Introduction Arc
6 eps
6 canon 📷 6
Genma Saotome finally arrives at the Tendo dojo with the son Soun has promised to one of his daughters, except the visitors appear to be a giant panda and a red-haired girl named Ranma. Akane befriends the girl until hot water reveals the truth: Ranma is a boy cursed to become a girl in cold water, while Genma turns into a panda. Soun immediately pairs Ranma with Akane anyway, beginning an engagement neither of them wants.
Ranma starts at Furinkan High with Akane and discovers that her mornings begin with half the boys at school trying to defeat her for the right to date her. Tatewaki Kuno, captain of the kendo club, is the strongest of them and immediately takes exception to Ranma's place at Akane's side. Ranma beats him, but Kuno is far too proud and far too interested in Akane to let the matter end there.
Kuno challenges Ranma over Akane, only to encounter Ranma's female form after a cold-water mishap and fall just as hard for the mysterious pigtailed girl. Ranma realizes with horror that Kuno is now pursuing both Akane and him without understanding they are the same person. Keeping the curse quiet becomes much harder when Kuno refuses to take a hint in either direction.
Ranma's double life at Furinkan gets harder to manage as Kuno becomes determined to defeat male Ranma while courting the pigtailed girl. Akane gets dragged into the confusion while Ranma tries to keep his curse from becoming school gossip. Kuno somehow comes away even more convinced that the two Ranmas are separate people.
After Akane knocks Ranma around for teasing her, Dr. Tofu treats his injuries and gives Ranma his first real look at Akane's longtime crush. The bigger surprise is Tofu himself: calm and capable until Kasumi appears, at which point he becomes a complete wreck. Ranma starts to understand that Akane's feelings for Tofu are serious even if he cannot resist teasing her about them.
Akane finally has to face what everyone else can already see: Dr. Tofu is hopelessly in love with Kasumi. Ranma tries to cheer her up in his usual clumsy way and actually listens while she talks through how long she has cared about him. When Ranma tells her she is cute when she smiles, the two get one of their first genuinely tender moments before embarrassment takes over again.
Ryoga Arc
4 eps
4 canon 📷 4
Ryoga Hibiki finally reaches Nerima after months of wandering and demands the duel Ranma supposedly denied him back in junior high. Ranma barely remembers the grievance, which only makes Ryoga angrier, and the two quickly prove they are much closer in ability than Ranma expected. Ryoga also makes it clear that the bread feud is only part of why he has been chasing Ranma since China.
Ranma and Ryoga take their fight onto the grounds of Furinkan High, where Ryoga's strength and weaponized bandanas turn the grudge into a real battle. Ranma begins to suspect that something happened to Ryoga during the trip to China, but neither boy is interested in stopping long enough to explain it. Their fight ends with one of Ryoga's attacks accidentally cutting off most of Akane's long hair, instantly making the rivalry personal for her too.
Ranma and Ryoga both apologize after Akane's hair is cut, while Kasumi trims it properly and Akane quietly accepts the change. Dr. Tofu tells her the short hair suits her, helping Akane finally let go of the crush she has carried for years. Ryoga eventually reaches the Tendo house again, gets splashed with cold water, and Akane unknowingly adopts his cursed piglet form as P-chan.
Ranma realizes that P-chan is Ryoga and learns that Ryoga received his curse after Ranma knocked him into the Spring of Drowned Black Piglet at Jusenkyo. Akane remains completely unaware and even lets P-chan sleep in her bed, driving Ranma insane when Ryoga openly admits he loves her. After P-chan is taken in by a wealthy family, Ranma and Akane recover him, leaving Ryoga's secret intact.
Early Adventures Part 1
4 eps
3 canon 1 filler 📷 4
Akane and Ranma discover Kodachi Kuno destroying Furinkan's rhythmic gymnastics team before their match against St. Hebereke. Akane agrees to take their place, but Kodachi begins attacking her outside the ring to make sure she never reaches the competition. Ranma saves Kodachi from falling off the Tendo roof, and she immediately falls in love with him, adding another Kuno to his problems.
Kodachi and Akane agree to make Ranma the prize of their gymnastics match, only for Akane to injure her ankle during training. With no one else able to replace her, Ranma is forced into his female form and spends the night learning martial arts rhythmic gymnastics with Ryoga's help. Kodachi keeps cheating before the match even begins, while Kuno somehow remains oblivious that his sister's opponent is the pigtailed girl he loves.
Ranma faces Kodachi in a match where clubs, ribbons, hidden weapons, and outright sabotage are all apparently acceptable as long as someone can call them gymnastics. Ryoga, trapped in P-chan form and chained to Ranma, tries to tip the match against him so he can have a chance with Akane. Kodachi's tricks nearly work, but Ranma adapts faster than she can cheat and wins the match.
Dr. Tofu's mother Kin arrives determined to find her son a bride, putting Akane in the awkward position of pretending she might marry the man she has only just accepted she cannot have. Nabiki joins the act for money, and Kin decides the matter can be settled by judging which candidate has the best hips for childbirth. Ryoga throws female Ranma into the contest to save Akane from the marriage, turning Tofu's love life into a completely ridiculous family competition.
Shampoo Arc
4 eps
3 canon 1 filler 📷 4
Shampoo arrives in Japan hunting the red-haired girl who defeated her in China, because Amazon law requires her to kill any female outsider who beats her. Ranma tries to stop her without revealing the curse and ends up defeating Shampoo again in his male form. That changes everything: the same law says a defeated Amazon woman must marry the man who beat her, so Shampoo's vendetta becomes an engagement on the spot.
Shampoo uses a pressure-point shampoo treatment on Akane that erases every memory she has of Ranma. Desperate to undo it, Ranma agrees to Shampoo's demand that he kill the red-haired girl she still considers her enemy, which is impossible without exposing his curse. While Akane struggles to remember the boy living in her own house, Ranma searches for a way to restore what Shampoo took from her.
Ranma tries to satisfy Shampoo by arranging for Ryoga to beat his female form nearly to death, but even Ryoga backs off when Ranma loses hope of restoring Akane's memory. What finally reaches Akane is not a secret technique but Ranma insulting her in exactly the familiar way she has been missing. Ranma then reveals that he and the red-haired girl are the same person, leaving Shampoo heartbroken and sending her back to China.
Fed up with his curse and another argument with Genma, Ranma declares that he is going back to China to find a cure. Father and son look back over everything that has happened since Jusenkyo, making the episode largely a recap of the first seventeen stories. It closes the original eighteen-episode Ranma ½ broadcast before the series returns as Ranma ½ Nett?hen.
