Tales of Ranma and Ranko/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Trivia about Tales of Ranma and Ranko includes:

  • Continuity Nod: At one point Ranma references Pantyhose Taro's original choice of new name[1], mentioned in the manga, and not what he goes with in these stories.
  • Did Not Do the Research: Near the end of Ranma's Fiancées, Ryoga dons a wetsuit in order to venture out into the typhoon to attack Ranma and "rescue" Akane, so as to stay dry in the face of all the rain. However, wetsuits work by, well, letting water get between them and the wearer's skin, which then acts as a layer of insulation. That's why they're called wetsuits. There are such things as drysuits, but they're thick, often bulky things having more in common with old metal-helmet diving suits than stereotypical SCUBA outfits.
  • Fanon: Unironically embraces some of the most common Ranma ½ fanon of the era in which it was written:
    • Akane begins the story in stock "psychobitch" mode.
    • She possesses a Hyperspace Mallet implied to be an idiosyncratic ki attack.
    • Ranma refuses to fight girls -- to the point that Ranko apparently did all the combat with females.
    • Nabiki's money-making schemes are to help keep her family afloat financially, not her personal enrichment.
    • Kuno is able to summon lightning and thunder by invoking his self-given sobriquet of "Blue Thunder".
    • Nerima is a City of Weirdos.
    • The Amazons all have names that sound like the English words for personal grooming products -- Ko Em and Bru Xha, for example, are mentioned.
    • Shampoo's trademark weapons -- properly termed "chui" -- are called "bonbori".
    • Ryoga's canonical case of No Sense of Direction is subject to something beyond even the usual fannish exaggeration here. For instance, when he moves in with Shampoo, she sets up colored strings and painted lines on the floor to help him get from place to place within the Nekohanten. But even when following these, he sometimes finds himself in places that can't possbily be part of the restaurant -- like Oz or a vast chasm -- while still being on the line or string he's following.
    • Nabiki is secretly (at least it's secret at the start of the story) in love with Kuno.
    • Averted, actually, with Dr. Tofu's presence in the stories. His disappearance from Nerima early in the original manga is acknowledged and his return is implied to have been a very recent development.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Cologne, while lecturing Shampoo on Amazon history, makes reference to the days of "Queen Gabrielle and Xena the Great". There is also a later reference to Xena being one of the first non-Amazons adopted into the tribe.
    • One of Dr. Tofu's "exotic customers" is explicitly identified as Wakko Warner.
    • Another of Dr. Tofu's patients is clearly Ralph von Wau Wau. Ranko addresses him by (first) name in Our Wedding Day.
    • At one point when needing to provide water for a Saotome transformation, Nabiki sings a line from an "anime movie sequel": "We've got hot water in our spaceship's bathtubs". As of this writing exactly which movie this was is unclear.
    • Another unclear reference is a book that Kasumi recollects having read, written by a "singer-storyteller", which describes visions as bubbles floating around to be picked up and "popped" into someone's head.
    • In chapter 7 of Our Wedding Day, Akane mentions seeing The Lord of the Dance on videotape (without mentioning the title) and sings a verse from the song "Our Wedding Day" -- which provided the title for the story.
    • Kuno inexplicably quotes "Jabberwocky" when he erroneously concludes he still has a chance to prevent Ranma and Akane's marriage.
    • Ryoga somehow manages to pass through Oz while following a yellow string between rooms at the Nekohanten.
    • A random student compares Principal Kuno's palm tree mecha to something out of Project A-ko.
    • When Principal Kuno's secret first name turns out to be his Kryptonite Factor, a student suggests it might be "Paulette" in a reference to the fic Girl Days by Rob "Kenko" Haynie.
    • Kuno gets boxed and shipped to Lower Slobbovia, where he is promptly dogpiled by dozens of hideously ugly women.
  • Yiddish as a Second Language: Mixed with A Worldwide Punomenon for the several references to Ranma as the "Saotome boychick". "Boichik" (also spelled "boitchik" and "boytchik", among other variants), is Yiddish for "boy", often used as a term of endearment. But here it's also a literal reference to Ranma's Gender Bender status. (Not to mention it's used by characters who are explicitly not Jewish.)
  1. ↑ "Awesome Taro"
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Tales_of_Ranma_and_Ranko/Trivia?oldid=1949791"