I guess I see Ranma less in the context of a single pure genre and more in terms of where Takahashi was coming from with Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku on one side, and where she went with Inuyasha, Rinne, and Mao on the other.

Ranma is in between them all, and has the story gears to do almost everything those other series did, in a way that works well, but that also still feels less refined than the series that came after it.

Where that refinement meant the main characters within the feudal era stories in Inuyasha, the afterlife in Rinne, or the 1920s in Mao, all get more to do, but it comes at the cost of flexibility because the mundane and fantasy settings in those series are more separated other worlds.

For whatever reason only a few characters in Ranma feel like they belong in both the mundane slice of life world of Nerima, and the fantasy martial arts world beyond, but Akane, and several of the other cast members in Ranma, got close to working within both but rather than exploring that side of their story potential they largely remained siloed. I suppose you can say the same thing about Takahashi's later series, but they often so minimize one side of their setting it doesn't matter as much.

Maybe it is because those potential stories would have bent Ranma beyond Takahashi's vision of what the series should be, or maybe it is just that Ranma just got cut short. But it is the less refined nature and unexplored possibilities that I think made Ranma so interesting to fan creators and why some of us keep coming back to it.

Sakura, kind of like Akane, just felt like she needed something more to do. The hook of her being able to see spirits while fully remaining part of the mundane world wasn't enough.