Early Adventures Part 2
6 eps
4 canon 2 mixed 📷 6
Genma's past catches up with Ranma when Kinnosuke Daikoku arrives to collect on a bargain Genma made when Ranma was a baby. His daughter Kaori challenges Akane to a martial arts takeout race, with Ranma's future tied to the result. When Akane is hurt, Ranma swallows his pride, changes into a girl, and enters the race himself rather than let Genma's old stupidity decide who he has to marry.
A cat delivered to the Tendo house exposes Ranma's absolute terror of them, the result of Genma's horrifying childhood attempt to teach him the Nekoken. Sasuke keeps throwing cats in Ranma's path until fear pushes him into a feral state where he genuinely believes he is one. Akane is the only person who can calm him down, and Ranma's catlike affection gives her a kiss he would never manage while fully himself.
Shampoo returns to Nerima with her great-grandmother Cologne, the tiny Amazon elder who immediately decides Ranma belongs in the family. Cologne proves she is on another level entirely and uses the Full-Body Cat's Tongue pressure point to make Ranma so sensitive to heat that he can no longer change back into a boy. With his curse effectively locked in female form, Ranma has no choice but to challenge Cologne on her terms.
Mousse arrives from China determined to win Shampoo back and blames Ranma for standing in his way. His terrible eyesight does nothing to slow down a fighting style built around hiding an absurd arsenal inside his robes, and Ranma has to face him while still suffering from Cologne's heat sensitivity. Dr. Tofu gives Ranma just enough relief to fight properly, and Mousse leaves the duel with neither Shampoo nor the victory he expected.
A family ski trip turns into another one of Ranma's impossible martial arts competitions when Cologne offers the Phoenix Pill as the prize in a snowman-carrying race. Ranma jumps at the chance because the pill can finally undo the Cat's Tongue curse, but Cologne adds a catch: if he loses, he has to marry Shampoo. The mountain turns into a battlefield of giant snowmen, dirty tricks, and one more round of Ranma trying to outmaneuver an old woman who is always two steps ahead.
Shampoo offers Ranma a dose of Instant Spring of Drowned Man if he will go on a date with her, on the same day Akane needs help defending the Tendo dojo from a hulking dojo destroyer. Ranma tries to rush through the date and still make it home in time, only to discover the supposed cure is temporary. He reaches the dojo before Akane is overwhelmed, and the two finally put the challenger down together.
Rival Battles Arc
4 eps
4 canon 📷 4
After another quick loss to Ranma, Ryoga decides brute strength is not enough and accepts training from Cologne in the Breaking Point technique. Ranma and Genma head into the mountains for training of their own, with Akane tagging along and trying very hard to feed them. While Ranma struggles through Akane's cooking, Ryoga survives Cologne's brutal lessons and starts building a weapon that may finally let him beat his rival.
Ryoga returns from training able to shatter solid rock with a fingertip, and Ranma immediately realizes Cologne has handed him a serious advantage. The Breaking Point itself cannot harm human flesh, but the punishment Ryoga endured learning it has made his body unbelievably tough. Ranma has to find another way through that defense before Ryoga turns their rematch into the victory he has been chasing since Nerima.
Mousse returns as a masked circus performer and, thanks to his terrible eyesight, initially kidnaps a pig doll instead of Akane. Once Ranma tracks him down, Mousse reveals that he fell into the Spring of Drowned Duck after leaving Japan and now has a curse of his own. He eventually gets the real Akane and threatens to splash her with cursed water unless Ranma agrees to settle things.
Mousse turns his duel with Ranma into a trap built around cursed water and Akane, forcing Ranma to fight while trying to keep everyone from being transformed. Akane convinces Ranma that deliberately losing might finally give Mousse a real chance with Shampoo, but Shampoo has no intention of rewarding him that easily. Ranma wins anyway, and Mousse ends up back at the Cat Cafe in duck form, still hopelessly devoted to a girl who enjoys tormenting him.
Happosai Arc
8 eps
5 canon 3 mixed 📷 8
Soun and Genma's old master Happosai returns, and their terror immediately explains how bad he must be. He is tiny, lecherous, impossibly strong, and perfectly happy to make Ranma the new heir to the Anything-Goes school whether Ranma wants the job or not. Ranma laughs him off until Happosai shows that the ridiculous old man can actually back up every threat he makes.
Ryoga brings Ranma a map to a supposed Spring of Drowned Man hidden somewhere in Tokyo, only for both of them to discover that the site is underneath Furinkan High's girls' locker room. Ranma sees a possible cure and starts digging for it, while Ryoga decides protecting the girls from Ranma is suddenly his sacred duty. Their fight uncovers a clue to a Japanese version of the cursed spring instead of the easy cure either of them wanted.
The search for the Japanese Spring of Drowned Man leads Ranma and Shampoo into the Kuno estate looking for one of three special urns needed to summon it. Akane, P-chan, and Mousse follow, turning the mansion into a maze of traps, machinery, Kodachi, and Sasuke's attempts to stop everyone. They finally locate the Crimson Moss urn, only for Happosai to get his hands on it first.
Ranma's hunt for the Japanese Spring of Drowned Man continues as the three moss urns are finally brought together. The group travels to the countryside expecting a real cure and finds the site where the spring is supposed to appear. After all the trouble of collecting the urns, Ranma learns the Japanese spring shut down years ago, leaving him exactly where he started.
Akane is furious when Ranma refuses her cookies but seems interested in Kodachi's, not realizing he is only trying to recover an embarrassing photograph Kodachi is holding over him. Ranma keeps sneaking around with Kodachi while Akane assumes the worst, and every attempt to explain himself only makes him look guiltier. The misunderstanding finally comes apart once Akane learns what Ranma was actually trying to hide.
Ranma pushes Happosai too far and gets thrown out of the Tendo house until the old master calms down. Cologne gives him a girl-repellent scent that weakens Happosai by making women flee from him, finally handing Ranma a chance to beat him. The problem is that Ranma cannot bring himself to enjoy crushing an opponent who has become genuinely helpless, even when that opponent is Happosai.
Akane is thrilled when Furinkan's drama club finally casts her as Juliet instead of another masculine role, but finding a Romeo becomes a disaster when Kuno and Happosai both want the part. Ranma only joins the competition after hearing the winning cast may get a trip to China, putting him directly opposite Akane in a play built around a kiss neither of them can handle normally. The stage performance collapses into a fight before anyone can pretend this was ever going to be ordinary school theater.
When the Tendo house loses hot water, everyone heads to the public bath and Ranma gets stuck supervising Happosai. Happosai spends the night trying every possible route into the women's side while Ranma blocks him again and again, only to get splashed into female form in the process. What should have been a simple bath turns into another running fight with hot water, cold water, and Happosai refusing to behave for even five minutes.
