Ranma Saotome

Ranma Saotome (Saotome Ranma) is the series' main protagonist.

A proficient martial artist, he spent most of his youth on training trips with his father.

The last of these trips led them to Jusenkyo, China, where he fell into the Spring of Drowned Girl.

Since then, he changes into a red headed, well built girl when splashed with cold water.

When splashed with hot water, he changes back into a man, but only until the next time he is hit with cold water.

Thanks to an agreement between his father and Soun Tendo, he is engaged to Soun's daughter Akane.

Due to a series of other involuntary entanglements, he has several additional love interests, most notably the Chinese Amazon Shampoo, okonomiyaki chef and childhood friend Ukyo Kuonji, and Kodachi Kuno, the younger sister of rival Tatewaki Kuno.

He is very much in love with Akane, but does not want to admit it.

When another man shows general interest in her, he can't help but grow jealous leading him to depression, scheming something to separate them, or grow worried.

Martial arts is the 16-year-old hero's life.

Whenever his pride is damaged, Ranma will go to great lengths to rectify the situation.

He can come across as petty, overconfident, insensitive and arrogant, as he is prone to cheat or give insults, often acts out of unthinking selfishness, and is a frequent braggart.

However, much of the above is caused by awkward immaturity.

Ranma has an extreme fear of cats resulting from when his father trained him in the misconcepted 'Cat Fu' (Neko Ken) technique.

If he is isolated with a cat in a very small space, or when he can no longer cope with his fear of cats, he begins behaving like a cat himself and becomes a master of the 'Cat Fu', and only Akane can calm him down.

He and Akane drift closer throughout the series, each going to great lengths to save the other when in trouble.

The reason why Ranma tolerates his big number of suitors is not only because he is generally very friendly and caring towards them (going through great lengths to make sure Shampoo doesn't hate him, for example), but mainly because he considers himself a hunk.

In spite of this, Ranma is the butt of most of the violence that happens in the story.

Rumiko Takahashi herself has described Ranma's personality as a mixture of nice, clean-cut, frank, energetic, indecisive, stubborn, picky, stingy and sly, and has stated that she finds flawless characters rather boring.

She addressed the origins of the character as: "With Ranma ½, I had thought a lot of doing a series with a male/female like protagonist, and since in the greater part of my previous stories the main character had been a woman, I planned to use a man this time. I was worried about writing a male main character because of the hundreds and hundreds of male readers, therefore I decided on the character being half man and half woman."

His male half is voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi in the Japanese anime and by Sarah Strange (Seasons 1-3, Movies and OVAs) and Richard Ian Cox (Seasons 4-7) in English.

His female half and childhood is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in the Japanese anime and by Brigitta Dau (Episodes 1-6, OVAs 1-2) and Venus Terzo (Episodes 7-161, OVAs 3-12, Movies) in English.

In the Live Action Special, Ranma Saotome's male half is played by Kento Kaku while his female half is played by Natsuna Watanabe.

In the Hong Kong-aired Animax dub male Ranma is voiced by Darren Pleavin and female Ranma is voiced by Andrea Kwan.

Links
Ranma 1/2 Perfect Edition
Ranma Wiki
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