[Coolshaymin]

Ranma 1/2 is an manga anime series that is a classic martial arts comedy drama romance from the 90's. Starring Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo, heirs of the school of anything goes martial arts and set up for marriage by their fathers that neither agree on. Oh yeah, and Ranma turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and turns back with hot water from a curse of a ancient chinese spring.

Why am I telling you about Ranma? Well, it had a collaboration with Battlecats and is therefore suspectible to the test featuring the actual characters from the show.

The series had a few of it's own games in Japan as well. The show and manga contain a wide cast of differing characters from the easily lost and rather naieve but determined Ryoma to the amazonian warrior in Shampoo. The show also features a lot of very unique martial arts styles in it's cast from the Anything Goes school to Ballet to doubles figure skating to food delivery to cooking to hidden weapons and a diverse umbrella the show is no stranger to unique styles of fighting. As well as the spiritual elements sometimes included like ghosts and the aforementioned curse as well as fighting energy.

The only problems I can see is there was maybe some questionableness with chinese depiction that leaves it dated. Also some perverts but they aren't really much worst than some we have if at all that leaves it a bit dates but I don't see either being a problem here.

[Jade Callisto]

In the series nudity is often depicted too, fan service and the like as well. Other than the perverted parts and the stuff I mentioned before this show is a very fun one. It has lots of martial arts and a fun cast of characters of which I agree on. Happosai is a perverted old man but also sensei like Master Roshi in Dbz and Jiraiya from Naruto. It's a pretty common trope in old school anime.

I'd say as long as Happosai is not allowed to be on or very very much toned down then I would be fine with it. Also with Ranma I think as long as he doesn't use his girl form in a perverted way apping him would be fine too. 

Again though this anime follows a lot of old tropes and I relate a lot to Ranma on several levels but I am not sure if this should be allowed. I love the series, I really do, but so much of it at least from what I've watched had a lot that would likely not be allowed on this site. Objectively this series has a lot of potential and cool martial arts in it, plus techniques and and so much more. 

However my vote is against putting this on the site simply because of how the series was run. That is my opinion on the subject at least. It may not be a fully informed opinion since I haven't watched the entire series but I saw a good portion of it.

[KashKey]

Okay, Alviss please don't take this personally, but your argument is actually a great frame of reference for my personal argument, because I knew criticisms like that would come up and I would like to address them. To start, however, I do feel the need to point out my own bias. I love this show. It was one of my first anime, and it's my father's personal FAVORITE anime. (If I'm being honest I watched it years before I ever should have.) But with that said, I personally am of the opinion we have no reason to ban Ranma besides the connection making it Ligal being comedically Tenuous at best. And if we're going with that logic, we should also ban FMA, because it's in the same boat.

Moving on, to address Alviss's arguments. Again, to be clear I'm simply using what he stated as a frame of reference for arguments I was actually going to tackle before he posted.

1: Nudity. Yes, nudity and general other fanservicy things do happen in the show. (I mean, there was a time where Ranma wore a playboy bunny outfit just to get an advantage in a fight for god's sake. No, really, that's canon.) However, to ban it on that basis would be to disregard our own rating that we proudly display on the welcome, before even the Plot Synopsis. 2,2,2. To take this at face value with the rating system we have used, the only sexual content we are banning is that of graphical detail, IE: Writing porn. Ranma as a show falls very squarely in our ratings in my opinion, although I am also of the opinion that the next argument is pushing it.

2: Happosai. Yes, that old man is getting his own fucking bullet point. He's that much of an issue. Happosai, as Alviss said, is a perverted old man. However to compare him to Master Roshi is frankly unfair to Master Roshi. He may have looked up a teenage girl's skirt, but not even he has the indecency to actively grope girls chests and steal underwear en masse, to the point of gathering a fucking collection. No, really, Happosai is that bad. Which is fucking hilarious when you consider he's one of the strongest martial artists in Ranma 1/2. I will say that I believe Happosai as a character SHOULD be toned down to a degree if he ever shows up. And if he does, I also believe it should primarily be in the context of an antagonist, similar to his role in the original show. 