Hard Battle
24 eps
8 canon 1 mixed 2 good filler 13 filler 📷 24
Genma is attacked by a stranger carrying a giant okonomiyaki spatula, and Ranma soon learns the challenger is Ukyo Kuonji, a childhood friend Genma once promised him to in exchange for her father's food cart. Genma took the cart and ran, leaving Ukyo with a ten-year grudge and every reason to hate the Saotomes. Once Ranma discovers Ukyo is a girl and tells her she is cute, the old engagement comes roaring back to life.
Ukyo realizes Ryoga's feelings for Akane could solve her own Ranma problem and starts pushing the two toward a date. Akane goes along because she thinks Ryoga is being dragged into Ukyo's scheme, while Ranma immediately decides the date needs to fail. His increasingly desperate interference says more about how he feels about Akane than anything he is willing to admit.
Shampoo slips Ranma a pork bun laced with a Chinese obedience herb meant to make him follow her commands. The plan goes sideways when the trigger changes from a finger snap to a sneeze, leaving Ranma compelled to embrace whoever happens to be nearby whenever someone sneezes. Shampoo spends the rest of the episode trying to regain control while Akane gets caught in the middle of the chaos.
Happosai remembers the Happo Fire Burst, a technique he once sealed away, and heads after the scroll that explains how to use it. Unfortunately, the scroll is hidden in the middle of an outdoor hot spring where Akane is bathing. Ranma, Genma, Soun, and the others race to keep Happosai away from both the technique and the women, turning the hot spring into exactly the disaster everyone expected.
Ranma receives a challenge from Tsubasa Kurenai, a bizarre cross-dressing classmate from Ukyo's past who is hopelessly in love with her. Tsubasa attacks Ranma through disguises ranging from a mailbox to a vending machine, convinced that eliminating him will win Ukyo's heart. Ukyo finally explains their history, and Tsubasa leaves without accepting that Ukyo simply does not return those feelings.
Soun is put in charge of a neighborhood watch trying to catch the mysterious underwear thief terrorizing the area, unaware that the culprit is Happosai. The investigation gets stranger when a ghostly woman becomes involved and takes an interest in the old lecher herself. Soun spends the night trying to uphold his new responsibility while Happosai somehow turns a simple patrol into a supernatural mess.
Akane accidentally eats Happosai's super-strength soba and wakes up with enough power to toss Ranma around like he weighs nothing. She is delighted to finally beat him cleanly, while Ranma is horrified that Akane now has both her temper and ridiculous strength. The boost does not last, but for one day Akane gets to enjoy being the strongest person in the room.
Someone begins abducting everyone in Nerima who carries a Jusenkyo curse, taking Shampoo and Ryoga before setting sights on Ranma. The attacker turns out to have a personal connection to Jusenkyo and a grudge against the people transformed by its springs. Ranma has to stop the kidnappings while dealing with an enemy who knows exactly how vulnerable cursed fighters are to water.
Ranma takes a hard blow to the head during a morning fight and wakes up convinced that he is completely, sincerely female. Suddenly he wants dresses, makeup, and a very different relationship with the boys around him, leaving Akane and the rest of the household scrambling to get the old Ranma back. The joke works because everyone knows how stubbornly Ranma usually defines himself, making his total reversal especially unsettling for Akane.
Genma and Soun return claiming they have learned Body-B-Gone, an invisibility technique from Master Chingensai that might finally let them defeat Happosai. Their new power quickly becomes another excuse for bad behavior, and Happosai is not impressed by opponents he cannot see. Ranma gets dragged into a showdown between three old men whose martial arts knowledge is matched only by their complete lack of judgment.
Sasuke tries to mediate yet another war between Tatewaki and Kodachi, only for Kuno to accuse his loyal servant of betrayal and throw him out of the estate. With nowhere else to go, Sasuke ends up at the Tendo dojo and briefly experiences what life is like outside the Kuno household. His absence eventually forces the siblings to recognize just how much abuse he quietly handles for them every day.
A supposedly haunted sword falls into Ranma's orbit and begins causing trouble for anyone unlucky enough to handle it. What looks like a simple ghost story becomes another Nerima fight once the weapon's strange power starts dragging Ranma, Akane, and the others into its curse. Getting rid of the sword proves harder than picking it up in the first place.
Happosai finds a set of love pills that make the person who takes one fall instantly for the first member of the opposite sex they see. Ranma gets mixed up with the pills while trying to stop Happosai from using them for exactly the reasons everyone expects. The result turns the beach into a chain reaction of unwanted devotion, with Ranma and Akane once again stuck pretending the whole thing means less to them than it does.
Mousse convinces Ryoga that their lives would both improve if Ranma simply stopped being a problem, and the two rivals form an alliance against him. On paper, the combination of Mousse's hidden weapons and Ryoga's strength should be dangerous. In practice, their jealousy, terrible coordination, and completely different reasons for hating Ranma make the partnership almost as dangerous to themselves.
Happosai rediscovers a magic mirror from his youth and learns that tears can activate its ability to send people through time. Ranma and the others get pulled into Happosai's memories and encounter a much younger version of the old master, along with the people he knew before becoming the menace they live with now. The trip does not make Happosai easier to tolerate, but it does prove he has been causing trouble for a very long time.
The Tendo dojo is short on students, and Kodachi decides the obvious solution is to move in as Ranma's wife and rescue his supposedly failing household. She arrives with enough possessions to take over the place and immediately treats Akane like an obstacle that needs removing. Ranma spends the episode trying to survive Kodachi's version of domestic life without encouraging her for even a second.
A fortune teller named Miyo predicts that Akane will marry Ranma within a week, a possibility Akane dismisses until Happosai suddenly begins acting strangely. His apparent personality change sets off a chain of events that makes the prediction look more believable by the hour. Ranma and Akane react to the idea of marriage exactly as expected: by panicking, arguing, and watching circumstances drag them closer to it anyway.
Chinese Amazon twins Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung arrive in Nerima looking for Shampoo, whom they admire as their senior. Their admiration disappears when they learn she failed to kill female Ranma after losing to her, and they decide to enforce Amazon law themselves. Shampoo is forced to defend the same person she once came to Japan to kill, while Ranma gets another reminder that Amazon traditions never make his life simpler.
Happosai uses his Personality Splitter technique on Ranma and literally separates his male and female selves into two bodies. The female Ranma quickly develops a dangerous personality of her own, while the original Ranma discovers that dealing with himself is much worse than dealing with any ordinary rival. Putting the two halves back together becomes urgent once the split personality starts acting on impulses Ranma normally keeps buried.
Copycat Ken secretly photographs Ranma in combat and uses his Copy Martial Arts to reproduce Ranma's appearance and techniques. When the fake Ranma starts fighting exactly like the real one, even Akane has trouble telling them apart. Ranma finally has to beat an opponent who can imitate nearly everything he does, forcing him to rely on the one thing Ken cannot photograph in advance: improvisation.
