Rumiko Takahashi --- The Godmother of this forum

[Animusubi]

Maybe it's because I had 0 friends who were into Ranma 1/2 as much as I was back in the day, and wasn't going to cons and anywhere else there were discussions, but I've been noticing a lot of people mentioning how annoyingly vocal Ranma 1/2 fans were back then. I saw it mentioned alot recently on tumblr. Just sort of baffles me. To be honest, the Ranma 1/2 tumblr fandom of 23 and unders are much more annoying because of how they take Takahashi too seriously and think she's making some sort of social commentary by it's creation (which is has clearly stated she did not and did Ranma for fun).

As I get older, I tend to ignore fandoms, because I like what I like, regardless what kind of crap or otherwise people say about it. Though the really vocal fandoms, like Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill have already super spoiled the series and overhyped it that I'm gonna have to wait about 10 years before I even attempt watching either series. So that's the only real issue I have with fandoms. Well that and the "my anime is better than yours" junk. LOL But again, that's kids.

[llj]

Heh. I don't even know how Ranma 1/2 fans COULD be "annoyingly" vocal, since the internet didn't really begin to blossom until 1997. You need a platform to spam in order to be annoying, and that just wasn't possible back in 1993-1995. Ranma 1/2's real stomping grounds were in the early to mid 90s. Anime Cons were still pretty small back then too. By 96-97 everyone was going on about Evangelion, Sailor Moon and Slayers on most anime message/chat boards.

From my experience, the most "annoyingly vocal" fans were Sailor Moon fans from 96-99. I even got ran out of a Sailor Moon mailing list once because I slipped up and referred to the english DIC version a few times in my posts, and referring to DIC's Sailor Moon was a big no-no at the time. Many fans on the Sailor Moon usenet group often cross posted to the rec.arts.anime.misc group for no other reason than to be annoying.

The thing with fandoms is that they take everything personally, as if everything you say about their favourite THING is somehow a representation of *them*. You can't be a fan of an anime and still at the same time criticize it, so it's frustrating to try to really examine things in-depth and then have conversations get shut down because you're not going "SQUEEEEE I LUV SAILOR SATURN IT WAS SOOO SAD AT THE END OF SUPER"

Today's fandoms are so fleeting too. Nowadays anime fandoms only exist as long as the show is on, and once it's done, people pack up and move on to the next season's big NEW SHOW. And conversations, incredibly, are even less in-depth than they were back in the late 90s. Most episode talkbacks read more like random tweets strung together now. "LOL at Ryuko and her costume." "That had to hurt." "OK MAKO IS NOT THAT ANNOYING AFTER ALL."

?????

[Animusubi]

Yeah, man some of you experienced a whole other side of being into anime I didn't get till 2000, when I attended my first convention for a day. I pretty much loved anime completely on my own with my brothers and sister. I had no friends who mutually liked it (I got them into it), couldn't attend any conventions or clubs, and the only forum I joined was Animenation, where rather than talk about anime I RPed and talked about video games more.

My experience with other people being into fandoms was in high school, when it was like a "cool kid's club" to be into certain anime, like Evangelion, Slayers, or fansubs. And if you didn't watch what they were watching (like myself, who would ask my friends to watch Ranma 1/2 with me, only to be rejected), well then you weren't an anime fan. And I bought into it. I watched everything they watched, and consumed more than loved. Of course I enjoyed many of them, but by the time Trigun was a thing, I stopped myself finally. And being back into it now, years later, I do the same thing. I missed alot from the 80's and 90's that is so readily available now, that it makes me feel like I did well before the hype and high school cliques.

I really enjoy hearing how people grew up with anime and what they experienced, but also kinda glad I didn't experience some of the same things.

[Net-Lex]

I remember the 'Japanimation' section of my local Media Play (ca. mid-nineties) having entire rows of Ranma 1/2 vhs tapes, so early on the show struck me as something significant. (granted the volume of tapes was attributed to only one, two, maybe three episodes per cassette)
This was, of course, just before the onslaught of Dragon Ball Z, and it's myriad of translations.

[SteveH]

Been a while, but it's my memory that Macross F gets a whole lot better after ep. 13. Much more Macross-y and a lot less High School teen romance angst comedy.

But that may be just me.

[Ben]

Heh. I don't even know how Ranma 1/2 fans COULD be "annoyingly" vocal, since the internet didn't really begin to blossom until 1997. You need a platform to spam in order to be annoying, and that just wasn't possible back in 1993-1995. Ranma 1/2's real stomping grounds were in the early to mid 90s. Anime Cons were still pretty small back then too. By 96-97 everyone was going on about Evangelion, Sailor Moon and Slayers on most anime message/chat boards.

?????

