Genma’s
Daughter
Deborah Goldsmith
OTHER STUFF BY GOLDSMITH: Equal Halves, Notes from Julliard
Overall: 7.5
Plot: 8
Grammar/Punctuation: 10
In a Nutshell: Ranma was always a girl?!
Critique: This is an interesting epic tale about a girl named Ranko Saotome. Yes, Ranko. No, not Ranma. There are some big problems with this story, namely with Ranko’s extreme almost blinding ‘femininity’, but the good parts of the tale more than make up for the bad.
Sum and Substance: What a concept. Ranma, man amongst men, a girl this entire time? Impossible.
Not according to Nodoka Saotome, who insists she gave birth to a baby girl. And she has the birth certificate and home video to prove it.
Thus begins Genma’s Daughter, a story that attempts to explain Ranma’s preoccupation with macho-ness, his relationship with Akane and Ryoga, his discomfort around women, and his father’s blinding stupidity using one premise. The strange part is that it succeeds. Goldsmith’s tale sweeps all of these problems in a neat little pile that leads to one thing. Ranma was not born a boy, and s(he) spent the first four years of life as a girl. That’s why she can’t stand it when girls hang on her, that’s the crux of her problems with Akane (who vaguely remembers her as a girl!) and that’s why Ryoga keeps on getting angry at her for ‘acting like a girl’.
It even explains the curse, in a convoluted (but believable) fashion.
So where does Genma’s Daughter fail? Well, for one, it takes itself too seriously, and perhaps that’s the best way to explain a great number of the difficulties I had with the tale. Ranko understandably spends the first month or two crying her eyes out (once she remembers how), but then goes on to spend the rest of the year in tears too. She drops martial arts, takes up the violin, starts enjoying to shop, goes out with Ryoga, gossips, gets a job babysitting...
In short, she becomes just like every other girl most readers have ever known, but worse, since she used to be more. Not more as in ‘a boy’. More as in more. Ranma loses that which makes her special in becoming ‘Ranko’. What’s more, she realizes she’s losing it, and despairs for awhile before becoming happy with her girlhood which is sadly quite less than her manhood. A Ranma who bursts into tears daily, doesn’t get into fights, doesn’t have any fiancées, and has the entire student body hanging on her every word is somewhat less interesting than the Ranma we all know and love. The worst part is the implication that becoming a girl causes this change from interesting to uninteresting.
In short, what Ranma does is become Reelena Peacecraft, but less ballsy, if that means anything to my readers.
There’s still a lot to say for the story. One thing is the extremely human portrayal of Genma Saotome, who searched for years to find a way to make Ranma into his little girl again, and was willing to get cursed to do so. The new relationship Ranko develops with Kasumi and Nabiki is also very nice. There are also some fun one-liners and some fabulous scenes in this story.
The single best part is the fact that Ranma plays the violin. I know I undermined it up there, but Goldsmith seriously handles this well. Ranko is a natural (thank heavens something about her is not ‘normal’) and everyone is spellbound by her playing. It was the best aspect of the story by a mile.
The worst aspect by far is Goldsmith’s idea of being a woman. As a woman who watches Japanese animation, I must often sit back as the characters, both male and female, deride women, calling them names or implying that women are less than men. I’m in love with other aspects of anime, so I ride these parts out and wait for the good bits. That’s much how I felt reading Genma’s Daughter. At times, Goldsmith gets it right—the scene with Nabiki and the posters pops to mind. And at other times she gets it so horribly wrong that one wonders how a female could actually write that particular scene. Most of the things that Ranko does that the author considers ‘female’... are enough to make a sensible girl shudder, find some comfy sweatpants and not brush her hair for a week. I mean, honestly. What sort of girl is really that girly? Plus it seems like Ranko’s eternal quest is to blend in; she joins the endless ranks of superheroes demanding to know why they can’t just live normally.
The mix of positive and negative images of girlhood left the negative images on top, giving the positive ones a feel of something that is repeated often, and yet never believed or quite understood.
Something I never believed is the wonderful reaction of Akane and every other girl Ranko knows. Not a single girl goes against Ranko, ‘cause she’s one too. I found that patentedly ridiculous. I myself have not gotten along with every girl I ever knew simply because I, myself, was also a girl.
This is not my final word on this. Please see ‘Equal Halves’.
Back to the Reviews
Back to the Garden