Ryoga accidentally uses a Chinese waterproof soap and discovers that cold water no longer turns him into P-chan. Convinced he may finally be cured, he works up the nerve to ask Akane out while Ranma and Shampoo both chase after the soap for reasons of their own. Ryoga gets a brief taste of life without the curse, but the miracle is not nearly as permanent as he hopes.
A televised anything-goes obstacle race offers a trip to China as its grand prize, which is more than enough to get Ranma into the competition. Akane, Shampoo, Ryoga, Kuno, Kodachi, and most of the usual troublemakers pile in too, turning a ridiculous game show into a full martial arts brawl. The course keeps escalating until winning the trip becomes almost secondary to surviving everyone else.
Tired of Ranma treating her like one of the guys, Ukyo arrives at school in a skirt and makes a serious attempt to act more feminine. Ranma still calls her a friend, but Shampoo, Kodachi, and Akane immediately recognize the extra competition and drag the situation into a cooking contest over who deserves him. Ranma eventually tells Ukyo he likes her best when she acts like herself, which is exactly what she needed to hear.
After dreaming that Jusenkyo has dried up, Ranma becomes desperate to undo his curse before the chance disappears forever. He, Genma, and Happosai use a magic mirror hoping to reach the past, but first land ten years in the future and see a nightmare where Akane has married Ryoga. They eventually try to stop their younger selves from falling into the springs at all, only for the entire adventure to collapse into one more cruel dream.
Outta Control Part 2
18 eps
5 canon 1 mixed 12 filler 📷 18
A mysterious woman named Sakura appears at the Tendo home, and Happosai claims she is Ranma's long-lost mother. The possibility that Ranma might leave throws Akane and the other fiancées into a panic while Genma behaves strangely enough to make the story seem believable. Ranma eventually discovers Sakura is actually a circus performer who wants to exploit the Saotome curses as an act, and Happosai simply lied because he thought it would be funny.
Sheltering from a storm, Ryoga starts writing Ranma a letter while brooding over their rivalry and his hopeless love for Akane. His thoughts turn the episode into a look back at the disasters, fights, and humiliations that brought him this far. Ryoga decides to abandon romance until he can finally defeat Ranma, then immediately wanders straight back to Nerima and runs into both Ranma and Akane.
Shampoo gives Ranma a large bell that she claims will bind them together, but the souvenir carries the spirit of Maomolin, a giant ghost cat searching for a bride. Ranma's fear of cats makes him uniquely terrible at dealing with the creature as it starts treating the bell as an engagement token. The entire household gets pulled into stopping a supernatural courtship that Shampoo absolutely did not intend to arrange.
A painfully earnest martial arts enthusiast arrives with the kind of fiery youth-and-training philosophy Ranma has absolutely no patience for. His sincerity and obsession with doing everything the hard way begin rubbing off on the people around him, especially Akane. Ranma spends the episode trying to prove that enthusiasm is no substitute for judgment while getting dragged into the man's overblown training crusade anyway.
A young martial artist named Genji Heita comes to the Tendo dojo determined to become Happosai's disciple and throws himself into training with complete sincerity. Ranma initially finds his hot-blooded attitude ridiculous, especially when Akane starts admiring his effort. Happosai predictably turns the arrangement into nonsense, and Ranma ends up defending his own place in the dojo from a rival who takes every lesson far more seriously than the master does.
Genma disappears while looking for a Christmas tree, and Ranma and Akane eventually find him living comfortably at a wealthy family's mountain estate. In panda form he has become the treasured companion of a sickly boy and has no interest in giving up the easy life. Ranma has to decide whether dragging his father home is even worth the trouble when Genma may actually be helping someone for once.
Ryoga decides to try enrolling at Furinkan High and stays at the Tendo house while Akane helps him study for the entrance exam. For Ryoga, living under the same roof as Akane sounds perfect until Ranma, P-chan emergencies, and the normal chaos of the dojo make concentrating almost impossible. The episode gives Ryoga a rare glimpse of the ordinary school life he keeps missing because he can never find his way there.
Happosai unexpectedly falls in love, which sounds impossible until the rest of the household realizes the old menace is taking it seriously. Ranma and the others are delighted by anything that might distract him from stealing underwear, but Happosai's idea of romance is no less disruptive than the rest of his life. For once, the joke is watching Happosai discover that wanting someone does not mean he can simply take what he wants.
A prediction convinces Kuno that Nabiki may be the great love waiting in his future, which is exactly the kind of misunderstanding Nabiki knows how to monetize. She encourages him just enough to keep the gifts and money flowing while everyone else watches Kuno reinvent his romantic destiny yet again. The arrangement lasts only as long as Nabiki can keep control of a boy who never understands when he is being used.
Ryoga feeds a starving old hermit and is rewarded with the Mark of the Battling God, a martial arts calligraphy technique that makes him almost impossibly strong. He finally gets the power to overwhelm Ranma, but the ridiculous mark permanently painted across his stomach is humiliating enough that Ryoga immediately wants it gone. His solution is to lose a fight and break the technique, which becomes much harder now that his body refuses to let him lose.
The Mark of the Battling God creates a new problem when Akane notices that Ryoga and P-chan carry the same strange symbol. Ryoga panics that his secret is finally about to collapse and considers leaving Nerima rather than face her reaction. Ranma, meanwhile, keeps trying to defeat Ryoga and remove the mark without being the one who tells Akane why it appears on both of them.
Kasumi meets Yasukichi, a wandering man with the bizarre talent of catching eggs in midair, and comes home cheerful enough that Nabiki immediately suspects romance. The stranger later ends up at Dr. Tofu's clinic, putting Kasumi, Tofu, and the rest of the Tendos into an unusually gentle misunderstanding. For once the chaos around the dojo takes a back seat and Kasumi gets an episode centered on her own quiet kindness.
Kuno acquires the Manganmaru, a legendary sword that grants three wishes, and wastes no time using it to pursue both Akane and the pigtailed girl. Ranma tries to steal the remaining wish before Kuno can make things worse, only to get dragged into a situation where Kuno believes he is finally about to receive his first kiss. Ranma has survived monsters, curses, and Happosai, but very few things frighten him as much as that possibility.
Shampoo obtains a magical red thread that makes Ranma fall completely in love with whoever is tied to the other end. The spell works far better than she expected, turning Ranma into an embarrassingly devoted boyfriend while Akane insists she does not care. With the enchantment becoming permanent if the thread stays tied too long, Akane finally stops pretending the situation means nothing to her.
Mousse receives a letter from China expecting news of his marriage to Shampoo and decides he cannot keep going home empty-handed. He challenges Ranma again and promises that if he loses he will return to China and give Shampoo up for good. Even after losing, Mousse keeps finding excuses to delay his departure because walking away from Shampoo is much harder than making the promise.
