Obligatory disclaimers: I do not own Ranma 1/2. If Ranma-chan stories aren't to your tastes, you probably won't like the conclusion of this tale. And, of course, as the premise might suggest, not all characters will remain in their canonical character interpretations.
Ranma Saotome doesn't even remember how young he was. How young he was when he realized that he wasn't normal.
Growing up, he runs with the quixotic quicksilver wind, he walks the roads of China and Japan with his father, Genma. Ranma trains every day in martial arts, each passing moment another new challenge from his father: "Everything is training," the man says sternly, summoning up a vestige of pretension that he can't live up to in real life. "Everything is training, and that means it's on you , you understand? Everything is training, and you're going to get through it."
Some of what compels Ranma to obey his father is just the tradition of it all - all around him, the accepted attitude is that children must respect their parents, no matter what else. It is his duty as a son to carry on his father's legacy as a martial artist. It is his duty (one day, in the future) to provide for his father, so far as he can.
But most of what compels Ranma is cold and hard punishment, cold and hard reality. He is only a child when his father starts stealing food from him. "Everything is training," the man says. "If you can't keep your food from me than you just have to grow stronger."
Nothing more than token dissent is accepted, not really. At the end of the line, Genma's actions and words are law, because some things are just impossible - Ranma may live in a world where powerful martial artists can outstrip the speed of sound and punch through concrete as easily as cutting through styrofoam and butter, but Ranma is still just a child and Genma is the adult. There is no way Ranma can match his father, not for years and years.
Ranma loses a lot of food, over those years. And Genma becomes… well, decadent might be a good way to put it. Alone on the road with his son, with absolute power over the boy, he becomes even more neglectful and slimy than he already is.
Ranma is seven or so when he's left alone in a restaurant. "Oops," Genma says. "I forgot my wallet, let me run on home and grab it. Here, my son will stay behind, so you know I'm honest," he says, before turning to Ranma. "I'm not coming back for you," he whispers. "Better get out of here on your own, boy. Everything is training."
(Ranma has to knock out one of the waiters before they let him leave unattended.)
Ranma is ten years old when he's thrown to the cats - literally. Tied up in meat, thrown in a pit with starving cats, and left to fight them back, because everything is training. And it doesn't work the first time, Ranma doesn't spontaneously learn secret cat-based martial arts: so his father does it to him again. And again. And again.
Ranma is twelve years old when his father intentionally breaks his bones in a spar, just to prove a point. He heals.
And somewhere along the way, he realizes that it just isn't normal . Normal boys aren't raised on the road, without regular schooling or schedule or routine or a home to come back to. Normal boys aren't beaten and starved like this as a way of literally toughening them up.
But what can he do? He's trapped by his own indecision, because he's not even sure he's willing to turn on his father completely. Genma is a bastard, but he's still Ranma's father , and doesn't that just hurt? Genma hurts Ranma, but Ranma learns martial arts in the process, and how can he turn against his father now? All the abuse was done for his own good, wasn't it?
"What's so special about all of this?" Ranma asks his father one late night, staying up and watching a campfire. "Why are you so devoted to making me a 'man among men?'"
Genma snorts, pushing and pulling on the air with his breath. "The pride of being such a man should be it's own reward, boy."
But somewhere along the way, Ranma realizes that he isn't a man among men.
Well, that's not exactly true. He is a man among men - he remembers to be such a man in his every interaction with the world. But on the other hand, that's exactly the problem, because he has to consciously remember to do so - it's a role he plays.
Is there even a difference, is there even a meaningful distinction? Ranma doesn't have some deeper self to reveal, because he doesn't know what he can or would be aside from a man among men. So obviously any person he became would just be a role. And if everything is a role, then nothing is.
Besides - the pride of being a man among men is it's own reward.
Ranma is 16 years old when his simple life of training on the road comes to an end.
The decline of his traveling with Genma starts happening at Jusenkyo, the so-called Cursed Springs of China. It seems like all roads lead to Jusenkyo, in the end.
Bamboo peeks out from dozens of crystal-clear pools of water, untouched by time and the water cycle. The wooden poles emerging from the water give the place the same cast as a great bed of nails, every bamboo spur reaching up to impale someone.
