Ranma ½ (2025) – 05
In this cast full of whack-a-doodles, I must say Tatewaki is not my absolute favorite. He’s fine, but I prefer Ryouga by a long shot. It’s funny but after five episodes we’ve actually heard more of Yamadera’s Ichirou than Ryouga – and I think probably P-chan too. I mean at this point the de facto main trio is the obvious pair, plus Shampoo. She’s almost on level pegging with them now, and it’s the three of them who get most of the payoffs this week. And most of them at Tatewaki’s expense.
If you go by the photos on his wall (yeah, nothing icky about that) you’d have to say Akane is clearly still the Kuno pick. But I suppose he hasn’t had as much time to stalk Ranma-chan yet. That bit where he ripped his (slightly crushed) bouquet of roses in half was pretty funny. Most of the headline moments here come in the “delivery girl race“, which is every bit as monumentally silly and pointless as everything else in this series but gives us an excuse to listen to Ichirou for 15 minutes and watch the big three beat the hell out of each other (well, mostly two of them).
I get why Shampoo seemed to always win those character polls back in the day (though Ranma seems to have won a few with the reboot). She’s a hoot, no question about it, and Sakuma Rei’s performance is and always was iconic And Akane kind of has to play the straight man role a lot. Shampoo and Ranma-chan just get most of the laughs here, and this series is a comedy first. As to who was going to win the race, it almost had to be Ranma because neither Shampoo or Akane could be seen to get the upper hand on each other. We still have like 100 episodes to go, after all.
Spy X Family Season 3 – 05
Another pretty good ep of SpyFam this week. We’re not in masterpiece territory or anything but the series does seem to be avoiding its worst tendencies more often than not, so thank Heaven for small favors. This was a somewhat unusual episode in that Spy X Family tends to gravitate towards one pole or another – deadly serious or extremely silly. This week was substantial while still relatively low-key, a zone SxF doesn’t land in too often.
The MacGuffin of the week is Melinda Desmond, and of course with that name she has to be the mother of Damian and wife of Donovan. Ever-17 Inoue Kikuko brings the proper gravity to Melinda, who initially comes across as surprisingly affable but has an undercurrent of something dark to her. This means we’ve met everyone of note in the Desmond family except (mostly) elder brother Demetrius. Given her position Melinda is obviously a vital figure in the story, but we still know very little (even Loid) about the interactions of the family behind the scenes. On the surface Melinda’s seemingly warm personality belies a woman who apparently has no relationship with her six year-old son.
The other aspect of this development is that Loid is naturally suspicious of everyone’s motives – in his business he has to assume someone is betraying him. He’s probably wrong here – we know Yor isn’t up to anything and Melinda’s surprise at her identity seemed genuine. And then there’s Anya, who sees the birth of a potential “Plan C” as a threat to her value to Loid. Endou sometimes introduces threads that seemingly go nowhere, but even if we don’t hear more from this one for awhile one suspects Melinda is destined to be a pretty significant addition.
The post Weekly Digest 11/03/25 – Ranma ½ (2025), Spy X Family Season 3 appeared first on Lost in Anime.
