Ranma 1/3: Notes from the Closet

Tiny liner notes by Peter

Ranma 1/3: Notes from the Closet was our attempt at trying the other side of the "good taste" spectrum, and was also our first "good enough* production," in which we strove for, ah, randomness and knee-jerk humor rather than quality and consistency of scriptwriting.

This was our first "good enough" production, if memory serves

It was some months after Robotech III: Not Necessarily the Sentinels, and we were pining for something to dub. We'd long wanted to dub Ranma, and after a trip to Asahi Video, the local Japanese video store in San Diego, we finally got some footage to work with. Thinking way, way back, there was a time when we liked Ranma, back when it was "edge." But Ranma 1/2 was the first show to attain massive popularity among then-mainstream anime fans, and this somehow annoyed our "indie" sensibilities, causing us to turn on the show. The result is one of our "lowest" productions ever.

Can Ranma overcome his gay tendencies and confess his love to Akane? Or will Genma and Soun get it on?

I think, in retrospect, that R1/3:NFTC was good, but cheesy. We all were, at the time, not quite dekiagatteiru as they say in Japan -- in short, we were not wholly adult, still very immature. Our white, middle-class penchant for making jokes out of drugs, homosexuality and Carl Macek was quite funny in 1990, when the words "political correctness" weren't even coined yet (no, really). Now, thinking back, it's kind of silly -- Carl Macek, for example, is an old man now, and no longer worthy of the mocking of anime fans, even level 10 anime fans like us. Alas. As you can tell from the soundtrack, we were into Rocky Horror at the time, and some of that film colored this production, especially the gay stuff.

Nothing beats a cup of Columbian after a line of Columbian

As in Robotech III, you can see the Twin Peaks air dripping off this production, in our choice of music, vocals, and dramatic motifs we chose. In 1999, at this writing, this seems silly beyond words, but when Peaks was on the air it was glorious. We would -- really! -- buy doughnuts and line them up in front of the TV as we watched the new episode, then get sick of eating doughnuts later. Twin Peaks ushered in the 1990s for us, so we tried to do it honor through our work.

These battle scenes were almost too easy to mock

Despite the low-brow humor and problems with the story, I refuse to hate this production. It was the first successful blending of pornographic anime and parody dubbing, and the last, as far as I know. We mocked Ranma and Ranma fans, by making them think we were doing a tribute to their favorite show. It was fun, had lots of base, gross humor, and was deep enough to excite the intellects of the Seishun Shitemasu members for a time. In short, it "could live."

Will Ryoga get the girl in the end? Or will Ranma find a way to turn it around

* The name comes from a practice begun during Robotech III, where lines that were starting to stray in performance or timing were considered "good enough." After the first try at dubbing R3 fell apart, we recognized that "good enough" line readings would irk us forevermore if allowed into the final product. Conversely, with Ranma meant to be rude and crude, we opted to make "good enough" the level of the bar. And so "good enough" tags are generally used on our comittee-scripted gag shows.