A wandering Gambling King arrives to collect an old debt and takes possession of the Tendo dojo after producing a contract Ranma signed as a child. The problem is that Ranma is nearly as terrible at cards as the man he has to beat, and straightforward gambling gets him nowhere. With the dojo on the line, Ranma finally learns that winning against a professional cheat requires becoming an even bigger cheat himself.
Azusa Shiratori discovers Tatewaki Kuno disguised inside a tanuki statue and instantly decides he is her newest adorable possession, naming him Marianne. Kuno is trapped between maintaining his dignity and escaping a girl whose ability to claim random objects borders on supernatural. Ranma and the others get to enjoy the rare pleasure of watching Kuno become someone else's unwilling romantic prize.
Akane finally gets fed up with Ranma after another argument and leaves the Tendo house, alarming everyone when she does not immediately come back. Ranma tries to act as though he is not worried, but his behavior says otherwise as the household searches for her. The episode strips away a lot of the usual martial-arts nonsense and lets their relationship sit in the uncomfortable space between caring deeply and being terrible at saying it.
Martial Mayhem
25 eps
8 canon 1 mixed 16 filler 📷 25
Three bald martial artists from China come after the Dragon's Whisker tied into Ranma's pigtail, an object Ranma has guarded since his training trip without fully explaining why. Once the whisker is loosened, his hair begins growing uncontrollably whenever he is male. Ranma spends the episode fighting off thieves while desperately trying to hide a problem that becomes more ridiculous by the minute.
The truth about the Dragon's Whisker comes out: it was originally used as a hair-restoration ingredient, and Ranma accidentally ate the special gruel during training in China. Genma and Happosai immediately want the whisker for themselves while Ranma's hair grows into an enormous weapon he can barely control. By the time the curse finally burns itself out, Ranma is less worried about embarrassment than the horrifying possibility that he may have used up all the hair he will ever grow.
Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung return from China furious that Shampoo still has not married Ranma and decide to eliminate the competition themselves. Ukyo and Kodachi are attacked first, then Akane receives the Amazon twins' Kiss of Death and has to face their supposedly devastating Great Phoenix Dance of Fire. The legendary technique turns out to be considerably less impressive than its reputation, but Akane still takes the challenge seriously enough to beat them herself.
Ryoga rescues a strange girl during one of his journeys and is stunned when she responds by treating him as a potential husband. For someone who has spent most of the series hopelessly devoted to Akane, suddenly being openly wanted by someone else is more confusing than flattering. Ryoga has to decide what he actually wants rather than simply chase whichever romantic possibility happens to be standing in front of him.
A petty argument with Soun finally sends Genma storming out of the Tendo house, declaring that he is done living under someone else's roof. Everyone assumes he will come crawling back, but Genma stubbornly tries to prove he can manage on his own. His absence makes the household noticeably quieter, though nobody is willing to admit they have become accustomed to having the useless panda around.
Sentaro Daimonji kidnaps female Ranma because he needs a bride capable of surviving his grandmother's Martial Arts Tea Ceremony. Ranma discovers that serving tea in the Daimonji school means dodging weapons, maintaining perfect etiquette, and fighting without spilling a drop. Akane eventually gets pulled into the marriage scheme too, forcing Ranma to master one of the strangest martial arts disciplines Nerima has produced.
A young girl named Temari arrives at the Tendo dojo practicing a nostalgic fighting style built around old-fashioned children's games. She defeats Akane with cat's cradle strings, beanbags, and tricks that look harmless until they hit. Ranma takes up the challenge after Akane's pride is wounded, discovering that dismissing Temari because she is a child is exactly how she keeps beating people.
Akane wins entry to a hot-springs obstacle race whose grand prize is a trip to any spring in the world, immediately giving Ranma visions of returning to Jusenkyo. Shampoo steals Mousse's ticket and pairs with Ranma, so Akane recruits Mousse instead, while Ryoga joins the race with motives of his own. The course becomes a full-scale Nerima free-for-all where alliances change almost as quickly as the obstacles.
Principal Kuno turns his latest scheme toward his own family, creating another humiliating mess for Tatewaki and Sasuke. Beneath the Hawaiian shirts and nonsense, the episode digs into the deeply strange relationship between Furinkan's principal and the son who can barely stand him. Ranma gets caught in the middle because no Kuno family dispute is capable of staying private for long.
Sentaro returns with another problem from the Daimonji school, this time involving the formidable family matriarch who has no intention of giving up control. Ranma is dragged back into Martial Arts Tea Ceremony and quickly learns that Sentaro's grandmother is far more dangerous than her age suggests. Sentaro's attempt to use Ranma and Akane to solve his family problem only gives the matriarch more people to discipline.
A team of male rhythmic gymnasts defeats Kodachi and begins collecting the sacred treasures of Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics. Ranma is reluctantly pulled back into a leotard to help Furinkan defend the remaining equipment, while Akane once again discovers that gymnastics combat rewards cheating almost as much as skill. The match escalates through exploding balls, weaponized ribbons, and enough resentment to power the entire sport.
The Tendos and Saotomes visit a shabby hot-springs inn where strange noises and disappearing guests suggest something supernatural is stalking the baths. A mixed bathing area is already dangerous enough for Ranma's secret, and the haunting turns every splash of water into another complication. What begins like a ghost story quickly becomes the usual combination of curses, panic, and people running around half dressed.
A mysterious Frog Hermit arrives in Nerima carrying a grudge against Jusenkyo and begins targeting everyone with a spring curse. Genma, Shampoo, and Ryoga are transformed into frogs, leaving Ranma waiting for his own turn while Akane struggles to understand why Ryoga was targeted at all. The attack turns especially dangerous once the hermit begins using Akane as bait to draw Ranma into a trap.
Ukyo's business is crushed when a flashy crepe chef named Crepe Joe opens nearby and starts stealing all of her customers. After losing to him directly, she disappears to train at a temple while Ranma and Akane keep Ucchan's running in her absence. Ukyo comes back with her confidence restored and settles the rivalry the only way she knows how: over a griddle.
A strange bandage turns Ranma into an uncontrollable flirt who starts charming nearly every girl he sees. Akane insists she could not care less, but watching Ranma shower attention on everyone except her gets under her skin almost immediately. The real problem becomes removing the spell before Ranma's new personality gets him killed by his own fiancées.
Another man from Genma's past arrives with a grievance, this time a master who has turned shogi into a full-contact martial art. Ranma gets dragged into a match where the pieces, board, and strategy are all weapons instead of a quiet tabletop game. Genma's history creates the problem, as usual, and Ranma is left figuring out how to win a fight governed by rules he barely understands.
Kuno dismisses Sasuke for failing one assignment too many, leaving the tiny ninja desperate to prove that he still deserves a place in the Kuno household. Sasuke launches a series of increasingly elaborate missions against Ranma, each meant to demonstrate his loyalty and competence. He works harder than almost anyone in Nerima and still manages to make every operation collapse around him.
