Ranma ep 1.5: "Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart!"

Summary | Dub & Animation | Notes & Comments

Animation (1 to 5):
Four again. Sometimes the faces look oversimplified, but that's only in slightly lesser characters, and only for a little while. Hiroshi and Daisuke look great. And the animation of Ranma getting hit by the softball wins the entire episode.

Dub (1 to 5):
I'm going with a three on this one. Most characters are getting the hang of their roles, Kasumi finally sounds right, Nabiki has very few lines but Angela Costain's delivery of "That's funny!" sounds really natural and appropriate. But the two (well, three, but there's not a whole lot of Girl!Ranma in this one) leads are just lacking, and not just in comparison. Miriam simply can't do the subtle levels of Akane's personality. Her yelling while sparring with Soun sounds less like traditional yelling and more like "grrrr! arrrgh!"

Plus well, like I said, comparison. Sara Strange just does not live up to Kappei Yamaguchi at the beginning; his eating noises are HYSTERICAL, and hers are... well, they just didn't try. Which is probably for the best, really, but it's sad to lose it when his were so great. *G* And Miriam makes a BIG flub in delivery (IMHO) when Akane changes Ranma into a girl so she can piggyback him home; "Oh, but if we're both girls it's okay?" is nonsensical in context. It was Akane's idea, and a genuine question; her delivery is sarcastic and resentful, and completely against context.

One thing I'll say for Brigitta Dau: her delivery of "Good morning!" to Soun, while cheerful and sounding out of character for Ranma to me, tones down the bubbly girlishness that Megumi Hayashibara stuck in there. THAT line really always stuck out to me in Japanese, b/c it just seems so unlike Ranma. Another moment that is better in the dub: the joke of panning past Ranma and Akane's bickering at the breakfast table to focus on Kasumi and Nabiki making small talk works much better here, somehow. Good Miriam moment: "I have apologized to you enough times already, Ranma." That's actually pretty reined in for her, and here she just sounds generally irritated - and it matches Akane's facial expression almost perfectly. Oh, and Ted Cole: fabulous as ever, particularly when Kuno runs away crying. XD

Unlike last episode, they keep a lot of the lines the same from subtitles to dub in this ep. I guess there's just less fun to be had. ;) One interesting change is Kasumi's promise request: from "never strike a boy in anger" to "never strike someone in anger again". That actually makes a bit more sense, if you think about it. Contrarily, Akane's later line before she goes to town on Ranma is a bad translation and a bad delivery. "Even my own mother wouldn't-!" The mistake is basically in the vagueness; the delivery cuts the sentence off so that it sounds like it's meant to stand alone and always sounds to me like she's saying "even my own mother wouldn't speak to me that way!" instead of "wouldn't blame me".

No Shakespeare in this one (and I weep!), but the pseudo-bard is great: "A base falsehood claims that rascally knave Ranma Saotome has bested me in combat!" "RASCALLY KNAVE!" Oh, I love Kuno in the dub.

Also interesting to note that a few of Ranma's line changes imply a bit more concern than in the subtitles. In particular, from "Who was that on the phone?" to the dub's "Tell me who that was on the phone, okay?" brings out a concerned interest instead of a straightforward question. Yeah, it's pushy and rude, but so is Ranma, and he only asks because he can tell Akane's upset by whoever just called. Course it's also the delivery's implication, too.

From manga to episode:
The story picks up from midway in a chapter, where the last ep left off, and continues through another full chapter. Once again there is a LOT of fleshing out, in particular having to do with Kasumi's request of Akane not to strike anyone in anger (or not to hit boys, depending on which version you're watching); that's not in the manga at all. Nor is the Soun Abuse, which has occurred in two eps in a row now *giggles* Mostly just the stuff at the beginning; the majority of the second half - of everything after their visit to Tofu, in fact - is pretty exact.