I had to take a break from messageboards/maling lists for awhile after waging a one man, Anno ripped off Tomino war against the Eva fans back when it was hailed as the greatest thing of all time, myself. Also, the only thing I can say about those early Ranma 1/2 fans (of which I was one), is that we were not particularly welcomed at local comic shops, It's ridiculously nerdy, but my town had two shops, the customers at both hated anime/manga fans messing up their American comics scene. As I recall, the regulars at one store (Your Marvel/DC collecting, D&D playing crew) staged a mini-boycott trying to get the owner to quit stocking Viz titles because they brought in the wrong class of people. Now both stores don't exist anyway.

[davemerrill]

There was a guy who was sort of a special needsy sort of fellow who was deeply involved in every sort of fandom in Atlanta in the 1990s, and at one Dragoncon staff meeting he was in the audience of staffers listening to the directors talk about the upcoming show, and he'd loudly interject his own commentary into the proceedings.

One director mentioned something about the anime video room. "DID SOMEONE SAY ANIME??", said our guy. The director mentioned some of the titles that would be screened and this included Ranma 1/2. "I LIKE RANMA," our man informed the crowd.

This, and the seemingly endless parade of cosplayers who would dress up as Ryoga and then pretend to be lost, is what I think of when I think of Ranma fans. Oh, and the guy who made a thing out of cosplaying as Shampoo. That's what I think of. I know it's not representative or fair, but it is what it is.

[Ben]

There was a guy who was sort of a special needsy sort of fellow who was deeply involved in every sort of fandom in Atlanta in the 1990s, and at one Dragoncon staff meeting he was in the audience of staffers listening to the directors talk about the upcoming show, and he'd loudly interject his own commentary into the proceedings.

One director mentioned something about the anime video room. "DID SOMEONE SAY ANIME??", said our guy. The director mentioned some of the titles that would be screened and this included Ranma 1/2. "I LIKE RANMA," our man informed the crowd.

This, and the seemingly endless parade of cosplayers who would dress up as Ryoga and then pretend to be lost, is what I think of when I think of Ranma fans. Oh, and the guy who made a thing out of cosplaying as Shampoo. That's what I think of. I know it's not representative or fair, but it is what it is.

I get where you're coming from, Dave. I just wasn't a fan on that level, Ranma 1/2 was just a book that I bought along with some American comics and what other sparse manga titles that came out interested me in those days. I never got into cosplay or the cons really, so I didn't see that aspect of it. It just always fascinated me to see the vitriol some people (especially American comics fans) had for people into Ranma, I'm guessing due to their experiences from the cons.

[davemerrill]

The fans definitely turned me off. It really did act as sort of a catch-all for the more annoying fans. Sailor Moon fans got extreme, but the serious Sailor Moon fans I knew realized on some level how goofy the whole thing was. Of course I never had to deal with the dueling gangs of Sailor Moon cosplayers and their ego tripping, thank goodness.

By itself Ranma was a TV show that I quit watching 10 episodes in as the formula quickly became apparent - new person comes to town, has some sort of magical comedy transformation, there's a fight. Then another new person comes to town, etc. It - the manga and the anime- got tedious really quickly, with none of the sharp left turns of Urusei Yatsura's non-sequitur comedy or the character growth of Maison Ikkoku. Built as it was on a minor one-note Urusei Yatsura character, I didn't find the concept that interesting to begin with. Of course there are a ton of other shows with gigantic fanbases that I have no interest in, so that's nothing special.

[SteveH]

I come at Ranma fandom from a completely different angle, that of a midwest fan annoyed with the California (and those that bow to them) fandom.

See, It was all about Urusei Yatsura, and Takahashi (the OTHER Takahashi in my mind. ) was God and all must bow before her creation. I liked some of the episodes I saw but didn't have one bit of interest in trying to watch it all. Then came Maison Ikkoku and it was GENIUS and I *HAD* to watch it and I just didn't, and then Ranma 1/2... well that was THE SINGLE GREATEST ANIME EVER MADE and if I wasn't watching then I was not an anime fan, nosireee.

So let me expand on the differences here. The UY fans, they weren't that used to slapstick and gag comedy, not as anime, so it was fresh and new and without question some of those episodes were just amazingly animated, plus catchy pop OP songs and fun OP credits (what made '80s anime awesome) and of course all the guys (and fandom was more vocally male then) loved them some boobies and many cheered for Ataru to succeed in his lascivious activities.

MI had a MUCH smaller fan 'voice', but they were passionate. It was almost a religion. I'm sure once translations started to hit some of them dropped out as they discovered that there was little of significance said.

And then came Ranma. Oy, such insanity. Mostly driven by the "Oh, look, BOOBIES!!" fans, those that came into fandom with Akira and Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll, the 'boobs and blood' crowd. they sought out socially approved boobies and Ranma delivered. AND. THEY. WOULD. NOT. SHUT. UP. ABOUT. THE. DAMN. SHOW.

See, there's nothing to talk about with the show. Nothing. I know it's been likened to an American sitcom where nothing changes, nobody learns and everything happens again and again, but man, even Sitcoms advance in SOME ways.

Bleah. The Takahashi *I* worship goes by Ryouske.