Ranma ½: The Manga Gallery
All 38 covers across three Japanese programs. Pictured: volume 1, the most reproduced Takahashi cover of the 1990s.
The original program is 38 tankobon under the Shonen Sunday Comics imprint, 1988 to 1996. Volume 1’s cover, girl-type Ranma in yellow, Genma in panda form beneath her, became the series’ visual signature worldwide. Shogakukan has kept the books in print through two further full editions since.
THE FIRST VOLUME
Shogakukan · 1988
Volume 1 · Shogakukan · 1988
The first tankobon of 38. Girl-type Ranma rides the panda Genma: the curse, the comedy and the sales pitch of the entire series in a single image.
THE JAPANESE PROGRAMS
Three complete sets of coversTankobon · 38 Volumes · 1988–96
The original Shonen Sunday Comics run, tracking the serialization from August 1987 to March 1996.
Shinsoban · 38 Volumes · 2002–03
The reassembled edition of April 2002 to October 2003: same count, new presentation, the basis of the modern Japanese text.
Sunday Special · 20 Volumes · 2016–18
The Shonen Sunday Special edition compressed the series into twenty volumes and added The Making of Ranma, a series of interviews with Takahashi: an edition that is also a source.
THE ENGLISH SHAPE
A counting trap, documentedThirty-Six, Not Thirty-Eight
Viz’s flipped graphic novels span 36 volumes, not 38: the content is the same series regrouped, with minor differences in how chapters are bundled. A shelf count of 36 is not a gap.
Nineteen, Restored
The 2014–17 2-in-1 edition pairs the 38 volumes into 19 books and restores the original right-to-left art.