Ranma and Me (The Life and Times of Ranma's cousin, Ito Takahashi) as told to Uncle Fester Part 3 - Furinkan, The No-So-Early Years [Furinkan, all hail to thee. We strive to win oh mightily. Down the years we're proud to say. Pineapple Slugs we'll always stay. (From the Furinkan School Song)] [Excerpts from the taped interview.] Uncle Fester: Now, what about this 'panda' you claimed to have seen? Ito: Hey! *I* thought it was a real panda. Two meters tall and fat as my Uncle Genma. UF: And when did you realize it *was* your Uncle Genma? Ito: After I followed him home... or should I say, the Tendo's home. UF: Is that when you discovered Ranma's little 'problem' as well? Ito: Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, you bet. [Looks wistfully towards the ceiling.] UF: I detect something else in your answer. Ito: Huh? Oh... well... It's just... you never really get over finding out things like that about a relative. I mean, my macho male cousin dressing like a girl... gives me the creeps. UF: How so? Ito: I'll tell you this, when I found out he was into wearing women's clothes... You know the worst part? He looked *damn* good in those things. He actually could have been a girl. I mean, WOW! UF: So he liked women's clothing. Ito: Actually, it all started up in Sapporo when Aunt Nodoka almost caught them both. They had just returned from China - some kind of 'training' trip, I suppose. Uncle Genma hustled Ranma into a costume shop to escape his wife. He figured Nodoka wouldn't expect to find a *girl* Ranma so he stuffed a red wig on his son's head, packed his shirt with fake 'gabonzas', and told him to talk in a girlish voice. The only costume that fit fat Uncle Genma was a panda costume. UF: So that's how the 'transformation' rumor got started. Ito: Yup, all phoney. ****************** Now I know you all are aware of the stories about Ranma Saotome and everyone surrounding him. Aunt Rumiko's a really good writer and all. But are you aware of just where those stories came from? I all started back in high school when I was an upperclassman. Mom hauled me over to visit Aunt Rumiko. She said it was the proper thing to do because Aunt Rumiko was fast becoming a big success and it wouldn't hurt for us to get a little *closer* to her... if you know what I mean. Anyway, we're all sitting around in Aunt Rumiko's living room, just sipping tea and making small talk. She had just finished her 'wet dream' series about a fur-bikini clad female alien who came to earth and only had eyes for some lecherous high school kid (She claims Ataru was based on me, but I'm not so sure...). Anyway, it was a big success (being made into TV and movies and stuff) and she was mid-way through her second series about her days living in a boarding house. By the way, we all thought Godi was really Aunt Rumiko but she kept insisting it wasn't. Still, the look in her eyes when she denied it was enough to tell me there was more going on here than she was letting on. Anyhow, she was talking like she was really scared because she had run out of ideas for the kind of pseudo-sexual comedy she was so good at and would have to resort to doing those icky horror things she banged out back when she needed help paying the bills. She claimed she was looking for some wacky love story that had just enough Japanese stuff to hook the older readers. I couldn't help myself. I knew of just the right 'love' story for Aunt Rumiko. I blurted out: "Why don't you do a series on wacky cousin Ranma. He dresses like a girl and has the hots for the high school S&M queen." That earned me a wack on the head from mom and a sharp jab in the ribs from Grandma. (And let me tell you, the old bat can still harpoon with the best - left a bruise that lasted a week.) Ranma's little 'problem' wasn't supposed to be public knowledge and it wasn't fair for me to characterize the ultra-violent Akane Tendo that way. The girl couldn't help how she turned out, after all, she didn't have a mother growing up. Mom wacked me again just to emphasize what she meant. Aunt Rumiko just got one of those far-away looks she usually got whenever a good idea struck her. I'm yelling at mom. Mom's smacking me around the head and saying how 'disrespectful' I was while Grandma Emiko kept bayonetting me with her bony elbows. All this, while Aunt Rumiko slipped into that little world of hers where Hiroshima could reoccur and she wouldn't notice. I didn't know it at the time but *I* was the reason for the 'Ranma 1/2' series. Anyway, back at school, Ranma and Akane were in the process of trashing what was left of my alma mater. I mean, you've never seen two people fight as much as they did. Nothing was safe. Walls disappeared, sidewalks vanished, and people just ceased to exist. Teachers were the most vulnerable. Four of them bought it in Ranma's second year. Most due to getting caught between