Ranma ep 1.9: "True Confessions! A Girl's Hair Is Her Life!"

Summary | Dub & Animation | Notes & Comments

Characters in this ep:
Ranma
Akane
Ryouga
Nabiki
Kasumi
Genma
Assorted students and townspeople
Some Old Lady lookin' for the Tanaka residence
Bess, the dog

Even though this is still a continuation of the Ryouga arc, it's a MAJOR Ranma/Akane episode, and I loves it.

Summary:

Akane: angry. Belt: slashy. Hair: gone. Everyone: Shock! Thus ends the recap from the previous episode.

Akane stands in shock after her hair gets chopped off while she's in mid-yell. Nabiki couldn't look more horrified if the belt had disemboweled Akane instead of just chopping her hair off. Akane can only run her hand through her hair and look expressionless. Ranma wonders what the big deal is, since it's just hair, but a girl steps up and says that "she" should know it's a big deal, since "she" is clearly a girl herself.

Ryouga has the decency to finally stop the onslaught, and when Ranma tells Akane she can beat him up to make herself feel better, Ryouga jumps in and says she can smack him around too if it'll help. Akane wallops 'em both but good, and heads home, still in shock. On her way she recalls the day she decided to grow her hair long, when she was still a little kid; Kasumi had warned her that she needed to act like a girl or else Dr. Tofu wouldn't like her, which young Akane interpreted to mean "girly like Kasumi" so she grew her hair out to emulate her oldest sister.

Ranma tails Akane meekly around the house as she recovers, then asks Kasumi to even out her hair. Rather than let Ranma confess as to his role in the haircut, Akane lies and tells her sister that she did it herself but messed it up. After Kasumi fixes her hair, Akane goes to Dr. Tofu to have her ankle looked at (since she fell in the previous episode). He treats her ankle and tells her that she looks best with short hair and always has; Akane smiles as if she's happy, but soon starts crying and can't stop. Ranma, who has tagged along, looks uncomfortable. On the walk home, Akane says she feels better and she's finally over Dr. Tofu. Ranma stammers his way through an actual compliment, telling her that her hair looks cute, and Akane is floored but flattered. Her mood takes a turn for the better, and she pushes Ranma into the reservoir and laughs at him. This is how we show our love!

Meanwhile, Ryouga has been sidetracked for a week as a woman asked him for directions to a police-box so that she could find her grandson's house. He finally gets her there, and locates the Tendo Dojo with the intent of finishing his long-delayed Fight O' Vengeance. Attacking Ranma in the middle of a stormy night, Ryouga takes the fight into the backyard and may or may not be gaining the upper hand when Akane, mistaking him for a prowler, clocks him with a handweight to the head. Ryouga drops his umbrella and makes a run for it. Ranma follows him and finds only his clothes, in a rumpled pile that suggests they were discarded but rather - no longer fit. DA-DUNNNN!

Ranma brings a weird-looking dog into the house, assuming it's Ryouga after a Jusenkyo curse. Meanwhile, Akane finds a strange little black piglet in her room, and upon picking it up finds it has a bump on its head. She finds Ranma in the kitchen talking to the dog, and recognizes the dog as belonging to her neighbours. Ranma examines the pig, who instantly hates him. However, when Ranma leaves to take a late-night bath after running around the neighbourhood in the rain in his underwear, Akane insists that he take the pig too. Somehow Ranma remains too dumb to realize that, if the dog isn't a transformed Ryouga, maybe the pig is, and instead he just plunges the little guy into the warm water and is shocked when a Naked Ryouga appears in the piggy's place. Go figure.