is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from August 1987 to March 1996, with the chapters collected into 38 tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. The story revolves around a teenage boy named Ranma Saotome who has trained in martial arts since early childhood. As a result of an accident during a training journey, he is cursed to become a girl when exposed to cold water, while hot water changes him back into a boy. Throughout the series Ranma seeks out a way to rid himself of his curse, while his friends, enemies and many fiancées constantly hinder and interfere. Ranma ½ has a comedic formula and a sex-changing main character, who often willfully transforms into a girl to advance his goals. The series also contains many other characters, whose intricate relationships with each other, unusual characteristics, and eccentric personalities drive most of the stories. Although the characters and their relationships are complicated, they rarely change once they are firmly introduced and settled into the series. The manga has been adapted into two anime series created by Studio Deen: Ranma ½ and , which together were broadcast on Fuji Television from 1989 to 1992. In addition, they developed 12 original video animations and three films. In 2011, a live-action television special was produced and aired on Nippon Television. The manga and anime series were licensed by Viz Media for English-language releases in North America. Madman Entertainment released the manga, part of the anime series and the first two films in Australasia, while MVM Films released the first two films in the United Kingdom. The Ranma ½ manga has over 55 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series. Both the manga and anime are cited as among the first in their respective media to have become popular in the United States. Plot On a training journey in the Bayankala Mountain Range in the Qinghai Province of China, Ranma Saotome and his father Genma fall into the cursed springs at . The cursed spring causes any afflicted to assume the physical form of whatever drowned there hundreds or thousands of years ago whenever they come into contact with cold water, which reverts on contact with hot water but resumes with exposure to cold water. Genma fell into the spring of a drowned panda while Ranma fell into the