TV: Ranma ½ (2024 series)

Ranma ½ is both the first manga I ever read and the first anime my sister and I watched together, so it has always been a sentimental favorite of mine, warts and all.  When I heard they were remaking the anime and releasing it worldwide on Netflix, I feared the worst.  Would they change the classic martial arts comedy of the sexes to reflect today's sensibilities?

Produced by animation studio MAPPA (best known for Jujutsu Kaisen), this new Ranma is a very faithful adaptation of the original comic, perhaps even more so than the original TV series. Practically every story beat, line of dialogue, and sight gag has been brought to screen.  It's even set in '80s Japan rather than the modern day, so there's no Internet or social media to speak of.

For diehard fans like me, this approach is both good and bad. The animation is very well done (the fight scenes in particular are better than anything Studio DEEN ever put out), but if you read the manga, there really are no surprises in the story. Still, I'm impressed that they didn't mess with their gender-swapping, mildly misogynistic main character to accommodate "modern audiences," which is more than can be said for a lot of things these days.