Picolet Chardin arrives at the Tendo dojo as a master of Martial Arts Dining and a prospective bridegroom looking to collect on yet another old arrangement. Ranma challenges him at the dinner table and discovers that Picolet can clean a plate before anyone else can even see his utensils move. After losing badly, Ranma enters the Chardin household in female form to learn the same ridiculous but deadly table-manner techniques and beat Picolet at his own game.
Ranma trains inside the Chardin mansion to master Martial Arts Dining, where eating properly means stealing every bite without staining your clothes or breaking etiquette. His answer is the Gourmet de Foie Gras, a technique fast enough to challenge Picolet's impossible table speed. The final meal becomes a genuine martial arts duel fought with forks, knives, and disappearing food, with Ranma's engagement on the line.
Akane is chosen to represent Furinkan in a swimming competition despite one important problem: she cannot swim. Principal Kuno takes charge of her training and responds with sharks, bizarre equipment, and exercises that would terrify an experienced swimmer. Ranma spends most of the episode trying to keep Akane alive while she stubbornly refuses to quit just because the principal has turned swimming lessons into combat training.
Ryoga gets lost far from Nerima and is taken in by an elderly farmer and his granddaughter, who treat him with a kindness he rarely gets to experience. For a while he settles into their routine and discovers how good it feels to be useful somewhere instead of constantly chasing Ranma and Akane. The quiet life cannot last, partly because Ryoga is Ryoga, but the episode gives him a rare glimpse of the home he never manages to find.
A strange sleep overtakes the Tendo household and pulls everyone into dreams shaped by their private wants and anxieties. Ranma, Akane, and the others drift through fantasies that are funny on the surface but reveal more than they would ever admit while awake. The episode turns the cast inward for once, using dream logic to show what the normal fighting and shouting usually keeps buried.
After another fight with Ranma, Akane angrily tells Nabiki she can have him, and Nabiki immediately accepts the engagement like a business transaction. She starts charging Ranma for meals, dates, and even the privilege of spending time with her, while Akane discovers that handing him over feels much worse than she expected. Nabiki never pretends to love Ranma, which leaves both Ranma and Akane uncomfortably aware of how much their own relationship actually matters.
A plate of takoyaki disappears from the Tendo house and the family treats the missing snack like a major criminal investigation. Everyone has a motive, everyone has an alibi, and every attempt to reconstruct the crime makes somebody look guiltier. The mystery is absurdly small, but watching the household interrogate one another with complete seriousness is the entire joke.
Ranma buys a training incense that creates a shadow duplicate capable of copying his techniques and fighting him without hesitation. At first the perfect sparring partner seems useful, until Shadow Ranma begins acting independently and proves just how unpleasant Ranma can be when stripped of restraint. Beating his own duplicate forces Ranma to fight someone who already knows every habit and trick he normally relies on.
Random Rhapsody
24 eps
9 canon 2 mixed 13 filler 📷 24
Kodachi learns that Furinkan's Hawaiian-obsessed principal is her long-absent father and welcomes him back to the Kuno estate with an enthusiasm Tatewaki absolutely does not share. The reunion briefly suggests that Principal Kuno may have a softer side with his daughter, but putting all three Kunos under one roof quickly restores the family's usual insanity. Ranma gets dragged in once their domestic disaster spills beyond the estate.
Hikaru Gosunkugi transfers into Ranma and Akane's class and almost immediately falls for Akane. Unlike Ranma's other rivals, Gosunkugi has no strength, confidence, or realistic chance of winning a fight, so he relies on voodoo dolls, traps, and petty schemes to get Ranma out of the way. His plans fail almost automatically, establishing him as a rival whose greatest enemy may be his own terrible luck.
A master of Martial Arts Calligraphy challenges Ranma with a fighting style built around enormous brushes, ink, and written characters used as weapons. Ranma initially treats the whole discipline as ridiculous until the calligrapher starts beating him with it. What follows is classic Ranma logic: once the absurd premise proves dangerous, Ranma has no choice but to learn how it works well enough to break it.
Ranma discovers that Furinkan has a supposed shadow boss operating behind the school's ordinary authority structure. The mystery quickly drags him into secret meetings, student underlings, and a power struggle nobody outside the participants seems to care about. The episode plays the conspiracy with complete seriousness even as Ranma realizes the hidden empire is every bit as ridiculous as the school it claims to control.
Ranma, Ryoga, and Mousse each obtain a packet of magical powder, and one of the three is supposed to recreate the Spring of Drowned Man and cure their Jusenkyo curses. The other packets can transform them into something else entirely, so nobody wants to be the first to gamble. The three cursed rivals retreat to the mountains to test the powders and immediately turn a possible cure into a paranoid contest over who gets the real one.
Genma gets angry with Ranma over a petty household dispute and announces that Ryoga will replace him as heir to the Saotome school. Ryoga takes the offer far more seriously than Genma deserves, seeing a chance to surpass Ranma with his own father's techniques. Ranma refuses to let Genma's latest tantrum stand, turning an argument over succession into another fight neither Saotome thought through.
Dr. Tofu gets a free pass to an amusement park and invites Kasumi, who naturally brings the entire Tendo and Saotome household along. Genma burns through the group's money, lunch disappears, and what was supposed to be Tofu's chance to spend time with Kasumi turns into a full family expedition. Tofu's nerves around Kasumi ensure that even the few quiet moments he gets with her go nothing like he imagined.
A masked figure with a black pigtail begins frightening girls around Furinkan, and the description makes Ranma the immediate suspect. Ranma has to clear his name while the accusations spread through school and Akane tries to decide how much of the story she believes. The culprit is using Ranma's reputation as part of the disguise, turning the mystery into a very personal attempt to ruin him.
Pantyhose Taro returns to Japan and immediately kidnaps Akane, using her to force Ranma to bring Happosai to him. Ranma learns that Happosai gave Taro his humiliating name after bathing him in a Jusenkyo spring as a baby, leaving Taro with a monstrous transformation and a grudge that has lasted his entire life. Ranma, Ryoga, Shampoo, and Mousse head after him, but Taro's winged chimera form is powerful enough to keep all of them on the defensive.
Ranma and the others continue their fight with Pantyhose Taro while Akane learns that the curse itself is not what he wants Happosai to fix. Taro actually likes the strength of his transformed body; what he cannot stand is the ridiculous name Happosai saddled him with at birth. Even after the battle ends, Happosai refuses to rename him, leaving Taro with the same infuriatingly legitimate grievance he arrived with.
Kasumi organizes a Christmas party at the Tendo dojo while Akane quietly hopes Ranma will show up with something more thoughtful than his usual insults. Ranma disappears during the preparations, and Akane spends most of the evening convincing herself that she does not care where he went. His eventual return gives the holiday episode a rare soft moment between them without suddenly making either one good at talking about their feelings.
