Ranma ½: The Movie (1991)
Director: Shuji Iuchi
Producer: Hiroshi Hasegawa, Yoko Matsushita, Hidenori Taga
Writer: Shuji Iuchi, Rumiko Takahashi (comic), Ryota Yamaguchi, Shigeru Yanagawa (story)
Cast: Kappei Yamaguchi, Megumi Hayashibara, Noriko Hidaka
Running Time: 74 min.
Plot: When Prince Kirin of the 7 Lucky Gods shows up at the Tendo dojo looking for his bride-to-be, guess who’s accidentally holding the scroll that signifies his future mate? Why, Akane, of course, and the rest of the Ranma crew is forced to take a boat to China in order to save her from the horrors of marriage and a diet of pickled vegetables.
Those who love the Ranma TV show will of course love this movie, which plants all the regular characters in the thick of some silly kidnapping story. Those of us that feel that filming Ranma ? is a mistake to begin with will be left with more evidence of it after seeing this movie. There seems to be an essential problem with adapting Rumiko Takahashi’s hilarious manga series to the screen; it does something to the humor, drawing out the timing of the jokes in a way that makes them seem stupid rather than clever. This pretty much ruins the production, but in case it wasn’t enough, the writers mire themselves even deeper by attempting to include every major Ranma character for at least a minute or two. It ends up a confusing mess.
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