Ranma and whomever he was fighting at the time, usually Akane. I mean, the kid just didn't know when to stop The teacher's union demanded 'hazard' pay for anyone teaching at Furinkan. As you would expect, Ranma was the king of the Martial Arts Martial Arts club. Cocky little creep, too. Never able to turn down a challenge - of any kind. We had some fun sitting around thinking up the goofiest challenges for those two. It wasn't hard either. All you had to do was tell Ranma: "You know, I bet Akane can change a tire better than you can." and the challenge was accepted. Of course, we had to duplicate the challenge to Akane in order to get them in the proper fighting mood. Anyway, we invented: Martial Arts Tire Changing, Martial Arts Jellyfish Catching, Martial Arts Copier Repair, Martial Arts Traffic Control (tied up traffic in downtown Nerima for six hours with that one)... My favorite was the Martial Arts CPR challenge - put five people in the hospital before it was done. (Don't worry, they were all first year students who nobody would miss.) Old 'Speedie' Seki probably won the 'Goofy Ranma Challenge Contest' with his Martial Arts Makeout challenge. Fourteen girls wound up pregnant before Ranma was declared the winner. (No, Akane was *not* one - nobody could or wanted to get close enough.) Anyway, it was a fun way to waste my last year of high school. That brings me to graduation. The dirty little secret is that neither Ranma nor Akane graduated from Furinkan. It seems they racked up so much in repair costs that their parents were unable to pay. So, their transcripts are being held until they figure out how to pay their debts. From what I understand, they *still* haven't repaid the school district. For the rest of us (those of us with IQ's above room temperature), graduation was a real party. We'd all passed our college entrance exams and got accepted to various colleges around Japan. (Except for Speedie Seki who got a scholarship to some girls college near Joketsuzoku in China. His letters stopped coming about a month after he left. Hope he's all right.) One day that spring, Aunt Rumiko asked me down to her studio and we hashed together a pretty good story about my cousin Ranma. Much of the series was true - sort of; Ranma, his 'problem', his pop, and living with the Tendo's. What we couldn't find out for sure, we just made up - including the characters. Take for instance, Mrs. Tendo. Aunt Rumiko wrote that she had died when the girls were young. Truth was that she left Soun because she couldn't take his constant blubbering all the time. Actually, she might have left because her eldest daughter, Kasumi, was totally out of control and constantly getting into trouble. I mean, Kasumi had three abortions before she got out of high school! (That's how she met Dr. Toufu, by the way.) She smoked and hung out with the wrong crowd, staying out all hours of the night. And, well, you know about the other two daughters. Neither one would have made a parent proud. Nabiki was a yakuza wannabe with homosexual tendencies and Akane was the school bully who was always on the look-out for a 'sugar daddy'. Frankly, I think Mrs. Tendo just couldn't handle it. To this day, none of the girls are what you'd call successes. Nabiki finally made her 'big' mark in business. She's night manager at the local McDonalds. Still single and a smart ass, too (which kinda explains the single part). Although it's rumored that Sayuri recently moved in with her, (not that I'm spreading rumors or anything, you understand) and the two have been seen walking hand in hand. But, heck, that's common enough here in Japan (for 10 year olds, that is ). There really was a kid named Ryouga. He didn't really turn into a pig - he just ate like one. The kid had table manners that could clear a restaurant in 30 seconds. I mean, he caused people to put drop cloths over everything in the room just by showing up. However, he *did* have a terrible sense of direction. That part was true. He could get lost putting on his pants. People were always sending him on errands and taking bets as to when he would eventually call for help in getting back. I think the poor kid was dyslexic or something. Maybe he just couldn't read the signs. I understand he never went to school much. We just invented the bit about his long travels and hatred for Ranma. Actually, he never really even knew my cousin. Shampoo was made up after we found out about Uncle Genma's little Chinese piece-of-tail he kept stashed away in an apartment over some cheap Chinese restaurant. It seems she followed him back from China and had the hots for old, fat, bald men. I don't remember her real name, just that it wasn't Shampoo or anything close to that. She *did* live with her grandmother but she was a bedridden old crone who pretended not to notice when Uncle Genma and the girl were 'busy' in