Look, and hear, who’s back!

Late last month came the surprise announcement that creator Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 is getting a new anime adaptation. The initial announcement video was little more than a slideshow of panels from the manga and an on-screen text promise that more info would be revealed in a few weeks’ time.

And now here we are with the first trailer for the new Ranma, which reveals it to be a TV series that will also stream on Netflix this fall. It also reveals how the show will look and, just as importantly, how it will sound. The original Ranma anime, which consisted of a TV series, theatrical features, and OVA episodes released between 1989 and 1996, had one of the most star-studded vocal casts of any anime ever produced, with multiple cast members going on to become legends of the Japanese voice acting industry. 20-plus years later, anyone stepping into these characters’ roles is going to have some very big shoes to fill, so let’s take a listen and see who thinks they’re up to the task.

The first voices we hear are those of protagonist martial artist Ranma and his arranged-marriage martial artist fiance Akane. If you’re a fan who’s watched the old Ranma anime, you might think the producers have done an excellent job finding a new voice actor and actress who give the pair the same atmosphere as they had before…but you’d be wrong. Not because the voices in the trailer don’t sound like Ranma and Akane, but because those aren’t new vocal performers!

The original voices of Ranma and Akane, Kappei Yamaguchi (who also voiced Inuyasha) and Noriko Hidaka (Touch’s Minami) are both returning to once again voice the series’ central couple who insists they’re not a couple. And as for Ranma’s voice when he gets splashed with water and turns into a girl (as per the conditions of the curse placed upon him)? Megumi Hayashibara, the most celebrated voice actress in the history of anime, is reprising the role.

▼ They may have replaced Hayashibara as the voice of Hello Kitty, but no one can replace her as female Ranma.

The core three are just the tip of the iceberg of returning talent. Nearly every casting revealed so far is a case of getting the figurative band back together. Akane’s sisters Kasumi and Nabiki? Kikuko Inoue and Manami Takayama, just as the anime gods always intended. Though neither can be heard in the video, the voices of Shampoo and Ryoga, two of the many frequently fighting romantic rivals who appear in the series, will remain as Rei Sakuma and Koichi Yamadera. Both Akane’s father Soun and Ranma’s father Genma have been recast, though, with Akio Otsuka and the mononymous Cho stepping into the roles, likely on account of the characters’ original voice actors now being in their late 70s and early 80s, respectively. Nevertheless, Genma’s original voice actor, 82-year-old Kenichi Ogata, is still involved in the project, serving as narrator for the new Ranma series.

As for how it looks, the character designs are a mild modernization that still lands close to Takahashi’s manga artwork. As the original Ranma anime went on, its designs gradually shifted closer and closer to the aesthetics of character designer Atsuko Nakajima, with a more heavily stylized look emblematic of anime in the mid-late-1990s. For the new Ranma, anime studio MAPPA seems to be following the playbook David Production did with the recently wrapped new adaptation of Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura, using cleaner, more distinct linework than the original anime’s early episodes did, but preserving a lot of the soft warmth that came from animation cels that were drawn and painted by hand. The new Ranma’s characters look a little fleshier than the old one’s did, with a bit more squash and stretch to emphasize the series’ physical comedy, but they’re still instantly recognizable as the Ranma cast, even if female Ranma’s hair is no pink instead of red and Akane’s is a noticeably lighter shade of blue than it previously was.

From the scenes shown in the preview video, it’s clear that the new adaptation is starting all the way at the beginning of the story, making it a reboot/retelling rather than a picking-up-where-the-old-series-left-off sequel. There’s no word yet as to how many episodes in total the new anime will have, and so there’s no way to say just how much of the manga’s story will be shown, but sharp-eyed fans will spot scenes from Ranma’s martial arts rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating battles, so we’ll be getting at least that far into the story, and we’ll also see the introduction of bandana-wearing pig P-chan.

▼ What, you thought I wasn’t going to spot P-chan in the corner of this shot?

The new Ranma 1/2 anime debuts on October 6 at 12:55 a.m. on Nippon Television, and will stream on Netflix immediately following the TV broadcast.

Source, images: YouTube/MAPPA CHANNEL
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