas and sleeping powers on people (even when she has no apparent motivation), and has a maniacal laugh which creeps many people out.
The name "Kodachi" is a type of sword.
(東風 小乃 Tofu Ono)
Japanese Seiyuu: Yuji Mitsuya
The friendly neighborhood chiropractor who's fixes up Ranma whenever Akane beats him up. Watch out when he sees Kasumi, though, his glasses get foggy and he doesn't really know what he's doing anymore.
Translated literally, "Tofu Ono" means "east wind axe". The Japanese interpret it as meaning "wind that brings the spring".
(八宝斎 Happōsai)
Japanese seiyuu: Ichiro Nagai
Genma's and Soun's tiny master, and founder and grand master of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts; he is either 100 years old (manga) or 300 years old (anime). The only things he cares about are martial arts, groping women and stealing their underwear, and satisfying his own hedonism. Even though he's a pervert, Genma and Soun don't have the backbone to stand up to him, and try to force Ranma to apologize when Ranma stands up to Happosai.
"Happōsai" has the same sound as "八宝菜", or "eight treasures dish", a popular Chinese seafood dish in Japan. The 斎 character that 菜 has been replaced with is a common ending for martial arts masters' names in old times.
(シャンプー)
Japanese Seiyuu: Rei Sakuma
English Voice Actor: Cathy Weseluck
Soon after getting cursed at Jusenkyo, Ranma (as a girl) defeats Shampoo, member of the Joketsuzoku ("tribe of women heroes", or "Chinese Amazons" in more culturally loaded English term). This was a bad move, because, according to the Chinese Amazon tribal laws, if a female Amazon is defeated by a outsider, she must give the outside the "Kiss of Death", hunt her down to the ends of the earth, and kill her. Ranma and Genma manage to elude her, and think that they've lost her when they settle down in Nerima.
However, Shampoo eventually tracks female-Ranma down and resumes her attempts at killing her. She tracks Ranma down to the Tendo household, attacks Akane for hiding Ranma from her, and, defending Akane, male-Ranma defeats Shampoo a second time. However, instead of receiving a "Kiss of Death", Ranma gets a searing, toe-curling kiss on the lips; it turns out that if a female Amazon is defeated by a male outsider, she has to marry him. She continues on the path of trying marry male Ranma and kill female Ranma, until Ranma tricks her into thinking that the male side is just a disguise for the female side. Heartbroken, Shampoo returns to China, where she receives a cat curse at Jusenkyo.
Realizing that Ranma had a Jusenkyo curse, she then goes back to Japan to try to marry Ranma once more. Unfortunately, the Jusenkyo curse which lead to this realization comes with a price: Ranma is completely phobic about cats.
She might seem like a bimbo, but that's because she's not good at speaking the Japanese language, and her head-over-heels love for Ranma often clouds her mind. Shampoo is an excellent unarmed fighter, but she also commonly uses a pair of Toshihiko Seki
A male Chinese Amazon and hidden Weapons master. He is desperately in love with Shampoo (he's has basically been stalking her since they were both three), and thus sees Ranma as the rival he needs to defeat (or kill) in order to win Shampoo's affection. He has extremely bad eyesight which requires him to wear coke-bottle glasses, but he usually has them propped up on his forehead, leading him to mistake people for other people (or for animals, or even inanimate objects).
He was cursed at Jusenkyo to turn into a duck.
(久遠寺 右京 Kuonji Ukyō)
Japanese Seiyuu: Hiromi Tsuru English Voice Actor: Kelly Sheridan
When Ranma is and traveling on the road with his father, he meets and befriens Ukyo Kuonji, "son" of an okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) chef; Ukyo is actually a girl. Unbeknownst to Ranma, Genma engages Ranma to Ukyo (even though Ranma is already engaged to one of the Tendo daughters), then runs away with the dowry, the family okonomiyaki cart, leaving Ukyo behind. Abandoned by her fiance, and with her dowry stolen, Ukyo renounces her femininity, dresses as a boy, and dedicates her life to revenge. Ten years later, she tracks the Saotomes down and tries to exact her revenge on Ranma, only to discover that Ranma had no idea about what was going on.
His nonchalant attitude about the whole situation enrages her further right until Ranma makes a remark that it was a shame about a "cute girl like her" throwing away her femininity. This remark, combined with her observation of the constant bickering between Ranma and his other fiance Akane, makes her decide to throw away her ten year long quest for vengeance, and to try to marry him instead.
Ukyo primarily fights with a very large metal spatula (resembling a baker's peel) which she holsters on her back, and with a brace of mini-spatulas that she throws like shuriken, which she keeps on a bandolier which is draped across her torso. She occasionally uses other food-related weapons, like a "flour bomb" that acts like a smoke-screen.
The name "Ukyō" is composed of the kanji for "right" and "capital city". "Kuonji" means "eternity".
(パンスト太郎)
Pantyhose Taro had the bad fortune to be born, not only when Happosai was nearby, but when Happosai was experiencing a totally out-of-character fit of altruism, and decided to help the mother out with her birthing. The lead to two unfortunate results. The first was that Happosai bathed the newborn Taro in the most accursed spring in Jusenkyo, the Niuhoomanmaorenniichuan (牛鶴鰻毛人溺泉) the spring of drowned "yeti holding an eel and crane riding an ox"; when exposed to cold water, Taro turns into a minotaur with wings and an eel for a tail. However, Taro doesn't consider that to be his misfortune; he rather likes how powerful his cursed form is. The true misfortune was that, because Happosai had bathed the newborn infant, he had to name the child; this was the law of the village his mother came from. Being an underwear stealing pervert, Happosai decides that "Pantyhose" is the perfect name for a boy. Taro loathes his name, but according to village law only Happosai can change it.
Thus, when he becomes an adult, he sets off on a quest to track down the shriveled old lecher and force him to change his name (in the English anime version, he wants to be named "Mister Cool"; in the Viz graphic novel, he asks for "Awesome Taro"). Taro is arrogant and cold hearted, and he angers off all of his potential allies, especially Ranma, whom Taro really hates for some unknown reason.
Kunō's father is the principal of Furinkan High School, which Ranma, Akane, Tatewaki Kuno, Nabiki and Ukyo attend. Though Japanese by birth, he has spent some years in Hawaii in the United States and has returned with very dark skin and a fake Hawaiian accent. He loves nothing more than making life miserable for his students, and is also obsessed with cutting hair. He combines these two by trying to enforce really bad haircuts on the student population (buzz cuts for boys, bowl cuts for girls).
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