Who made the 1989 Ranma 1/2 anime?
Credit where it is due starts with a separation. Rumiko Takahashi wrote and drew the Ranma 1/2 manga alone; she did not direct, design or write the anime. The 1989 television adaptation was produced by Kitty Films for Fuji TV and animated by Studio Deen, and its look and pacing are the work of its staff, a distinction collectors should keep when judging either version.
The series had two broadcast lives. Ranma 1/2 premiered in April 1989 in a Saturday evening slot and was cancelled after 18 episodes amid low ratings and sponsor trouble at Kitty. It relaunched months later as Ranma 1/2 Nettohen in a late night slot, where it ran successfully until September 1992, reaching 143 Nettohen episodes and 161 episodes in total.
Direction passed through notable hands. Tsutomu Shibayama, a veteran of Doraemon, set the first series' tone; Koji Sawai and then Junji Nishimura guided Nettohen, with Nishimura's long tenure giving the show its stable later style. Character designer Atsuko Nakajima translated Takahashi's drawings into animation models, softening line weight and standardizing the cast for weekly production; her versions of the characters are the ones on most period merchandise.
Music was a staff strength. Composers Kenji Kawai in the early period and Hideharu Mori and Akihisa Matsuura later gave the show its Chinese flavored score, and the rotating opening and ending songs by acts including CoCo and Etsuko Nishio became chart singles in Japan.
Understanding the staff explains the adaptation's character: its filler episodes, its gentler pacing and its decision to end before the manga did were production realities of Kitty and Deen, not Takahashi choices. The manga and the anime are two works with one cast, and this page credits each to its makers.
