Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung



Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung are a pair of young twin girl Joketsuzoku from the Amazon Village, long-time friends of Shampoo and fellow martial artists. They only appeared in the anime version of Ranma 1/2.

Precisely how old the twins are is unknown, though a reasonable estimate may be somewhere between the ages of 10 and 13 years old. They stand roughly a head shorter than Shampoo, are much flatter-chested than Shampoo, Akane or Ranma's female form, and Lung-Lung talks with a noticable lisp, all of which imply youth. They have a similar hairstyle to Shampoo, with odango ("dumplings" of hair) and a carefully cultivated lock of long hair in front of either ear. Ling-Ling has two odango, one on either side of her head, and a small, slightly curved lock of hair in front of either ear, so she most closely resembles Shampoo. Lung-Lung has a single odango on the top of her head, and large, penduulum-like locks of hair in front of her ear. Ling-Ling has magenta hair and purple eyes, while Lung-Lung has aquamarine hair and mint green eyes.

The twins look up greatly to Shampoo; they admire her and are her closest friends, so much so that they are referred to as being her sisters. In the dubbed version of Two, Too Violent Girls: Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung, Akane specifically notes that Shampoo means they are "sisters in all but blood" - siblings in the sense of tribal affiliation and close personal friendship, but the subtitled version implies that they are genuinely her little siblings by blood. They proclaim that Shampoo is their inspiration for trying to train so hard to become great martial artists, and they are heartbroken when Shampoo first seems to have betrayed their laws by giving up and reamaining dishonored, then actually tries to prevent them carrying out what the law demands.

In personal terms, the twins are inseperable; they are best friends and staunch allies, and their fighting style revolves around working in tandem with each other. Ling-Ling does seem to be the dominant twin, though, and is the one who gives the orders and comes up with the plans.

In terms of fighting level, the twins seem to be fairly medicore - Akane's level, maybe lower. They work as a team; attacking from two sides at once or in a powerful frontal assault is second nature to these two Chinese Amazons. They are smart enough to make use of trickery like diving from angles where they appear out of the sun, or having one twin distract an opponent so the other can attack her by surprise, but they tend to goof up their plans. Still young, they have a lot of growing to do in terms of reach, speed, strength and resilience. They are still not to be underestimated; while Shampoo can handle them easily enough (especially if one presumes she was going easy on them due to their friendship), and Akane doesn't find it that difficult to beat them (admittedly partially due to their own clumsiness), that still elevates them pretty high above the common herd, and they can quite easily handle the likes of those who attend the kendo, boxing, karate and sumo clubs of Furinkan High School. The twins do have some special attacks, but they are much more hype than substance. Ling-Ling specialises in wielding a retractile shortstaff, while Lung-Lung carries a trident cut to her size.

"Two Body Attack": Never really given a proper name, this technique consists of Ling-Ling leaping onto Lung-Lung's back before the two start spinning around at high speed. This allows them to deliver a rapid-fire flurry of blows from both of their weapons and is very hard to block or counter for.

Dance of the Great Fire Dragon: The twins deploy a dragon puppet that contains two special secrets. The first is a recording of a magical melody that makes whoever hear it dance until they can't hear it any more. The second is a flamethrower that the twins use while their enemies are helpless.

Great Dance of the Super Phoenix: A two-pronged attack, both pretty goofy. The first consists of the two taking to the sky in a rattletrap pedal-powered bird/aeroplane and dropping explosive eggs on their enemy. The second consist of erecting a huge plywood cutout of a terrifying phoenix and then pushing it onto their opponent.

The twins first appeared in season 3, "Hard Battle", the episode Two, Too Violent Girls: Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung. They came to Japan to try and test their increased skills while also meeting up with their long-absent, beloved "big sister", Shampoo. The story of what had happened with Ranma had never reached the village, and so they were curious as to how Shampoo had finally killed the "woman" who humiliated her before the rest of her tribe. During their exploration of Nerima, they learned Ranma was still alive and attempted to kill "her", only for Shampoo to intervene and give them the Kiss of Death to make them back off. Though they defeated Shampoo with the Dance of the Great Fire Dragon, Ranma came to Shampoo's rescue and defeated them. Finally learning that Ranma was actually a boy, they jokingly suggested that they also marry Ranma, but went back home to China to carry the message about how Shampoo was supposed to marry Ranma, and "she" was in fact a man.

They next appeared in the final episode of season 4, "Outta Control", called simply Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung Strike Back! While they had revealed the truth of Ranma's gender and Shampoo's engagement to him, news eventually reached the village of how Ranma had three other women vying for his hand in marriage. Humiliated for Shampoo's sake, the twins returned to Japan with the plans of chasing off Ukyo Kuonji, Kodachi Kuno and Akane Tendo, believing that Ranma would wed Shampoo once she was the last girl left. This didn't work so well; though they ruined an okonomiyaki that Ukyo had baked for Ranma, she just beat them up for it. When they tried to spring an ambush on Kodachi, they made he mistake of hiding in "Mr. Scaly Green's" pond, and found themselves running for their lives from Kodachi's giant pet gator. Finally, though they lured Ranma away with a picnic and, while he was eating, challenged Akane, Akane managed to defeat them thanks to their goofy new special attack. After some talk with the presumably exasperated Shampoo and Cologne, they headed back to China.

The twins had a cameo in the second OAV, Tendo Family Christmas Scramble, where they put on a fire-breathing dragon show for the amusement of those attending the christmas party.

Link to an image of the sisters from the anime episode Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung Strike Back!, created/hosted by AnimeAdvance: http://anime.advancedmn.com/images/media/Ranma%204-02.jpg

(Yes, I know that Lung-Lung in the picture has purplish-gray eyes. The mint green color comes from the close up of her face when she is first introduced in Two, Too Violent Girls - this was the best picture I could find of either of them.)