Here's some more idle chitchat...

1. I just got the subtitled AD Visions laserdisc of "Sol Bianca." Nominally
about five female space pirates in the far future, it seemed to me mainly
like a head-on collision between "Gall Force" and "Dirty Pair," with
perhaps a bit of "Bubblegum Crisis." The relevance here is that one of the
pirate's voices sounded awfully familiar. Every time she spoke, I heard
Nabiki. Checking later, I found out that Nabiki's Japanese voice, Minami
Takayama, was in fact listed in the "Sol Bianca" credits. Making that
determination was a minor triumph for me because the only listing I
had for Japanese voice credits for Ranma was the cast lists on the backs
of Japanese LD jackets, which are of course in Japanese (though often
the heading, "CAST," is in English and in Romaji). Minami Takayama's
name was given as takayamaminami with "Takayama" in two kanji characters
and "Minami" in three hiragana characters.. Yeah, I know: this is all
old stuf' for some of you, but hey, I'm new to this. I'm learning!

2. Japanese name order is family name first, given name second, as in
Takahashi Rumiko. Some Americans, trying to be faithful to the established
convention, follow that pattern when mentioning Japanese names. The
Japanese themselves, however, when putting Romaji versions of Japanese
names in cast listings or just to decorate a package with English words
and names, often print names in Western order (as on the 1995 Ranma
Calendar, with "Ranma Saotome" and "Akane Tendo" printed in just that
order). It's kind of touching, with the two sides each trying to
fumblingly do it the other's way. It was also kind of interesting to
compare the Japanese original and the Viz dub of Ranma OAV #5, "The One
to Carry On: Part I," where the two orphan girls pronounce their father's
name, with one girl saying "Soun" and the other "Tendo." In Japanese,
it was "Tendo." "Soun."  In English, it was "Soun." "Tendo." The name
each girl spoke had to be changed from one to the other. Toshi lucked
out in that mouth movements for "Soun" and "Tendo" take about as long
for each. He might have had a problem if the name had been the Japanese
equivalent of "Ed." "Unpronounceadopulous." Well, maybe that's what
Wordfit is for...

3. You can get copies of various Ranma OP and ED themes on CDs, of course,
but often the CD versions are longer and more elaborated. Sometimes the
shorter versions are actually better (in my opinion). The Christmas song
used as the ED theme on the Shinnosuke OAV is short and sweet; the longer
version on the Doco Second CD has an additional solo verse by Shampoo
that seemed to me to detract from it. The Movie #3 and OAV Themes CD has
a longer version of the Ballad of Ranma and Akane song used as the ED
number on the OAVs, with a bit of humor at the end: Akane and Ranma start
calling each other's names, and get louder and more frantic as the music
crescendos until they're screaming: "RANMA!" "AKANE" That's funny the 
first time through, but about the fourth or fifth time you hear it, the
joke's over and you'd just rather have something pleasant to listen to.

--Dwight Decker