らんま1/2 · Ranma Nibun no Ichi
A martial artist cursed to turn into a girl when splashed with cold water is engaged against his will, in a fast, chaotic action comedy. Read from the pairing, as a 2.
Created by
2Two — cooperation. That is the reduction of this title, and the shelf it is read from.
Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½ ran in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1987 to 1996 and was collected in 38 volumes. Ranma Saotome fell into a cursed spring in China while training, and now turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and back with hot. His father, who turns into a panda, has promised him in marriage to Akane Tendo, a martial artist who wants nothing to do with him.
The curse is a machine for comedy. A rival who turns into a pig, a Chinese warrior who becomes a cat, a growing crowd of fiancées and challengers, and a new martial-arts "school" for every absurd activity, from tea ceremony to figure skating, keep the series in constant motion.
Beneath the farce, Ranma ½ is a well-made martial arts manga, with techniques that have rules and fights that turn on cleverness. Takahashi mixes slapstick and choreography in a way many later action comedies imitated.
Its anime adaptation was one of the first to find a wide audience in North America in the 1990s, and the series became a gateway to manga for many Western readers. Its play with gender, light as it often is, gave it a lasting place in discussions of the medium.
Every letter here carries a digit; together they make 20, which folds down to 2.
Two is diplomat & cooperator — partnership, diplomacy, and the search for balance. The reference files it as a negotiation. Read that way, what the entry is really recording is the 2's search for balance between competing sides.
The vowels alone reduce to 2, the consonants to 9. Cooperation underneath, reckoning on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.
総画 strokes is 6, volumes is 38, an 11, years serialised is 10, a 1 and debut year is 1987, a 7 — none of which lands on the 2 the title gives. That disagreement is worth more than an agreement would be: it marks the gap between what a work is called and what it is.
The 2 will keep a bad arrangement alive out of politeness. A number of these texts are about partnerships nobody ended in time. What the 2 still asks is that you find the second party, because there always is one. The other entries that reduce to 2 are collected on The Pairing.