the next room. I kinda felt sorry for the girl. I mean, she *was* attractive, in a kittenish sort of way. Kind of a tragic tale, no? Ukyou is real. She's actually not a cook but a waitress at a Pizza Shop over in Chiba. I met her once while dating Kasumi (yeah, me and Kasumi had a thing going whenever Yuka slipped back into her old ways. But that's another story.) Ukyou isn't a bad kid, she just doesn't know where the boundaries are between reality and that little world she lives in. Mom says she spends too much time watching Anime and reading manga. Anyway, she talked funny and kept saying outrageous things about 'Ranma did this... and Ranma did that...' and 'how much in love she are Ranma are' even when she clearly never met the kid. When I told Aunt Rumiko some of the funny things Ukyou had said, she became a character in the series. Tatewaki and Kodaci were real brother and sister. However, they were a different as night and day. Tatewaki was the oldest upperclassman in the world. Being the typical jock, he thought he didn't have to study. The result was he spent 8 years trying to graduate from Furinkan. All the while, he was hoping for the newly formed 'Professional Kendo League' to succeed so he could skip right to the pros. (It failed in its second year.) She, on the other hand, was one of those four digit IQ kids hanging out on the first floor. I think she went on to work for Dow Chemical or something. You do know she invented Krazy Glue, don't you? The skating couple, Mikado and Azusa, were real skaters. I didn't know them personally, they were Aunt Rumiko's doing. I think they were based on a Japanese skating pair that went to the Olympics once and embarrassed everyone with their poor showing. Supposedly Aunt Rumiko had some money riding on their Olympic finish and lost it all. To get even, she wrote the pair into the 'Ranma 1/2' story as a couple of goofs. Oh yeah, Aunt Rumiko wrote herself into the series, but I'm not telling which character. Pretty funny, now that I know who she was supposed to be. By the way, Ranma still has his little 'problem'. He's just getting better about hiding it. I understand since Ranma and Akane are still the same size, they tend to swap clothes in the privacy of their apartment. The really funny part is how she likes wearing 'his' clothes. Like I said, interesting couple. Oh, in case I didn't mention it, they really did get married (about 10 years after high school) but still don't have any kids. Good thing too, considering the nightmare of a gene pool they'd have to dip into. Ranma works for some advertising agency in Osaka - running errands and cleaning up the place and Akane works as a greeter at a large department store. I can just hear it now: "Welcome to our store." Neither does much with their martial arts except the occasional Martial Arts Dinner challenge or fighting over who's turn it is to take out the trash. Aunt Nodoka? Well, she finally caught up with Uncle Genma over at the Chinese girl's place. I don't know all the details but I've noticed that Uncle Genma seems a lot calmer now (walks funny too). ********** Author's notes: I wrote this series over a six month period while interviewing Ito Takahashi, originally for a story that eventually got spiked by Newsweek. Anyway, Ito proved to be every bit the charming personality I was led to believe him to be. I've tried to check his sources but found most unwilling to talk on the record. Off the record, most of the people I talked to claim Ito is a lying, deceptive, toady little worm, who'd sell out his own grandmother to get his name in print. This tends to cast some slight doubt on his reliability. I met with Ranma Saotome and his wife Akane in their middle-class apartment in Nerima. Ranma certainly wasn't what I expected. He proved to be bright, articulate, and well read. He also proved to be quite calm. Akane also proved to be a perfect hostess, a most traditional Japanese wife. They had no children and I didn't ask the reason why. Neither could think of a reason why Ranma's cousin would say all those nasty things about him and Akane. ********** Editor's notes: Uncle Fester wrote this series over a six month period while interviewing Ito Takahashi, he claimed, for a story for Newsweek. We cannot confirm that the interviews took place or even if Ito Takahashi really exists. After milking my publishing company for several trips to Japan, these three flimsy chapters are all we got for our money. I've tried to check his sources but found most unwilling to talk on the record. Off the record, most of the people I talked to claim Uncle Fester is a lying, deceptive, toady little worm, who'd sell out his own grandmother to get his name in print. This tends to cast some slight doubt on his reliability. We are, however, kinda curious as to just what he did with all that 'advance' money we gave him.....