It is still endlessly amusing to me that the "harem" manga that Western women love to complain about being sexist or terrible was straight up created by a woman who became basically one of the top 5 most popular creators in Japan.
To this day every single harem archetype can find its roots in Ranma, for better or worse.
Eh, I enjoyed most of her stuff but I won't go so far as to call her characters "deep."
Most of her bigger stuff works because the characters are serviceable for the role they need to be, and never really develop beyond that. You already know 90% of their development and arc within their intro and a single story beyond it.
Not that that is an inherently bad thing, she has made it work incredibly for her and her biggest series are great for "oh that's on" watching forever, similar to Family Guy in the West. I just take umbrage with that descriptor.
not all of them of course, but main characters especially are often given time to develop and grow. over the course of a given series. maison ikkoku is a great example of this.
I'm going to still disagree, if only because the "time taken" is often so long that its basically nonexistant. The characters will be completely static in what is basically endless filler until suddenly they do something slightly different and then that is the new status quo for more endless filler (that often won't acknowledge the change either). And then it ends with the exact place you predict it will from the first few chapters.
Again, I like her work. Ranma was one of my OG series and I still go back to it. But almost every series could be 3-5 volumes long and lose nothing but extra side characters, but they get stretched forever with every character mostly being a handful of traits instead of anything comprehensive.
Slice of Life/harem/romance nonsense is my guilty pleasure of manga, so I've read far too many so I am comparing it a lot to what came after her and how much better it can be done. She set the foundation for all of it, and that can't be denied, but its popular due to how simple it is.
It is still endlessly amusing to me that the "harem" manga that Western women love to complain about being sexist or terrible was straight up created by a woman who became basically one of the top 5 most popular creators in Japan.
To this day every single harem archetype can find its roots in Ranma, for better or worse.
well, that, and the woman's work was genuinely good. she's brilliant at writing memorable, even deep characters, even in her more comical works.
Eh, I enjoyed most of her stuff but I won't go so far as to call her characters "deep."
Most of her bigger stuff works because the characters are serviceable for the role they need to be, and never really develop beyond that. You already know 90% of their development and arc within their intro and a single story beyond it.
Not that that is an inherently bad thing, she has made it work incredibly for her and her biggest series are great for "oh that's on" watching forever, similar to Family Guy in the West. I just take umbrage with that descriptor.
not all of them of course, but main characters especially are often given time to develop and grow. over the course of a given series. maison ikkoku is a great example of this.
I'm going to still disagree, if only because the "time taken" is often so long that its basically nonexistant. The characters will be completely static in what is basically endless filler until suddenly they do something slightly different and then that is the new status quo for more endless filler (that often won't acknowledge the change either). And then it ends with the exact place you predict it will from the first few chapters.
Again, I like her work. Ranma was one of my OG series and I still go back to it. But almost every series could be 3-5 volumes long and lose nothing but extra side characters, but they get stretched forever with every character mostly being a handful of traits instead of anything comprehensive.
Slice of Life/harem/romance nonsense is my guilty pleasure of manga, so I've read far too many so I am comparing it a lot to what came after her and how much better it can be done. She set the foundation for all of it, and that can't be denied, but its popular due to how simple it is.