Ranma Saotome

is a fictional character and the titular protagonist of the manga series Ranma ½, created by Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma is a Japanese teenage boy who has trained in martial arts since early childhood. As a result of falling into an enchanted spring during a training journey in China, he is cursed to transform into a girl when splashed with cold water, while hot water changes him back into a boy. Throughout the series, Ranma seeks out a way to rid himself of the curse, while his friends, enemies, rivals, and many fiancées constantly hinder and interfere. Creation and conception Because most of her previous series had female protagonists, Rumiko Takahashi decided that she wanted a male for Ranma ½. However, she was worried about writing a male main character in a magazine targeted toward male readers, and therefore decided to make him half-female. In 1993, an Animerica interviewer asked Takahashi if she intended the sex-changing theme "as an effort to enlighten a male-dominated society." The author said that she does not think in terms of societal agendas and that she created the Ranma ½ concept from wanting "a simple, fun idea." She considered Ranma changing every time he was punched, before deciding on water for initiating his changes after thinking of noren at sentō and making the hot and cold water connection. Takahashi said she gave the character's name a lot of thought; because the series deals with "a lot of entangled elements in an effective way" she named him Ranma taken from the proverb , which can roughly be translated into English as "tackling plenty of tasks diligently." However, when asked how she came up with it in another interview years later, Takahashi simply said she thought it would be a cute name for either a boy or girl. Male Ranma's name is written using kanji, while female Ranma's name is written in hiragana as . The manga artist gave Ranma a pigtail to make the character easy to identify regardless of whether he was in his male or female form. Because a pigtail pairs well with Chinese clothes, she then decided to make him a martial artist. Takahashi said that Ranma's personality ended up different from how she initially intended; "I originally intended for him to be a clean-cut, incredibly energetic kid who was into fighting. But, he became somewhat indecisive and picky." She speculated that, since everyone has those kinds of sentiments, these were her own feelings subconsciously reflected in her character.