Jusendo Arc

The  is the 115th and last (and longest) story arc of the Ranma ½ manga, spanning nineteen chapters. It was included as part of Volumes 36 and 37 of the  and volumes 35 and 36of the Viz Media tankōbon.

Plot Summary
When the bird people (see Characters Introduced, below) from Mount Phoenix, near Jusenkyo in China, attack the Jusenkyo guide is search of the map to Jusendo, the source of the Jusenkyo springs, his daughter, Plum, seeks out Ranma for help. Shampoo, on her way home, is attacked by the bird people and captured in a magic egg; when it hatches, she imprints on the bird people's commander, Captain Klima, and becomes her servant. She steals the map and delivers it to Klima.

All the remaining Jusenkyo-cursed (Ranma, Genma, Ryoga, and Mousse) return with Plum to Jusenkyo, both to rescue Shampoo and to protect the hotsprings at Jusenkyo (their only hope for lifting their curses). At a nearby hotpsring, they meet a young boy who they do not yet know is Lord Saffron, the prince of Mount Phoenix. Saffron challenges them for daring to use his hotspring without his consent. Ranma defeats him, and Saffron leads them all back to Mount Phoenix, where he double-crosses them and drops them into a trap, though in the process, Ranma manages to take from him his magic weapon, the Kinjakan.

The gang escape and challenge Klima and Saffron, and they manage to retrieve the map before Saffron drops them through another trap. As they fall, he challenges them to use the map and meet him at the source of Jusenkyo if they want Shampoo back. Meanwhile, Ranma has dropped the photo of Akane that he brought with him. Klima recognizes the photo; she goes to Japan, kidnaps Akane, and takes her to Jusenkyo. Once there, while running away from Klima, Akane falls into a freshly dug hotspring, and being unable to swim, half-drowns before she is rescued to be used as a hostage, creating in the process a Spring of Drowned Akane.

Klima uses the new spring to take Akane's form and pretends to be passed out on the road near Jusenkyo, where Ranma and company find her. She attempts to seduce Ranma as a ruse, and although they are interrupted, she successfully manages to reclaim the Kinjakan and the map to Jusendo. When the gang finally arrives at Jusenkyo, they find that the hotsprings have already been drained and they cannot use them to lift their curses.

Without the map, Plum leads them as well as she can to Jusendo, where the find Shampoo guarding the entrance. She throws cold water on everyone, quickly removing Ryoga and Mousse from the fight. She then manages to capture Genma in one of the magic eggs, and when he hatches, he imprints on her and follows her orders. Outnumbered, Ranma escapes with P-Chan [Ryoga], Mu Mu [Mousse], and Plum through a secret passage. Meanwhile Akane escapes from her prison cell, where Ranma and company find her running from Karuma and Masara (Klima's underlings). Ranma catches her as she falls down a giant well and tosses her to safety in a nearby tunnel but misses the tunnel himself and falls down the well.

[End of first volume]

In the tunnel, Akane meets the Jusenkyo Guide, who is trying to restore the flow of water to Jusenkyo. Meanwhile, Saffron takes the Kinjakan to the source of all water in Jusenkyo, a giant fountain with two heads carved in the images of a phoenix and a dragon. The Kinjakan is the tool that controls the Phoenix fountain head, and Saffron uses it to begin the ritual that will cause him to be reborn as the mature ruler of Mount Phoenix. Akane tries to shut off the water and interrupt the process, but get flash-dried into a tiny doll - still alive, but on borrowed time.

After regrouping at the Guide's home and forming a plan to save Akane, the company returns to the fountain chamber. Together, Ryoga and Ranma break the Dragon fountain head and Ranma takes the Gekkaja, the complementary partner weapon/key of the Kinjakan, which he then uses to destroy the Phoenix fountain head. The head falls on Saffron's egg-cocoon and Ranma is blown away and knocked out by the resulting explosion.

Ranma awakes a prisoner guarded by Shampoo, who also has Akane (still a doll). She offers to use the mystic water from the spring to restore Akane if Ranma will willingly be captured in one of the magic eggs and become her slave. Ranma's friend arrive and they manage to turn the tables, capturing Shampoo in the egg again, but spilling the water in the process. When her egg hatches, Mousse shows her a mirror so that she will become her own mistress.

Meanwhile, Saffron emerges early from the broken cocoon, mature but not fully transformed, and lacking the ability to control the power he has gained. As Akane's time is quickly running out, Saffron blocks Ranma from the water he needs to save her, and they engage in a final battle, with Ranma wielding the Gekkaja to counter Saffron's power. Ranma discovers that the Kinjakan and the Gekkaja are opposites, weapons of heat and cold, and uses them together to power up his whirlwind attack, giving Ranma the upper hand in the battle. With Akane's doll-body cancelling out various effects of heat and cold that Saffron tries to use against Ranma in the battle, Ranma manages to defeat Saffron, who goes back into an egg and returns to his childhood form to begin the cycle again.

Ranma gets Akane back into the water just in time to save her. But, thinking he has failed because of her slow revival, he confesses his love for her as he thinks she is dying. In the aftermath of the battle, Jusenkyo is flooded and all the springs mix together, so that they cannot be used to lift the various curses, and the gang goes home, Ranma remarking that at some point during the struggle to rescue Akane, he just stopped caring about his curse.

Back home, Akane's father has secretly received a cask of "Spring of Drowned Man" water from the Jusenkyo Guide as a gift after the floods receded, and he uses it to blackmail Akane into fast-tracking the long-avoided wedding. However, the wedding is ruined by the arrival of Ranma's and Akane's various rivals and suitors, who all try to stop the wedding and break the cask in the process. Soun decides that the wedding connect continue under such cicrumstances and orders Akane and Ranma to sort out their tangled relationships so that the wedding can be rescheduled.

THE END

Characters Introduced
Plum, the daught of the Jusenkyo Guide.

The bird people of Mount Phoenix. Mount Phoenix, near Jusenkyo, has a spring similar to those in Jusenkyo, in which a bird hard drowned. That spring served as the primary water supply for a nearby village, and after many generations of drinking from the spring, the villagers have evolved wings. In order to pass discretely amongst normal people, they deliberately use the hotsprings at jusenkyo to gain less conspicuous forms; as with all the Jusenkyo-cursed, these forms are temporarily banished by hot water but are retriggered by cold water.

Lord Saffron, young prince of the bird people. He fights with a very powerful magic weapon called the Kinjakan. It is his destiny to transform through a ritual at the source of Jusenkyo into a living power source for his people.

Lord Saffron's retainer, whose name is not revealed.

Captain Klima, a military commander from the village of the bird people.

Karuma and Masara, bird people and underlings of Captain Klima.