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Personal priority of OVA articles: The Two Akanes! "Ranma, Look at Me!" (OVA 12) and Oh, Cursed Tunnel of Lost Love! Let My Love Be Forever (OVA 10).

publication notes: Shonen Sunday 1996 Vol. 10 - February 21st, 1995 Vol. 14 - April 12th.
 * Chapter 255 published in issue 1993, Vol. 1/2.

Ryoga Article Cleanup

Appearance
Ryoga stands out in the crowd due to his regularly rough appearance. His usual outfit consists of his trademark yellow and black speckled bandana (and an unknown number underneath the visible one) around his head, a yellow jumper, black trousers with yellow leg bands around the ankes and a black sash-like belt. He is sometimes shown wearing a blue T-shirt instead of his jumper. His hair, particularly the front fringe, is quite long, obscuring his bandana at the front. He also quite often carries around a black backpack and a red bamboo umbrella either tucked into straps on top of his backpack or in his hand.

History
Ryoga is introduced in chapter 10 of the manga, titled "The Hunter" and in episode 7 of the anime entitled "Enter Ryoga, The Eternal Lost Boy", in which he casually stops a giant boar from attacking rural villagers. He politely asked for directions to Furinkan High School, but overshot the distance by 500 kilometres south, and again shortly thereafter by 500 kilometres north. A week later, he finally managed to reach his destination and promptly attacked Ranma. The latter had to think hard to remember him, but was glad to see him when he remembered Ryoga as a friend from his old boys' school (Junior High School in the anime, High School in the manga). At first, it seemed like he simply has a grudge because the latter "ran away" from their scheduled fight, at a vacant lot located 500 yards from his own house. His bad sense of direction forced him to wander all over Japan for four days looking for his destination, while Ranma only waited three days before leaving with his father for their training trip to China. Ranma recalls the motivation as consistently beating Ryoga to the last bread at lunchtime, slowly building up the latter's resentment towards him.

Ryoga ends up a week late travelling to their next duel. During their confrontation, he discovers Ranma's curse, and the latter accidentally cuts off part of Akane's hair, by kicking away Ryoga's belt-slash, leading both boys to profusely apologise.

After another fight takes place in a rainstorm, female Ranma finds out that Ryoga tracked her to China, and concludes that the reason for his anger lies in being cursed by the springs of Jusenkyo. Ranma finds a dog on the scene which she assumes to be Ryoga and allows it into the house, while Akane finds a suspicious small black piglet in her room and tends to it. Akane tells Ranma to bathe the pig, but when he puts it the hot bath Ryoga appears. Female Ranma almost manages to convince him that he should be mad at the girl who pushed him into the spring, leading him to almost be cooked and eaten, but it turns out to have been herself, during a chase after Genma-panda, aggravating Ryoga more then ever. Akane decides to adopt the pig, naming him P-chan ("cute pig"; the "P" is actually derived from the English word "pig"), completely unaware of his dual identity and that he has become utterly enamoured with her.

Afterwards, Ryoga frequently finds himself back in Furinkan, whether to challenge Ranma, search for a cure for his Jusenkyo curse, bring pastries and gifts to Akane as awkward shows of affection, or simply become entangled in the schemes and chaos that seem to follow his rival. His antagonism towards Ranma gradually lessens with time. It starts out as a fierce rivalry, then shifts back and forth between tense competition, uneasy alliances or non-serious conflicts and, after a brief lapse, progresses to friendly enough terms to repeatedly risk his life to help Ranma. However, they remain highly competitive. Ranma himself considers Ryoga as "generally a friend" and as his only true rival/equal.

Ryoga has collaborated with Mousse on a few sparse occasions, to get a cure for themselves during the Musk arc, and considered competing together during an onsen race. He and Kuno also made two very brief team-ups against Ranma, once accidentaly when independently simultaneously entering after seeing a photograph where he kissed Akane, and for a minute during a 3-way food fight. In the anime continuity, they both attacked Ranma in the episode "Ukyo's Skirt! The Great Girly-Girl Gambit!". They also allied in the episode "Pick-a-Peck o' Happosai" and to stop Ranma and Akane from getting together in the episode "Let's Go to the Mushroom Temple". They also both beat up Ranma in the OVA "Curse of the Contrary Jewel". Regardless, Ryoga is not remotely friends with either in the manga storyline, and is on better terms with Ranma in both continuities.

