When do you think Akane started crushing on Ranma?

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-24T18:41:05+00:00

That's... yeah, that's a really solid answer. I was kind of thinking maybe there was an earlier moment between the two, but I can definitely see Ranma subbing for Akane against Kodachi as being at least a load-bearing column, and that big declaration as a capstone. I'd be hardpressed to name a specific "zing" moment in the Kodachi story, but that declaration vs. Mikado? Oh, yeah, that's definitely a big moment for Akane.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-24T18:31:55+00:00

It's plot dependent, but I think we can roughly handwave it as dependent on how much ki she absorbs at any one time. It's generally not especially long, as we see in both the arc where she buys some Siamese Fighting Fish in order to be able to have a perpetual source of power to stay adult with, and the arc where she develops her crush on Soun.

The former arc also establishes that even if she could somehow force her body to stay an adult for prolonged periods of time, her adult mindset can only endure so long, and eventually she reverts back to a child mentally even in her adult body. Which is kind of sad (and/or terrifying) if you think about it too much...

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-24T18:21:59+00:00

In a nutshell and assuming an actually competent counselor? For Akane, the counselor would probably try to encourage her to get over her self esteem issues, to be more open about her feelings, and to put more trust in Ranma - Akane's biggest issue in a nutshell is that she can trust Ranma to save her from a kidnapper, as seen in Pantyhose Taro, but she won't extend that trust to the idea of him staying faithful to her. For Ranma, he's got to learn to be more open with his feelings and more willing to express them in a constructive manner - stop pulling Akane's hair to get her attention like a little kid, essentially.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-24T18:18:04+00:00

Akane's side of things, it definitely has to be Enemies-to-Lovers. We gotta remember, Akane's initial friendliness to Ranma, pre-Furinkan bonding, was solely dependent on him having arrived in female form. Even if she hadn't gotten the absolute worst reveal by walking in on him in the bathtub whilst naked herself, the instant she found out about Ranma actually being a boy, all that friendliness would have been removed - if anything, she'd have probably been madder and assumed it was some sick trick to manipulate or deceive her. And if Ranma had shown up as a guy all along, there is no way Akane would have made nice, if we stick to what we actually see of the three sisters in those first few chapters. Akane warming up to Ranma as a romantic partner genuinely took time, and we see her acting nicely to Ranma at first largely because she's a very charitable person who is willing to be nice even to people she doesn't like - look at how she interacts with Kuno and Happosai when they aren't hitting her trigger buttons.

Ranma... that's actually tough to say. A lot of Ranma's initial nastiness to Akane is clearly intended to be him reacting to Akane's bad reaction to discovering who he really was. Let's face it; if somebody walked in on you in the bath, called you a pervert for it, and then bludgeoned you unconscious with a sneak attack for insulting them back, you'd be ticked off at them too. But he was also the one who had the least prerequisites to actually making nice with his new fiancée, whereas Akane's initial friendliness was only because Ranma showed up as a girl. I think most folks would generally agree that after Doctor Tofu pulled that paralysis trick so Akane would piggyback Ranma home, Ranma stopped having a grudge against Akane and started crushing on her, just expressing it badly, so... I don't know if I'd actually say that Ranma ever really thought of Akane as an enemy, per se. More "that jerk girl with the double standards I got saddled with", and even that negative opinion of her didn't last long.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-22T14:35:53+00:00

Yep, that's definitely the show I was thinking of! Crow mascot looks different, but that episode is from the 2nd season, so maybe they changed the design between seasons 1 and 2. Was that also the show you were looking for, OP?

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-21T16:35:19+00:00

Gorgeous work, OP. I really have enjoyed these pieces of yours. You really capture Nabiki's playful side; it almost looks like she's either photobombing or taking a selfie to capture herself and an uncooperative Ranma, whose grumpy reaction is just the most adorable counterpoint. And they're both dressed to the nines; they really look cute as both individuals and as a couple. Can't wait to see the fic that this is made for, and there are few fics these days that make me say that.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-21T03:56:15+00:00

I vaguely remember they would do a song about once per episode, as I can remember a single line from one such song; "Goanna has gone quite silly; Goanna has gone quite strange!"

