Ranma 1/2 02
らんま1/2

Spoiler Summary/Synopsis

Ranma learns he has to attends school. As such, he walks there with Akane. Along the way, Ranma gets sloshed with cold water, bringing out his female form. Akane takes him to Tofu-sensei’s clinic to get a pot of hot water. Meanwhile, Tofu-sensei sneaks up on Ranma, scaring him. Ranma sees that Akane likes Tofu-sensei due to his strength and skills.

At school, the now male Ranma is amazed by the hoards of guys challenging Akane to a fight. She defeats them all, leading Kuno to emerge to take on Akane. Kuno gets angry when he learns Ranma lives at Akane’s house. Therefore, Kuno challenges Ranma. The battle ends in a draw after the rain turns Ranma into his female form again.

After Ranma transforms back to male, Akane and Ranma are punished for being late. Meanwhile, Kuno loses it when Nabiki informs him that Ranma and Akane are engaged. Ranma flees to avoid getting sloshed with cold water. He jumps out the third floor window, only to land in the pool below. Female Ranma saved Kuno from drowning, but gets felt up when Kuno comes to.

Akane provides Ranma more hot water. She distracts Kuno by challenging him. Ranma is unable to pour the water on himself, so he ends up defeating Kuno in his female form. As such, Kuno writes a challenge letter to female Ranma, giving it to Nabiki to deliver. Ranma turns female at the designated time, expecting a fight. Instead, Kuno gives female Ranma roses and confesses.

Thoughts/Review

Despite Netflix having absolute fetid subtitles, and despite knowing the story, I still had a lot of laughs from the 2024 Ranma 1/2 02.

The Laughs

There were quite a few laughs in Ranma 1/2 02. I mean, right out of the literal gate, you have Akane having to deal with all these guys. Amusing enough. But then Kuno takes it to the next level. I forgot what a moron he is in a comedic way. That aside, his battles with Ranma, combined with Ranma attempting to keep his female form a secret made for some laughs.

On that line, I think the biggest laugh I got was Nabiki trolling Kuno. When Ranma wrote “baka” (馬鹿) on Kuno’s forehead, Kuno felt the Kanji was wrong. So he and Nabiki write the kanji on the board, leading to Kuno expressing his hatred for Nabiki. Her genuine look and statement of how happy that made her caused me to laugh out loud. Good stuff with all the laughs and chuckles in the episode.

Netflix Subtitles Suck

As was evident in the previous episode, Netflix jacks up the English subtitles for Ranma 1/2 02. There was absolutely ZERO times that Kuno was addressed by his given name Tatewaki. And yet for unexplained reasons, Netflix decided that everyone should address him as his given name. Why? And these bozos who decided to have characters say things they didn’t say wonder why they are going to lose their jobs to AI.

That aside, Netflix made it clear that they weren’t going to use “filthy” Japanese honorifics in the “precious” English subtitles. Despite this, the decision was made to allow the “senpai” honorific to remain. I don’t get it. Kuno gets addressed as “Kuno-chan” by Nabiki, “Kuno-kun” by his classmates, and “Kuno-senpai” by Akane. Thus Netflix gives us “Tatewaki” and “Tatewaki-senpai”. 😑 And this is all on top of the other trash decisions made for the subtitles. Ugh.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I’ve got to get back to work. As such, I’ll wrap up my review of Ranma 1/2 02 by stating that while Netflix sucks, the episode was pretty funny. I will say I’m not a fan of the stylistic art style that shows up. I find it more intrusive in this series than it was in Urusei Yatsura.