Profile
Ryoga spends much of his time wandering, often depressed over having to spend so much of his time alone in the wilderness, with the slightest rain turning him into a defenceless pig at the mercy of hungry humans or animals.

His most notable characteristic is that, like his parents, and even his entire family, he has no sense of direction whatsoever. He is unable to go the right way, often sticking to the letter of any directions given to him, regardless of whether the path eventually turns. He has an inability to understand even the simplest of directions or draw any legible maps, once running the wrong way at the start of a three-legged race or getting lost in Shampoo's house for hours, looking for the exit.

This is not due to lack of motivation, however. For instance, on the way to a date, he was supposed to follow the edge of a lake, to reach a statue in plain sight directly in front of him. Instead, Ryoga follows a brook and gets lost again. In the anime, Maomolin the bakeneko possesses Ryoga and tries to lead him towards the girl he loves. However, Maomolin had as much trouble navigating as Ryoga himself even though the former was doing the thinking.

In real world terms, he would likely be classified as suffering from autistic limitation or brain damage in this area, especially in combination with his other most extreme character traits. It is also possible that his lack of direction might be some form of family curse. Another theorethical possibility is that the Hibiki family suffers from an inflamed or infected hippocampus gland, this gland being the human biologic compass, handling orientation and directional accuity along with short-term memory.

In the anime this condition is worsened by Ryoga's ability to traverse obscene distances in surprisingly little time on foot, although how he does this is unknown. When the two problems are combined, it results in Ryoga having essentially no idea where he is at any given time, which allows him to miss his destinations by insane margins. In one case, he attempted to reach Hokkaido and instead ended up in Hong Kong. Luckily, he carries a backpack, which evidently contains essentials for survival in the wild.

In the manga this is not as heavily implied to be a supernatural talent, at least not beyond his comical tendency to pop up at odd moments. He seems to need much longer travel times, and has not explicitly been seen to swiftly and randomly traverse continents under his own power. However, in his first appearance he quickly overshot Tokyo by 500 kilometres twice in a row, apparently within the span of one or two days, though no explicit reference was given. Through the aid of the (quick-travelling magical) Kinjakan, he also quickly made it all the way from Jusenkyo to Moscow and back while out to get some dumplings in Peking. His map was also once shown to contain a forest, a café, a road with a red car, the Tendo dojo, some African tribesmen, China, and France, and he once sent Akane a postcard in which the photograph displayed that he had unwittingly traversed to Hong Kong.

Ryoga's family house is within sight of Mount Fuji, where his dog Shirokuro (Checkers in the English translation) and her puppies live. However, given the Hibiki family's condition, it is usually empty. Ryoga generally leads a nomadic lifestyle, and only occasionally manages to find it. His dog, however, has no such trouble finding her way and recognises him in both human and pig forms. Ryoga and his dogs are shown to be very fond of and loyal to each other. It has been mentioned that Ranma helped to lead him home when they went to high school together.

The combination of Ryoga's poor sense of direction and his curse have regularly subjected him to imminent misery, constantly placing him lonely and lost in the wilderness, with tight food rations, or at the mercy of hungry predators. When first introduced, he is a very angry and seemingly unapproachable individual. Ryoga is very emotional, more often than not following his heart rather than his head, though he has shown capability of using strategy when he is focused or lacking distractions. He is emotionally fragile, straightforward and naive. He regularly feels depressed, which thus far has served as the source for his chi projection. He is generally shy, humble and polite, especially around women. He is often easily tricked and used by some of the more manipulative characters and turns extremely grateful, loyal and self-sacrificing for any kindness offered to him, and his compassion is just as overemotional as the rest of him, even bringing him to tears after realising that he is incapable of even trying to harm Ranma when the latter was weakened by Happosai (when trying to help him learn the Hiryu Shoten Ha to regain his strength).

A running joke is that whenever female Ranma dons a disguise, no matter how transparent, Ryoga will nonetheless be fooled. Ranma has used this to his advantage to find out about any training Ryoga has been doing, to tease him, or to torment Ryoga during any dates with Akane to destroy the latter's prospects.

