Here's the story as I've heard it, regarding the first story arc in Ranma's second season (which is referred to in the first season, when Akane remember Ranma saying, "Akane is my fiancee. You touch her, and I'll kill you."). First of all, in the comic, the martial arts figure skating appears *before* the Shampoo incidents, so it makes sense to have the reference. But from what I've heard, they were thinking about cancelling the show, so they skipped it and did the Shampoo episodes, hoping to garner more viewers, then tacked on the silly final "rememberance" episode to cap the story, in case it was cancelled. It wasn't, but it was sent to a very different animation house (I think--at least it was directed by different people) in hopes of making it more lively. And in some ways, it is. The cheaper production values allowed them to have continuous motion and stuff, but in the process lost it's thoughtfulness and visual creativity. The animation is often repetitious and downright crude at times (fast-moving kicks that are simply animated as the same series of blurred lines, bodies that warp too much as they spin, choppy walking, etc). Still, the first storyline is well told and animated, and for the most part, the stories are still pretty good. But by the end, they're all just a bunch of one-episode arcs that often have no connection to the ones before it, and the same sorts of things happen over and over, especially in regards to Akane and Ranma's relationship (this was also starting to become a problem in Rumiko Takahashi's comic--they would fight, make-up, and break-up again in the last page of a story arc). Finally, the dubbing quality goes downhill, especially in Hard Battle and Outta Control (I stopped watching them after the voice-actress (Sarah Strange?) of Boy-Type Ranma quit and was replaced). I don't know if the Japanese version did any better after the second season.
Review of Ranma ½