To summarize my thoughts on the matter: While perhaps it would be in good taste to tone it down, such as how often we saw nudity in the original show and Happosai's entire existence, but beyond that I believe Ranma would be a perfect fit for the site. It was at its heart a Romcom that had great action on top of it. The fighting was very fluid and bouncy, and never even strayed into the concept of actually killing the characters. There were antagonists that claimed they wanted to commit murder, but I can't name a single death in the entire series, except for that one time Ranma killed an immortal. But even then, said immortal resurrects with all his memories intact anyway, so does it count? The tone was very tongue and cheek for 90% of its run time, only delving into serious topics for the sake of character growth. I fully support the approval of Ranma 1/2 for the forum.

[Maverick Hunter Zero]

I would like to say that we should test the waters with this series.

Other than that, I'd say yes.

[Lucciola]

I'm yes for having this series join the board because as stated, while the series had nudity on the regular most of it was usually made as a sort of circumstantial type thing. And it's not a porn series nor did it ever stray remotely into that area, I know the series fairly well and while it can be crass. It usually kept things at a decent level for the most part that it wasn't as bad it is often made out to be. Sure not everyone might find it funny but that can be said for any form of comedy, and even some of the things we already have on the white list can be a bit on the silly side.

Also, I do agree that Happosai would need to stay as an NPC and kept to board standards. He's not really something we need around here, mind you the argument that he's worse than Roshi is quite debatable but let's not get into that right now. He's pretty much the only real problematic character in the series and he's rarely in it anyway, so he can be kept as a story NPC to get characters from the series moving or even as an enemy. Honestly, he'd probably make a weird yet interesting infected boss character or controlled villain.

Not only that, with the opening of the Ranma world. It allows for a lot more creative freedom in regards to original martial art type characters, as well as those who've fallen in the cursed springs. As they number pretty high and can pretty much cause all manner of weirdness and fun, so as long as everyone keeps their shirts on both proverbially and literally I think Ranma 1/2 would do fine here.

[Kari Meadowwing]

I agree it should be allowed. Sure it was A WIERD anime but it wasnt too bad. It' at least more down to earth and relaistic then some others like dragonball.

[Coolshaymin]

We have had concluded the talk as it were and have decided to open the gates to the crazy land of Anything is a Martial Arts. Ranma and the gang and rivals are whitelisted to enter the world of Life Itself.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

[Mari]

Yo! We observed some light confusion over the site's rules as the white list was going on and I figured I'd pop in just to clarify what is and isn't allowed. Kash basically correctly pointed out that our rules are actually really lenient with what's allowed. And he's also ...BASICALLY correct in that the guiding principle there is that we're trying to give people as much freedom to write the topics they want to write without crossing into the realm of smut.

So for example: If you wanna have your characters' clothes get destroyed in a fight, you can do that. You don't... have to invoke the invincible clothes trope. I mean I do, sometimes, because like--magical girls and their magical clothes and stuff. But if you wanna have your character notice their clothes just got burnt off, freak out, and grab the nearest barrel to wear for like a gag, you can absolutely do that. The choice is yours.

You just can't describe the nudity. By acknowledging it but not describing it, that is the writing equivalent of having black bars censoring the character for modesty's sake, or simply not drawing what needn't be seen in art.

Ideally you should be able to write about things like that or sexual harassment as long as what you write isn't unnecessarily titillating. It's kind of the same principle that allows Bowser to exist in kids games. Bowser has done worse things than Happosai, arguably on a regular basis. Remember that time in Super Paper Mario's opening where he happily got married to Peach while she was being physically battered and then mind-controlled by Nastasia to force her to agree to the marriage? All while a crowd cheered? The game itself basically acknowledges how deeply vile the events taking place in this scene are by having them spawn the chaos heart. But we remember the actions of Happosai with a lot more scrutiny and there's a reason for that. I think it mostly comes down to the way the respective scenes are framed and handled.

It's something worth thinking about and reflecting upon, especially if you want to write about more mature subjects, or are concerned with playing one of the many characters with reputations involving the damsel in distress trope.