Out of all of Ranma's rivals in either battle or love, Ryoga distinctively stands out as being more prominent than any of the others. Ryoga's extreme misfortunes (half of which Ranma actually legitimately directly, but unintentionally, caused through the curse, which he is not below feeling guilty about), confusion, mostly noble or chivalrous intentions (more so than any other, with the possible exception of Kumon Ryu, and sharing Ranma's and Akane's "Martial Artist's Code" to defend and definitely not intentionally bully the defenceless), in combination with having saved Ranma's or Akane's lives more times than the reverse, and consistent ability to bring his rival a very serious entertaining challenge, have also caused Ranma to respect, recurrently symphasise with, in some cases aid (such as trying to play match-maker with Ukyo or Akari), and even considers Ryoga as a friend; whereas he outright despises Happosai and Saffron, dislikes Taro, Herb, Shampoo, and Kodachi, considers Nabiki chilling, finds Kuno annoying, and seems mostly ambivalent about Ryu after settling their business or Mousse towards the end of the series. Their relationship is very complex and malleable, shifting between friends or fierce rivals, but are shown to make a very good team once they have set their bickering aside, usually in cases where they face extremelly powerfull enemies, such as Pantyhose Taro, Herb, the Yamata-No-Orochi, or Saffron; and by simply comparing them on the paper their different strengths do balance each other well. The two apparently eventually develop somewhat of a substitute strong brotherly rivalry towards each other, similarly to how Ranma seems to view Ukyo and Kasumi as platonic friendly acquaintances or possibly sort-of sisters.

P-chan
Ryoga's lonely wanderings make him rather desperate for affection, to the point where a hug as Akane's pet P-Chan was his only way to get any kind of warm human contact, and he has been overjoyed when snuggled like a teddy bear or kissed on his snout. However, he generally does not seem remotely lecherous, and will become heavily embarrassed simply from daydreaming about innocent dates or holding hands. When possessed by an Oni, the most evil thing he could conceptualise was peeking on Akane in the bath, and he was utterly mortified in shame afterwards. Even being hugged by Akane can cause the shy Ryoga to nosebleed and faint. He wouldn't enter the girls locker room together with Ranma even though they believed there was a Jusenkyo cure within, until Ranma threw him in and he quickly turned the opposite way of the girls changing. P-Chan is frequently present when the Tendo/Saotome families are talking or are involved in something, sometimes sitting in Akane's lap. Ranma, Genma, and Happosai all know of Ryoga's curse, but apparently don't consider it a problem. Cologne, Shampoo, Mousse, Soun, and several minor characters also know about the curse, but as one of the series running gags, Akane never figures it out.

His piglet form tends to more openly show when he is sad or needs comfort. The curse may also be age-specific, given that it was unchanged when he was turned into a child by the "mushrooms of time".

Ranma has mostly been shown as very considerate regarding Ryoga's curse, likely because he was the one who caused it, sheer sympathy, and possibly due to a silent "warrior's code" vow to the dog that he initially thought was Ryoga. While Ranma was initially willing to threaten to expose Ryoga's secret to Akane, he eventually finds out that Ryoga sees himself as Akane's protector even in his near defenceless P-chan form and endures her regularly violent nightly movements to keep her safe and happy, and helped to save her from drowning even in this state. He has generally tried to keep Ryoga's curse a secret from Akane ever since, through such actions as catching him when he is about to fall into water, switching Akane's head in another direction, and making up excuses and explanations. He became sad for his rival when it seemed like Akane had found out (when he saw Ryoga's headband in her hands, which is indeed the same as the handkerchief tied around P-chan's neck), and tried to explain that "Ryoga never meant to hurt you", when actually "P-chan" had run away from Akane and left his bandanna behind. Though he still likes to tease Ryoga about it in their ongoing banter and sometimes makes blunders, like when honestly trying to convince Taro that it is possible to live with a curse through support from Ryoga, without considering that Akane was near. However he also sometimes teases or plays with the piglet, even juggling it with his feet, which can make him attempt to beat it after it bites his hand in retaliation.

The one moment when Ryoga was shown as slightly lecherous occurred close to the end of the manga. When turned into a young child, and Ranma presented him to Akane, he was hugged and very bashfully accepted her offer to sit in her knee. When she offered to bring "Ryoga's brother" into the bath with her, he initially protested but then reconsidered, before being stopped by Ranma, going strongly contrary to his characterisation in all previous appearances, possibly explained by having loosened up somewhat due to meeting Akari. Turning this more interesting is that Akane wasn't the least bit upset when she found out, making it questionable whether she would mind learning about the P-Chan curse, given that nothing nearly as serious ever occurred with the piglet.