Ranma ½: La isla de las doncellas

Ahhhh, Ranma. For those of you not familiar with the Ranma situation, here's a quick explanation: It's the typical old boy meets girl, boy turns into girl, girl gets engaged to girl routine.

Anyway, Ranma is a fine martial arts comedy based around a boy, Ranma, who changes between male and female form because of a curse laid upon him while training in the mountains of China. This is the second Ranma movie (based on the TV series, which, in turn is based on the original manga).

The Ranma 1/2 series is top-notch hilarity from start to finish, every time. This movie, however brings a bad name to the name. Nihao My Concubine is full of gratuitous breast shots, lame non-humour and a severe lack of plot. The american dubbed version is (believe it or not) worse still, having ridiculous puns strewn about, thoroughly distracting and annoying to say the least, not to mention the acting standard. As for the actual animation, it's more or less regular Ranma standard - that is, high quality, but relatively simple artwork, that does the job well. If you must see this movie, make sure it's a fan subtitled edition, but better still, miss this movie altogether and pick up some of the original Manga ;)

This movie is totally silly just like the previous movie because the characters are very silly and they don't know How feel good and take care of the dangers. Then Ranma destroyed the lake of water of the died man. I Hate You Ranma Saotome and You are very DAMNED.

To my taste, this film was better than the first (Big Trouble in Nekonlon, China). The jokes are funnier and more silly. The animation is pretty much the same. The story is rather lame and could have been told in about 2 or 3 comic-chapters. The plot girl-guy saves girl isn't really that much different from Movie No. 1. The women's breasts are bigger and the legs are longer, and since all takes place in an exotic beach-environment, the creators have the opportunity of pointing this out to the viewer fairly often. Better than the first, but still not that great. Oh, but I must admit, I thought the main theme was kinda cute.

If you get your rocks off watching generously endowed cartoon teenage girls bouncing around in gravitationally-improbable bikinis, This Is the Movie For You!

The Ranma series, as with much anime, offers two things: sex and violence. Unlike the previous Ranma movie (released in the States as "Big Trouble...", this one concentrates on sex.) That's not to say that it is obscene; there's no full-frontal nudity, no tentacle rape. Actually, no intercourse at all. Just a lot of slavishly drawn teenage girls in bikinis and evening gowns.

Oh, the plot has to do with the entire Ranma crowd being on vacation, and the girls all being kidnapped by a local prince who wants to marry one of them. Etc., etc.

I enjoyed "Nihao My Concubine", and thought it was both fun to watch and had some good non-obvious humor in it. Take the title - to "get it", you need to both be aware of the Chinese film "Farewell my Concubine", and know that nihao means "hello" in Chinese.

Although there was some (very minor, very brief) nudity, I didn't feel it was gratuitous or offensive. YMMV.

I will grant the plot is tenuous at best, but I don't approach any of the Ranma 1/2 anime with an expectation of deep plotting. They're just fun to watch. Lighten up.