A strange winter cold settles over Furinkan, and the source turns out to be a mysterious girl whose presence seems tied to the freezing weather. Ranma and Akane get pulled into helping her while the rest of Nerima struggles through temperatures that keep getting worse. The episode leans more into a quiet winter ghost-story mood than the usual martial arts chaos, giving the cold itself an oddly melancholy presence.
A strange panda drawing becomes much more than a harmless piece of art when supernatural trouble begins following Genma and Ranma. The curse turns Genma's familiar panda form into the center of another bizarre problem that the Saotomes cannot simply punch away. Ranma has to untangle what awakened the curse while Genma, for once, becomes more useful than the mess he helped create.
Kuno turns up on Watermelon Island with a watermelon on his head and no memory of who he is, leaving Ranma and the others with a version of him who is startlingly normal. His amnesia briefly strips away the delusions about Akane and the pigtailed girl that usually define him. The situation cannot last, but seeing Kuno without his usual obsessions makes his eventual return to form even funnier.
Genma becomes the focus of a local legend involving a supposedly lucky panda, and the attention goes straight to his head. Before long people are treating panda Genma like a good-luck charm while Ranma watches his father exploit the situation for food and comfort. As usual, Genma's willingness to enjoy a scam lasts right up until the consequences catch him.
Ukyo discovers the old sauce she has been aging since childhood and is horrified to find that it tastes awful. The failure matters because the sauce is tied to her history with Ranma and to the future she imagined for herself as an okonomiyaki chef. Ranma tries to help in his clumsy way, but Ukyo hears his concern through ten years of feelings she has never really put aside.
Ukyo keeps trying to repair both her ruined sauce and the childhood promise she associates with Ranma. Ranma's attempts to support her create exactly the wrong romantic impression, and Akane quickly notices how serious Ukyo is taking it. The sauce problem gets resolved, but Ukyo's feelings remain where they have always been: real, acknowledged, and trapped inside the engagement mess surrounding Ranma.
Sentaro returns to the Tendo dojo because the formidable Daimonji matriarch has disappeared, throwing the Martial Arts Tea Ceremony school into panic. Ranma and Akane help search for her and once again get dragged into a world where perfect etiquette and violent combat are treated as the same discipline. Finding the old woman turns out to be easier than getting the Daimonji family to behave normally afterward.
Akane is injured and admitted to the hospital, forcing Ranma to confront how worried he gets when she is genuinely hurt instead of merely angry with him. He keeps finding excuses to visit while insisting his concern means nothing, and Gosunkugi sees Akane's hospital stay as a rare chance to get closer to her. The episode works because Ranma's behavior gives away everything his mouth refuses to say.
A strange octopus pot begins causing trouble and pulls Ranma into another apparently supernatural mystery. The object proves dangerous enough that the usual group of martial artists cannot simply smash first and ask questions later. Ranma has to figure out what the pot is actually doing before its bizarre curse turns the situation into something even harder to reverse.
Gosunkugi gets hold of magical paper dolls that force anyone wearing one to obey the command written on it. Naturally he uses them to make Ranma help him pursue Akane, giving him a rare scheme that actually works for more than a few seconds. Ranma becomes an unwilling accomplice in Gosunkugi's love life until the dolls' rules and Gosunkugi's own bad luck finally bring the plan down.
A boy with the ability to read minds becomes fascinated by Akane when he discovers that her thoughts are the one thing he cannot understand. Everyone else becomes painfully easy for him to read, exposing feelings and motives they normally hide behind shouting and bravado. Akane remains the exception, which frustrates him almost as much as it intrigues Ranma.
A haunted notebook brings a teenage ghost into Akane's life, and the Tendo household becomes involved in helping the spirit finish the business keeping her behind. Ranma approaches the haunting with his usual suspicion until it becomes clear that the ghost is more lonely than dangerous. The story trades some of the show's usual chaos for a quieter look at a girl who simply wants to leave something resolved.
Happosai tricks Ranma into taking one of a pair of Student's Devotion Pills and accidentally binds himself physically to his unwilling pupil. Worse, the pills gradually make Ranma more obedient to Happosai the longer they remain attached. Akane and the others scramble to separate them before Ranma becomes the perfect partner for Happosai's panty raids, while Ranma has to defeat a master literally stuck to his body.
Ranma Forever
23 eps
9 canon 1 mixed 13 filler 📷 23
Principal Kuno leaves Furinkan in Tatewaki's hands for a week, giving his son the authority to enforce school rules with the same delusional intensity he brings to everything else. Kuno creates an enforcement squad, hands out absurd punishments, and quickly turns the school against him. Ranma, Akane, Ukyo, Nabiki, and even Gosunkugi eventually work together to make sure his brief reign ends the moment his father returns.
Happosai announces that Ranma must defend a battered can through the night in a supposedly ancient Secret Demon Festival where losing means giving up martial arts forever. Ranma takes the threat seriously and survives attacks from mysterious fighters while Happosai barely helps. By morning he discovers the grand tradition is really a ten-year game of kick-the-can and Happosai only cared because the prize was lingerie.
The Jusenkyo Guide arrives in Nerima with news that sends Ranma, Ryoga, Mousse, and Genma into a frenzy: under the right conditions, the Tendo koi pond can temporarily connect to Jusenkyo. Everyone with a curse starts imagining life restored to normal, even as Ryoga realizes a cure would also end his secret nights as Akane's P-chan. The ritual nearly works before one accident ruins the alignment, and the next chance will not come for another thousand years.
Kasumi brings home a set of cursed cards that react to Happosai and spawn several supernatural versions of him across Nerima. Ranma and the others suddenly have to deal with vampire, witch, centaur, and other monstrous Happosais, each carrying the original's worst habits. Once the copies move into the Tendo house and decide Kasumi should become their bride, Ranma realizes the only solution is destroying the cards that created them.
Ryoga returns with a new technique, the Shishi Hokodan, and hands Ranma one of the most one-sided defeats of their entire rivalry. The blast draws its strength from depression, which makes Ryoga almost perfectly suited to it and leaves Ranma struggling to understand how to reproduce the same emotional state. Cologne confirms the problem: Ranma is simply too naturally confident to stay miserable for long, while every setback only makes Ryoga stronger.
Ranma stops trying to out-depress Ryoga and develops the Moko Takabisha, a ki blast powered by his own confidence instead. Ryoga answers with the perfected Shishi Hokodan, creating an attack so powerful that Ranma has to exploit the way Ryoga's emotions rise and fall during the technique. Ranma finally wins by baiting Ryoga with a lie about kissing Akane, then stripping away that despair at the exact moment he rides Ryoga's own blast back down on him.
