Ranma 1/2 08
らんま1/2

Spoiler Summary/Synopsis

Akane ice skates with her friends. While she eats lunch with them, a richly dressed girl named Azusa skates in and takes P-chan, whom she names Charlotte. Akane finds Ranma and the ramen shop to tell him of the theft when Azusa walks in with P-chan. As a result, Azusa challenges Akane to a skating battle over ownership of the piglet.

Meanwhile, Azusa’s skating partner Mikado “comforts” Akane over Azusa’s antics. He goes in to kiss her, causing Ranma to flick a kamaboko slice from his ramen at him. Mikado accepts the challenge. Back at the Tendou estate, Ryouga wants to be Akane’s skating partner. However, neither he nor Ranma know how to skate. Ranma changes to female form to practice with Akane at the rink.

Azusa and Mikado show up, where they are challenged by 100 guys in hockey attire, including masks and sticks. The pair put on a skating routine that easily defeats all the guys. Azusa puts a pink Charlotte collar on P-chan to force Akane’s hand. At the same time, Mikado puts the moves on female Ranma, taking his first kiss. The enraged Ranma goes to the men’s bath to change back to male form to fight Mikado.

Mikado seemingly defeats Ranma, but Akane realizes Mikado is unconscious while standing. After dragging Ranma home, Akane tends to Ranma’s injuries. She teases him about his first kiss. After she calls him a coward for not making a move on her, he starts to. On the second attempt, the other household residents reveal their presence and frustration over Ranma and Akane’s failure to kiss.

Thoughts/Review

Man, I’m almost ashamed to admit that I have zero memory of the skating pair in Ranma 1/2 08. That’s fine cause outside of Crunchyroll’s garbage subtitles, I had some laughs.

Unusual Battles

Last story, the martial arts battle got combined with rhythmic gymnastics. In Ranma 1/2 08, martial arts gets combined with competitive, paired skating. When it comes to the unexpected, Takahashi-sensei certainly had a flair for that. However, that unexpected element is what makes the humor work. It is ridiculous that a pair of figure skaters would defeat 100, burly, hockey players. Yet I laughed at the silliness of it.

Of course the biggest laugh for me came from Ranma’s reaction to his female self getting kissed by Mikado. He has the handicap of not being a skater. So even though it appeared that Mikado defeated Ranma, Akane alone saw the truth. Then seeing the dead-eyed Mikado made me laugh. As Akane hilariously notes, it did take Ranma 518 blows to render Mikado unconscious. That also made me laugh.

There was another unusual battle of sorts. Akane had her fun teasing Ranma over his first kiss and leaving himself open. He then showed her she did the same when he had her in a position to kiss her and almost did. She then challenged him to kiss her. I’m thinking, “Wow. I know it won’t happen, but man, it would be awesome if it did happen.”

However, all we got was the notion that they aren’t opposed to being romantic with each other. And that’s as far as we go, boys. After all, there was a gag to be served with the residence of the Tendou home getting frustrated that Ranma didn’t actually follow through. Well, it was still a nice moment…for now.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Ranma 1/2 08 was a funny and sweet episode, only marred by Crunchyroll’s horrible subtitles.