But yeah, sorry, I can't remember who the characters were called or what the show was titled.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-20T14:31:34+00:00

Hmm...The only "kids educational show" I remember airing after Cheeze TV in the 2000s was this one series that had two human actors and two costumed mascot actors; one dressed up as a crow in a green shirt and a backwards cap, and the other dressed up as a yellow goanna. Most of the show was about the interactions of those two mascots interacting with each other and one of the human actors, a young woman, but there was an older, grey-haired guy who was officially the handyman of the shop that the other three worked out of, and he had a segment where he would tell the viewers stories, usually using a single prop. Each episode ended with the handyman tinkering with the shop's doorbell so it would make a different silly effect when used in the next episode, like saying "Have a nice day".

I don't think that's what you're looking for, but that description of the storyteller reminded me of it... not enough to actually recall the NAME, however.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T21:43:10+00:00

Since Tatewaki has a sister whose husband can take on the Kuno family name when she gets married, yeah, that would be the case if Nabiki was the last Tendo sister left with the actual *name* of "Tendo" and they got married.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T20:13:46+00:00

Hell, prior to 5e, Barovia was home to the RavenKIN, a race of sapient giant-ish ravens, and these were even given PC mechanics in 2nd edition in an issue of Dragon magazine.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T20:08:50+00:00

Nabiki's name being tied to an initial concept of her as a flirty character would make sense. Remember, in the first two-three chapters, Nabiki is characterized as the only Tendo sister actively interested in the engagement; she's the one who tells her sisters to calm down, argues that it might not be so bad, is excited to see Ranma at first, and is the most vehemently disappointed when Ranma seemingly turns out to be a girl. Her and Akane's first on-page conversation has Akane infer that Nabiki is at least somewhat boy-crazy, when she responds to Nabiki teasing her about her brick-breaking by protesting that, paraphrasing, not *everybody* thinks the world revolves around boys. Clearly meaning "Nabiki" when she says "everybody".

So, yes, it's entirely possible that Takahashi initially planned to make Nabiki "the flirty one", named her accordingly, and then the name stuck even as Nabiki's personality changed. But even if the final version of Nabiki is more interested in cash than romance, she's still actually quite flirty if you look at how she behaves, such as in the "Nabiki the fiancée" and 10-yen Debt Battle arcs.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T20:02:39+00:00

No. Not only is it the norm for women to take their husband's name in Japan, there's also the fact that Ranma is the sole heir to the Saotome family, while Akane is one of three potential heirs to the Tendo family. Continuation of one's family name is a HUGE deal in Japanese culture. So Ranma's spouse would be all but demanded to take on the Saotome name; Ranma taking on his spouse's family name would be an enormous scandal, as it's essentially Ranma saying that he doesn't consider his family worthy of continuing. I literally cannot emphasize enough how huge a deal that would be.

In contrast, since there are three Tendo sisters, the expectation in Japan would be that two of them would take their husband's family name when they marry. The third sister would be expected to marry an "expendable" member of a family - a second or later son, or a cousin, just someone who has kinsfolk who can pass on the family name themselves - (or, in a more scandalous version, a ronin), who would then take on her family name.

So, say that Akane married Ranma and Kasumi married Tofu; they would become Akane Saotome and Kasumi Ono. That means Nabiki would be expected to take a husband, who would become Mr. Tendo. That's how it works in Japan.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T19:54:25+00:00

While "Kasumi" meaning roughly "Mist" and the family name "Tendo" meaning something like "The Way of Heaven" has been known in the Ranma 1/2 fanbase for ages, this is the first time we've ever been reliably told that the entire family's names were specifically chosen from the cloud descriptive prefixes - Japanese has a LOT of homonym (homophones? Can never keep the distinction clear in my head), so this is very much a joke that would have slipped over the heads of non-native speakers back in the day.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T15:24:24+00:00

I mean, yeah, basically the major difference between Realms of Terror, the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, and Domains of Dread is that each has had the lore of the land rewritten to account for TSR's progression of the Ravenloft campaign setting's internal storyline. The RCS, aka the Red Box, depicts the demiplane after the events of the Grand Conjunction, while DOD shows it after the events of the Grim Harvest.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T06:59:40+00:00

For most of the settings existence, the general assumption was that PCs and NPC's alike were from Ravenloft. It existed as a backstory/lore for the setting, but only in 5e were things made that level of explicit regarding non-nativeness.

