Ranma 1/2 hit the airwaves every Saturday night from 7:30 until 8:00pm starting on April 15, 1989, just two short years after the debut of the manga. The original series had difficulties winning its timeslot, as it was up against Super Sentai Series and Oboochama-kun. The show was cancelled after the eighteenth episode, which aired on September 16, 1989.

One month later, on October 20, 1989, Ranma 1/2 Nettohen began its run. The show was moved to Fridays at 5:30 which proved to be a much easier timeslot for the program. You can click here for an article discussing the various series directors and art directors involved in the production of the series.

Highest Rated Episode:
Ranma 1/2 18 - 16.1% audience share
Lowest Rated Episode:
Ranma 1/2 Nettohen 130 - 4.9% audience share

Japanese Top Ten
(taken from 1995 Music Calendar)
1. Ranma 1/2 Episode 1
2. Ranma 1/2 Episode 9
3. Ranma 1/2 Episode 15
4. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 88
5. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 103
6. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 105
7. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 110
8. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 113
9. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 123
10. Ranma 1/2 Nettohen Episode 143

1989
The Third Time's... Difficult

Who would have thought that a show like Ranma 1/2 with its pedigree of talent would have such troubled beginnings? Much of the cast and crew were veterns of Takahashi's previous anime adaptations, Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, which proved to be extremely popular with fans. Hidenori Taga was producing his third Takahashi anime only thirteen months after wrapping the final episode of Maison Ikkoku, and early on, much of the quality brought to the previous series was apparent in Ranma 1/2.

But, as mentioned before, Ranma 1/2 got off to a fairly difficult start, it was stuck in a tough timeslot that it was unable to win, and had to do some quick episode reshuffling when a series of high profile kidnappings occured when the unfortunately named "The Abduction of P-chan" was ready to go to air. This entire storyline wound up being pushed back by four months, and causing some continuity errors in the process. Eventually this run of bad luck culminated in the original series cancellation five months after its debut.

1989-1992
Starting Again

One month later, Ranma 1/2 got another shot, this time retitled Ranma 1/2 Nettohen the series was placed on a less competitive night in a much earlier timeslot, taking it out of the primetime battle it had failed to conquer. Though the show found success, the budget was obviously decreased, though many of the same staff remained on the show. All of these changes helped the show find success, though its quick adaptation, beginning only two years after the beginning of the manga, resulted in an inordinate amount of filler (compared with the Maison Ikkoku anime which began as the manga was nearly over, and the Inuyasha anime which debuted four years after its manga debut).

The show found an audience though, and lasted for three years, pumping out a grand total of 161 episodes between the two series.

1992-1996
Renaissance on Video

Following the end of the television series, Ranma 1/2 found new life in a successful series of OVAs, direct to video releases, that were of much higher quality than their weekly televised breathren. The OVA format was extremely popular in the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, and of all of the popular series created during this time, it is perhaps Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo that are most synonymous with the format in the United States. The OVA series adapted much of the later stories found in Ranma 1/2, and almost entirely focuses on material originally written by Rumiko Takahashi rather than stories written by the staff. Ranma 1/2 proved to be Takahashi's longest running series (at the time, Inuyasha would later outpace it by a large margin), and its length wound up out-pacing the final OVA by a few short months in 1996. Because of this, the ending of Ranma 1/2 was never animated. Since the end of the series, a number of factors have occured that make the continuation of the series less than likely, including the amount of time that has passed since the show's conclusion, the high cost of re-hiring the now all-star cast, and the death of Shigekazu Ochiai.

During a Ranma 1/2 marathon on Kids Station hosted by Kappei Yamaguchi and Noriko Hidaka, both actors expressed a desire to see the anime concluded.