らんま1/2 SP

I was very skeptical of this when I read the news. I was somewhat despaired when I saw the full casting on the program website. I kept putting off watching the actual thing.

Then I decided to plunge in yesterday while waiting for my curry to finish cooking.

All in all, the story itself is all right, since it's based on chapters of the original manga and tweaked to fit the drama settings.

But the biggest problem for live action shows based on manga or anime is always the casting, and that's exactly the issue with this one as well.

While the lead actress playing Akane is somewhat cute, her stature is too big and tall for the role. This is further accented by the skinny, albeit slightly taller, male Ranma and a much shorter female Ranma.

More importantly, the female Ranma is not cute at all! ぜんっぜん可愛くない！（ノ`Д´）ノ

In comparison, the mismatches of other characters are negligible, and the panda actually isn't as horrible as the photos on the program website. Since the show supposedly takes place from the beginning, it's acceptable that many regular characters don't appear.

I'm glad it's only a drama special, not an actual drama series. Although it did make me want to read the whole manga series again. XD

The next test of live action based on manga would be the Kenshin movie. We'll see.

On the subject of Kenshin, there's an announcement recently that the manga author of Kenshin will be drawing Kenshin again. I'm doubtful as to what the story would be about, but I'm more interested in the manga than the potentially image-crashing live action movie...