Ranma and Genma balance upon the wood rods without a care in the world, ignoring the protests of the tour guide below. And that makes it worse, even - because what happens next is basically their own fault.
Genma falls into the Spring of Drowned Panda. Ranma falls into the Spring of Drowned Girl. And just like that, they're cursed to flip-flop between bodies with the touch of water.
"This is your fault," Ranma gripes at her father, after she's changed into a girl. Her black hair has given way to red hair, red hair that she has to squeeze the cursed water out of, and she scowls. "All your fault, old man! You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"
"No, I didn't," Genma admits grudgingly. "But how do you think I feel? I turn into a panda!"
"If you didn't know," Ranma retorts, "then you're just a damned fool. But I knew that already."
And , Ranma thinks but doesn't dare to say, at least you're not a girl.
Because now that Ranma is half-man and half-woman, she's in limbo. Halfway to being a man among men, and halfway to being… something else. Not that she knows what else, but the mere thought of a choice scares the shit out of her.
She's never had a choice before, and now that she's staring it in the eyes, it's more scary and paralyzing than freeing. She wants to go back, she wants to go back to simpler times when all there was was the prospect of being a man among men.
"Give me that kettle," she hisses, grabbing for Genma's hot water and pouring it over herself - taking temporary respite from the curse as she becomes a he again. "We have to find a cure for this thing."
"Well…" Genma trails off. "We may have business back at home."
"What?"
And with that, their training trip truly comes to a screeching halt, while Genma drags Ranma back to his old family friends, the Tendos. The trip comes to a halt when Genma tells Ranma that he's being married off to one of the Tendo girls as a way to bring the Tendo and Saotome schools of martial arts together.
It's annoying, it's sickening that Ranma is being used as a tool. But what the hell is he supposed to do? He has a duty to his father, the one who taught him the Anything Goes style of martial arts, the one who raised him.
(the one who hurt him)
It's not all that bad, though. In the earliest moments of his stay at the Tendo household, he runs smack-dab into existential crisis, and maybe that's a good thing.
"I'm Akane," the youngest Tendo girl says to Ranma while she's still in her girl-form, before she's even explained the nature of her curse. "Do you want to be friends?"
And does she ever? Of course she wants to be friends, she hasn't had a real friend since she met Ukyo and Ryoga on the road, and she hasn't seen them since. So she folds like a house of cards and tries to make friends.
"I'm just glad you're a girl," Akane tells her, and it smarts just a bit. Because Ranma feels like she's a liar. Ranma isn't a girl, not really - she still thinks of herself as a man, because she has to be a man in order to think of herself as a strong martial artist who can be proud and have self-esteem. And Ranma might see Akane as a tomboy, but if Akane is a tomboy, than so is Ranma, because Ranma literally grew up as a man, and still is half-man.
It's nice making friends with Akane, even though it has to crumple like paper eventually. Eventually Ranma's gender-bending curse is revealed, and looking at the sheer hurt on Akane's face, Ranma feels awful.
"I trusted you, and… and it was all based on a lie!" Akane hisses through her tears. And Ranma learns a valuable lesson that day:
No one can ever see her as a real girl, not really, because eventually the truth will out. Jusenkyo doesn't offer the chance to be a girl, it just offers the chance to seem like a girl. Even now, all Ranma can do is be a man among men.
And because Ranma is terrified of the implications of choice, that's okay.
One night, Ranma - in his male form - tries to sneak out of the Tendo household, to placate the confused wanderlust in his bones by staring down the roads of Furinkan.
"You're just like Mom was, you know," Kasumi (the eldest Tendo daughter) tells him, catching him where he stands on the roof, pinning him down with her discerning gaze, and understanding . "She met Dad while she was traveling."
Instead of dwelling on the maybes of the road, Ranma listens to Kasumi elucidating the could-have-beens of the past, sitting with her atop the shingles.
"Dad was on a training trip out in China…" Kasumi recounts wistfully. "Mom was just… traveling. Seeing the sights. I know she was… she never did settle down, ever, until she met Dad."
"I'm sure she was a wonderful woman," Ranma replies. Something in his chest shifts uncomfortably.
"Was it worth it?" Kasumi asks. Looking into her eyes, Ranma wonders if she's asking him, or asking her mother by proxy. "Living on the road? What was that like?"