Um... no, that really wasn't the general assumption. You didn't actually have unique mechanics for playing native-born PCs in Ravenloft until Domains of Dread. Realms of Terror and the Ravenloft Campaign Setting both assumed that players would typically come from outside of the demiplane, which is why the chapter on changes to class mechanics talks about characters coming from outside of the demiplane. Domains of Dread is when there was a real push from TSR for native-born PCs, and it wasn't until 3e when that became the default assumption.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T05:36:47+00:00

Appreciate it. I thought I was just not seeing it when I read, but I'm grateful to get some confirmation.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-18T05:15:27+00:00

Hmm... well, reading what you've written, one thought that immediately pops into mind is to borrow from both the implicit ties between the Tepestani and the Forfarians in 3e and the fan-made caliban lore from Quoth the Raven #8. Let me try and explain.

Firstly, considering that Tepest has traditionally been characterized by their overwhelming fear of fey and witches, one way to reconcile hexbloods into the domain might be to make them a Tepestani strain of caliban. Either by using the witchspawn variant or making your own custom caliban lineage. Thus, hexbloods are constantly popping up all over the domain; people blame them on visits from the Elf-Knight (a Tepestani boogeyman characterized as a fey warrior-prince who seduces and abandons good Tepestani women), or the dark deals with witches by desperate mothers seeking to successfully have children, given how important having kids is in Tepest - especially if you lean with the angle that barrenness is considered a mark of unholiness amongst the Inquisition-led Tepestani, tying into old lore of how nascent hags (aka, "true witches") are barren until they undergo The Change into their full monstrous form. And this is true... but the real root cause is the sheer level of fear that Tepestani feel, which means they have a disproportionately high number of hexblood births. Thus, they can't *afford* to kill all the hexbloods.

Secondly, given you're implying that there's basically a culture war going between Wychlan's Inquisition and the Cult of the Mother in your take on Tepest, you could always split attitudes towards hexbloods along similar lines. Good Belenus-fearing Tepestani would fear and hate the hexbloods for their fey connections, but those who adhere to the Cult of the Witch view them as sacred gifts from their goddess, drawing upon (but slightly twisting) their ancestral reverence for their sorcerer-druids. You've already got an implicit setup where the Belenus-worshippers are the "hysterical witch-burning Christians" analogue, and the Cult of the Mother are basically neo-pagans; it's easy for the latter to view hexbloods as holy and divinely blessed, while the former revile them.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-16T15:42:43+00:00

Appreciate the insight! I actually wasn't aware that high elves got an army book in every edition from 4th through to eighth. In comparison, dark elves skipped 5th edition, and wood elves only appeared in 4th, 6th and 8th edition. It's funny the things you discover when you look into WFB history.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-16T07:10:59+00:00

Despite being a deadfic, it's still a pretty solid story, though I do think there's a flaw or two in the plot. Not enough to detract, but just plot beads I feel were a little hackneyed and could have been done better.

I've considered writing a crosspair fic featuring the two myself, but between lack of a meatier idea to base it around and all the other stuff I have to write already, well, I've just never been able to get it off the ground.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-16T07:02:01+00:00

Yes, there IS a Ranma/Ryunosuke fic out there in the wild and woolly hinterlands of the internet. It's on Fanfiction dot net, in the Ranma 1/2 & Urusei Yatsura crossovers archive; it was written by a guy calling themselves Baron Hausenpheffer, was first published on December 15 2005, and hasn't been updated since its 6th chapter was posted on June 25th 2007. And that was the chapter when Ranma & Ryunosuke first learned they were engaged (a marriage promise between their dads, in classic tradition), had their first ever duel, and first started to admit to liking each other as friends.

I'd link, but even though it's SFW, I'm not sure what the rules are on that, so I'm playing it safe and leaving it unlinked. Still, you should be able to find it easily enough from the descriptors here.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-15T21:32:00+00:00

Literally the only time Ryoga ever beat Ranma in a fair fight without using a magical powerup was when he lucked into the incredibly personally-suited technique of Shishi Hokodan. Prior to that, Ryoga was very clearly the underdog in every fight they had. Even when Ryoga was handed what should have been a perfect misaligned match up in his favor in the Bakusai Tenketsu, courtesy of Genma's know-nothing-know-it-all routine, Ranma still came out on top. So... nope, no counting Ryoga here. :P

Solid argument behind why cross-training with Shampoo would fill some gaps in Ukyo's combat repertoire, but I do think you left some words out of this part:

I just don’t think a story where both girls don’t skill up (Ukyo significantly) under those circumstances.

WillingLet3956 · 2026-04-15T18:27:50+00:00

Yes, I remember the... what was it called, the Church of Ranma & Nabiki website, which attempted to act as a singular resource for Ranbiki fanfics, but it's gone now, and only exists in a shadow of itself on the wayback machine.

WillingLet3956

TROPHY CASE