Green Starfish

7/10

**Pros:** I was not expecting this movie to adapt the story's beginning again. It makes sense as it is trying to reach a new audience, although I honestly don't know how successful that would be. Since I don't think there are many people who watch dramas like this that would be willing to watch a 22-year-old anime, let alone read the manga. But that's beside the point for this review, how good is the movie itself? Well for one almost every part of this movie is adapted from the manga, they just kind of mashed together various arcs into one movie. You would think that this is a disaster waiting to happen, but honestly, it just kind of works. This is due to taking a lot of liberties with the source materials and making a lot of little changes that at first may seem confusing and baffling but end up working in the movie's favor. The biggest change the movie makes for the sake of its plot is that [spoiler]the spring of drowned man in Japan (the same one from that one manga arc) belongs to the Tendos.[/spoiler] This results in [spoiler]Ranma being engaged to Akane from the start instead of getting to choose because Akane was always going to inherit the dojo so that she can protect the spring. Doctor Tofu is also employed by the Tendos as the school nurse so he can keep an eye on it. (The spring is actually underneath the girl's locker room instead of just one of the urns like the story it's adapting.)[/spoiler] [spoiler]Inheriting and protecting the dojo[/spoiler] is made a more important part of Akane's character in this adaptation than in the original. Instead of the [spoiler]walk-in in the bath being the biggest source of Akane's disdain towards Ranma, it's that he insults the dojo. To symbolize this further, she carries a necklace from her mother which is revealed to be the key to the spring and was given to her for the express purpose of defending it. To protect the spring, she even offers to be taken hostage and be doused in the spring in place of Kasumi.[/spoiler] Since this is a full movie adaptation it can have an overarching message throughout the movie, which is [spoiler]that both genders are equal and that one isn't better than the other.[/spoiler] Even though it is quite basic, it does fit Ranma 1/2 surprisingly well, especially due to the way the movie portrays it. The movie [spoiler]starts with Ranma disliking his female form and being unwilling to use it even in a situation where it would benefit him (in this case sneaking into the girl's locker room). The idea that Ranma's female form is weaker than his male form is used by the villains as well. The secret that Hikaru tells Kuno is that Ranma turns into a girl. (He still manages to misunderstand it lmao.) The main villain Kamoyo Okamada is the only fully original character in the movie. He's a drag queen who plans to turn all women into men because he believes women are disgusting and men are just more beautiful. At the start of the final fight of the movie, he intentionally splashes Ranma with water so that he'll be easier to defeat. But Ranma disproves him by beating him even while a girl and accepts that both his forms are equal.[/spoiler] Due to taking place near the beginning of the story, the movie doesn't feature the full cast of characters. While it would've been interesting to see how they would've adapted Happosai, Cologne and Shampoo's and Mousse's cursed forms into a live-action medium, it does allow them to give some characters more screen time. This mostly applies to Dr. Tofu who we see use his martial arts skills in combat, which was only ever mentioned in the anime. I also liked the references to Happosai and the principal, because it shows that the movie knows its source material. One joke I particularly liked was when Genma gave a sob story to Akane about [spoiler]Ranma's mother passing away[/spoiler] so that she would feel closer to him, potentially pushing forward the engagement, but this story is completely false as we know. The reason I like it so much is that this is a joke they could've only made with the hindsight of the story being complete. **Neutral:** The movie also has a bunch of small changes, like making the characters even more exaggerated than they already were. Nabiki really likes Genma's panda form because she thinks she can make money off him somehow. Another recurring joke is that Kasumi takes forever to cook food and spends most of her time doing so. For some reason, Genma also spends a lot more time in his panda form than he probably should. He just enters some scenes while a panda with no explanation as to why that is. The amount of water required to trigger the change also seems much higher in this movie as in the first fight, Ranma and Genma don't change despite fighting within a fountain and in another scene, in the bath Ranma doesn't change until he is fully submerged. **Cons:** Despite most of the changes made by the movie enhancing it, there are a couple that baffles me. Kuno's introduction is probably the most downgraded one. [spoiler]He is fighting the school mob that wants to date Akane to prove himself to her. The problem is that his declaration is what caused the formation of the mob, to begin with. Him falling in love with the pig-tailed girl is what makes the least sense however. Instead of being defeated by her first and then falling in love with her. Ranma just kind of stands there and then Kuno just declares his love for his female form, only after which Ranma defeats Kuno. While the scene of Kuno being told Ranma's secret does further the message of the movie, it doesn't end up going anywhere. Kuno never exploits the weakness he found out about.[/spoiler] The movie also downplays Akane's abilities while improving everyone else's. Ranma, Genma and Kuno are all given special moves. The whole idea behind Anything Goes Martial Arts is that they don't specialize in any one technique but can learn techniques from other doctrines. Although this movie doesn't mention the name of the doctrine that Ranma and Genma follow, so I'll give it a pass. What I can't give a pass however is that Akane loses to Kuno and that Ranma has to save her. In the anime, Kuno goes easy on Akane because he loves her, but in this movie, Akane just looks weak. I'm guessing this is to support [spoiler]the fact that she manages to get kidnapped[/spoiler] later in the movie. This movie's plot is much better than what you would expect for this type of live-action action adaptation, but it cracks under pressure if you think about it too hard. And that's all because [spoiler]of one gag at the very end of the movie. When it is revealed that the spring of drowned man has been replaced by regular hot water, it's done through a scroll on the wall that unfurls. This joke works in the manga and anime because the cast was following some very old legends, that didn't reflect this new information. But in this version of the story, the Tendos control the spring, and Soun knows where it is located. If the spring had run out of its magical properties without him realizing it, that would be a fine enough explanation, but that doesn't work since the scroll was placed there by someone intentionally. You would think that crucial information such as the spring not working anymore would've been passed through generations. Soun even kept the spring a secret from his own daughters, because of its power and giving the necklace to Akane so she can protect it shows how important the spring is to the family. But when this major plot twist is revealed to him, something that should shake him to the core, it's played off as a joke.[/spoiler] Like what? One final point is that [spoiler]when Akane and Ranma are splashed with the supposed spring of drowned man, she gets emotional because she believes that the spring's effects are delayed and that she'll soon turn into a guy forever. This scene is played completely straight, but I couldn't take it seriously, because nowhere in the movie was it established that the spring's effects were delayed. Akane would have no reason to believe that this is the case either because she's seen that Genma's and Ranma's changes are instant without any delay.[/spoiler]