"If I knew, I would tell you," Ranma sighs. "It was worth it, I know that much, but I don't know how to begin explaining what it was like."
The bitter night air pushes and pulls against them with the wind.
"For everything that I saw…" Ranma says slowly. "Some things never changed. In the end, it seemed like it was always the same. The people were always the same, in the worst way possible."
It was always dojos and monasteries and the like. It was always Ranma and his father, never anyone else, not for long. Any human ties were severed soon after they were made.
"I'm not even sure I know how to explain," Ranma eventually concludes. "I think it was worth it. I still sort of want to travel and see the world, if I'm being honest. But… I never want to travel like that again. I'm done with that, it's over."
"No more training trips?" Kasumi asks, looking at him oddly. Ranma's lips quirk up and down.
"Aw, that's not what I meant," Ranma says. The night sky seems to have enchanted him, stars skidding across the navy blue in blurs of sidereal motion. "I think it's who I travel with and how we travel, not what we travel for, that makes the difference."
"I'm not sure I understand," Kasumi shrugs. "But maybe that's okay."
"Maybe it is okay," Ranma echoes.
His breath pushes and pulls on the night air, and at the end of it all, he doesn't even care to spin out a more complex reply.
It's okay.
In a different place, at a different time, Nodoka Saotome is barely into her twenties when she makes the single worst decision of her entire life.
It's not marrying Genma; that turns out to be a mediocre decision at best, but it's still hardly the worst. It's not having a child before she's ready to care for one; that's a fairly bad decision, but it could have turned out okay and it was still far from the worst.
The worst decision of her life is letting Genma go on a training trip with her son, Ranma.
"Nodoka, listen to me…" Genma says, bringing out the not-entirely-suave charisma that charmed her to begin with. "Our son must become the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts."
"I know that," Nodoka says tearfully. "I knew this would happen when I married you, and when we had Ranma. But must you start this so soon?"
Genma grits his teeth. "Nodoka! You have raised Ranma well, but the time has come for me to train him properly. You have to put your maternal instinct aside, for the sake of Ranma's future."
And the sad thing is, it's almost easy to give Ranma to him. She's overwhelmed as a mother - she feels like she's drowning under it all. She wants to be a good mother, but she doesn't know how. The opportunity to abdicate responsibility and give it to someone who she trusts is too tempting, and she's not a paragon of virtue.
"If you truly love your son," Genma continues, "then you must allow me to train him as I see fit. Be patient, and I will show you that this is the right thing to do."
"Okay," Nodoka says, feeling as if she's wilting. And Genma beams.
"Nodoka!" he crows. "As proof of my dedication, I swear upon my honor: I will make Ranma the greatest martial artist of his generation, and he will return as a man among men! This I swear! And if I should fail, then we shall commit seppuku together!"
Nodoka only agrees because she doesn't think there's any chance of failure on his part, and because she doesn't put any stock in the vow. And being too-far-removed from the nature of martial arts training, she doesn't understand how far Genma plans to push her son until it's too late.
She watches Genma leave with Ranma slung over his shoulder, she watches Ranma reach a hand out to her and cry, she watches them disappear down the road, and it isn't until the next day when her anxieties reawaken in her breast. It isn't until the next day when she wonders if she's going to see them again, it isn't until the next day when she regrets her decision to let them go.
She gets post from them, occasionally. At first it's wordy and verbose, if rather… waffling and vague. But over time it trails off, becoming less and less frequent, and becomes more and more sparse. Detailed letters are replaced with barely-informative postcards.
The last letter she gets informs her that Genma and Ranma have departed for a place called Jusenkyo. And when she gets no more mail for months thereafter, she fears the worst.
She researches Jusenkyo in excruciating detail - she reads the rumors of ancient cursed springs that change all those who fall into them, and she almost wonders if Ranma and Genma have been cursed, trapped in alien bodies and suffering.
But the more likely conclusion is that something terrible - something completely normal, but terrible - has happened to them. She imagines their broken bodies in shallow graves, killed during their travels, and she cries.
She cries herself to sleep, night after night, and then she stops crying because she has no more tears to shed.
She just grieves.
-but then she hears that Genma is back in Furinkan, at the Tendo household, and hope bursts into flame within her chest for the first time in a long time. Hope that she can see her son again.
And so it goes.