Shampoo disappears while making a delivery to the Cat Temple, where Maomolin traps her behind a curse that will eventually leave her permanently transformed into a cat. The only way to break it is with a kiss from someone she loves, which immediately puts Ranma in the worst possible rescue mission for a boy terrified of cats. With the New Year's bell counting down, cat-form Shampoo finally takes matters into her own paws and kisses Ranma herself, breaking the curse.
Ranma begins having the same dream every night about dating an elderly man named Harumaki, then learns the man's wandering spirit is leaving his hospital bed to search for a woman named Gyoko. Female Ranma looks exactly like Gyoko did when she was young, so Harumaki drags her through the date he believes he never got to finish. The mystery ends on a surprisingly sweet note when Ranma discovers Harumaki's wife is Gyoko after all and the old couple really did run away together decades earlier.
The Tendo household heads to a mountain temple for a meditation retreat, joined by Ryoga, Kuno, and Mousse, who immediately turn the supposedly peaceful trip into another competition over Akane and Ranma. Poisonous mushrooms become a very real problem when several of the group eat the wrong ones and start acting under their effects. What was supposed to be disciplined spiritual training ends with Ranma trying to keep everyone alive while the temple's quiet mountain routine collapses around them.
Genma decides Ranma has become too dismissive of him and challenges his son to a serious match, reviving an old technique called the Cradle from Hell. Ranma laughs at his father until Genma traps him in a hold built from years of wrestling a much smaller Ranma during their training days. The fight becomes one of the rare times Genma reminds everyone that beneath the laziness and scams, he really is the martial artist who trained Ranma into what he is.
Madame St. Paul returns to the Tendo home asking for help because Picolet Chardin has begun behaving strangely and girls around the Chardin estate are mysteriously collapsing. Ranma and Akane travel back to the mansion expecting vampires and find Picolet avoiding food before suddenly devouring entire meals with his old Martial Arts Dining speed. The apparent horror story turns into another Chardin family absurdity, complete with Ranma once again becoming far more involved with Picolet's mouth than he ever wanted.
During Tanabata, Akane watches Vega and Altair and takes the old story of separated lovers much more seriously than Ranma does. When a young woman claiming to be Orihime falls into Nerima, the Tendos take her in while Ranma tries to make sense of a romance that seems to have literally dropped out of the sky. The episode uses the festival's story of lovers allowed one meeting a year to push Ranma and Akane toward feelings they still refuse to name directly.
Akane buys special sakura-mochi ingredients from an old man who claims the cakes will reveal whether she and the boy who eats them are destined to be together. She makes a batch for Ranma, then immediately regrets creating a test whose answer she may not actually want to know. Ranma eats the cakes without understanding what Akane is watching for, turning a silly fortune-telling gimmick into one of those quiet moments where both of them care far more than either is willing to admit.
Weeks of rain ruin Happosai's usual underwear thefts and leave the Tendo house buried in damp laundry, which somehow inspires him to create the Happo Mold-Burst. The new attack spreads aggressive mold everywhere it lands and quickly turns the dojo into a filthy disaster even Cologne wants nothing to do with. Ranma finally discovers that the terrifying new technique has one extremely ordinary weakness: Kasumi's disinfectant.
Tatewaki destroys one of Kodachi's giant Ranma posters, so Kodachi retaliates by stealing his private photographs of the pigtailed girl and turning the family feud into a public scandal. Doctored photos begin circulating around Furinkan, making it look as though Kuno and female Ranma are secretly involved. Ranma gets trapped between the siblings' blackmail war and finally resorts to physically puppeteering Kuno into apologizing just to make the whole mess stop.
The Daimonji and Miyakoji schools of Martial Arts Tea Ceremony descend on the Tendo house in another feud, this time over a legendary golden tea set. Sentaro drags Ranma back into the argument as both schools head toward a showdown at a five-story pagoda. Ranma once again discovers that in this family, serving tea politely can involve just as much violence and cheating as any ordinary martial arts tournament.
During Obon, the ghost girl Kogane returns to the world of the living and visits the Tendo household because she has no family of her own to return to. Gosunkugi meets her and, for once, finds a girl who responds to him without immediately choosing Ranma instead. Their brief summer connection is sweeter than Gosunkugi's usual schemes, precisely because everyone knows Kogane can only remain until the festival of the dead is over.
Furinkan's volleyball team starts collapsing during a match because Mariko Konjo, Seishun High's Martial Arts Cheerleader, is secretly attacking players while cheering from the sidelines. Ranma exposes her tricks, only for Mariko to fall for Kuno and declare female Ranma her romantic rival. To beat a fighter whose cheers, batons, and crowd manipulation are all weapons, Ranma has to learn cheerleading well enough to support the one person he least wants to encourage: Tatewaki Kuno.
Ranma faces Mariko in a full Martial Arts Cheerleading battle with Kuno at the center of both their routines. Mariko turns affection itself into a weapon, using elaborate baton attacks and perfectly timed support to keep Kuno fighting harder, while Ranma struggles to fake enthusiasm for him without losing focus. Ranma finally beats Mariko by understanding that the match is not just about attacking the other cheerleader, but controlling the fighter and the crowd around them.
A day at the beach turns into a Miss Beachside contest after Shampoo and Ukyo start fighting over who gets to cook for Ranma. Akane, Kodachi, Tsubasa, and eventually female Ranma join the competition, while Ryoga, Mousse, Kuno, and Maomolin create chaos around the stage. After all the posing, sabotage, and jealousy, the judges ignore the contestants entirely and choose Kasumi, who was only supposed to be helping Soun run the event.
Kuno and Sasuke uncover an ancient drum hidden beneath the Kuno estate, and one strike produces an explosive shockwave powerful enough to tear through the house. A matching instrument soon brings Kodachi into the fight, leaving both Kuno siblings armed with supernatural musical weapons they barely understand. Ranma gets bounced between their attacks while the siblings turn another family treasure into a neighborhood-scale disaster.
Ryoga rescues a black-and-white ninja dog named Shirokuro and entrusts her with a love letter for Akane, only to lose track of both dog and message almost immediately. Shirokuro reaches the Tendo house, where Sasuke recognizes her as a fugitive ninja dog and is ordered to capture her. After Ryoga finally receives Akane's reply, Ranma points out that Ryoga forgot to sign his original letter, allowing Ryoga to interpret her rejection in the most optimistic way possible and wander off happily with his new companion.
During a typhoon, Ranma finds a tiny seahorse-like creature and brings it home as material for a school report. Dr. Tofu identifies it as a baby dragon, while the returning Frog Hermit reveals that he wants to eat it because dragon flesh is said to grant immortality. Ranma and Tofu protect the creature long enough for the storm to mature it, and the dragon finally rises from the Tendo koi pond and disappears into the sky.
