Ranma ½ is getting a reboot this year. The anime is based on the story from the manga. For the 1989 anime, some content was removed from the manga. The 2024 reboot may now revive one of those contents.
What could be revived in the 2024 reboot? In the manga, there is a character named Konatsu. She is a kunoichi born in the body of a man but identifies as a woman.
- She was raised by her stepmother to learn the fighting style of ancient kunoichi.
- Within her lies the soul of a legendary female warrior who is reborn only every 100 years.
- She is one of the best friends of Ukyo, one of Ranma’s three fiancées. Konatsu helps her with her food stand.
- She is in love with Ukyo. However, she never confesses her feelings because love between two individuals of the same gender was not accepted at that time.
Despite her calm nature, she can keep up with Ranma’s technique and speed and is his equal opponent. In the manga, she even teaches Ranma some fighting techniques she learned over time. However, the anime completely omitted her from the series.
The reboot will have a new look. Check out the following trailer to see what will come with the new series:
Ranma ½ could include a transgender character in the series
Why was the character omitted? There is no official statement regarding why the character was omitted from the anime. Since multiple contents were removed from the manga, it could be that the production team wanted to streamline the series a bit and thus removed this character from the anime.
Another possible reason could be that it involves a transgender character, which might have caused an uproar among some parts of the audience. However, transgender characters had already been a topic in the anime and manga scene much earlier: Claudine from 1978 even had a transgender character as the protagonist.
It is likely, however, that Konatsu was not implemented in the anime because her first appearance was much later. She first appeared in Volume 35 (according to Weekly Shonen Sunday) while the anime series only goes up to Volume 22. Although some OVAs and movies continued, she did not appear there either. If the reboot continues beyond the original anime, she might finally appear.
We can only speculate why the character was omitted. For the creators at the time, it was at least not a problem to show nudity. Breasts were often uncensored, and even nipples were visible in shower scenes.
In contrast, no nudity scenes have been seen in the trailer so far. There is only a moment when Ranma incredulously admires her cleavage. This indicates that the production team is taking a different direction. If it indeed was due to Konatsu’s transgender identity that she was omitted, then the reboot might finally include her.
When is the reboot coming out? The reboot of Ranma ½ is scheduled to premiere on October 5, 2024.
Unfortunately, in the MeinMMO survey, Ranma ½ only reached 7th place in the best RTL2 animes. If you want to know which anime series ranked above Ranma ½, you should check out the following article: You voted for the best afternoon anime on RTL2, and there is a clear winner
