©高橋留美子・小学館／「らんま1/2」製作委員会
I didn’t realize how much I’d come to enjoy the little “Meet Ranma Saotome” segments at the beginning of each episode until this one, when it was replaced with a simple recap of Shampoo’s arrival. Seeing the clever bits of animation and genre parodies were a delightful way to grab my attention each week, and I looked forward to seeing what they’d come up with. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
Not that I totally blame them. Shampoo’s arrival is important not just for the arc, but for the whole series. She’s probably the most consistently present secondary character after Ryoga, so it’s highly important that new viewers are up to speed with her deal. She’s a fan favorite, too, so it makes sense they’d want to wave a big banner yelling, “SHAMPOO IS HERE! SHE HAS ARRIVED! IN ALL HER BLURPLE-HAIRED, BROKEN JAPANESE-SPEAKING GLORY!”
For a bit of historical context: fans went to war about whether Shampoo’s hair was blue or purple. It was bloody. People were flamed within an inch of their lives. Fandom was never the same. Never forget.
But I’m sure a new fandom war will be fought, this time over her accent, or lack thereof. Shampoo as a character is… fraught. She embodies a number of Japanese stereotypes about the Chinese, many of them negative. She speaks broken, ungrammatical Japanese. She comes from a small village with primitive, unbreakable traditions, unlike the modern enlightened Japanese characters. She picks P-chan off the street and tries to cook it for Ranma because those weird Chinese folk will try to eat anything instead of buying it at the store like NORMAL people! It’s not great, and there’s not really much that can be done without fundamentally changing her character. Even if this version were willing to confront the racist stereotyping around her, she would be unrecognizable if they were washed away.
That brings us to the dub. While Rei Sakuma reprises the role in Japanese, her new English voice actor is Grace Lu. Shampoo doesn’t speak much Japanese at this point in the story, so most of her sparse dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese…I think. While I can recognize the language when I hear it, I don’t actually speak it, nor do I know Lu’s linguistic background, so I really can’t comment on how “well” she speaks it. The bits where she speaks English, notably, use grammatically correct, if simple, repetitive phrases. I feel that, like with the Jusenkyo guide, the dub team is planning to elide her quirky speech patterns. I’m sure the fans will be very normal and rational about this.
Last episode ended with Ranma accidentally knocking Shampoo out, much to his horror. Now, there’ll be no hiding from her, even in his male form! Except, when she wakes up, she immediately starts making out with him, which he is much more amenable to than when Sanzenin did the same. It turns out that if a man defeats one of her tribe, she must marry him to create strong progeny, and Shampoo is totally down to clown.
The comedy that follows is pretty much what you would expect: Shampoo is smitten, Akane is jealous, Ranma is spineless and incapable of rejecting her, and Ryoga is mad at Ranma for hurting Akane’s feelings. Lather, rinse, repeat. (See what I did there???) Things come to *ahem* a head at the episode’s climax when Shampoo delivers the kiss of death to Akane for stealing the lunch Shampoo prepared for Ranma, which consisted of fried P-chan. Shampoo attacks Akane, who is strong but not a match, and Akane wakes up with no memory of Ranma! Oh no!
Rating:
Ranma ½ is currently streaming on
Netflix.
