Ranma: Ying Yang

All Ranma Saotome wanted was one quiet evening out. No rivals. No chaos. No one trying to kill him before the appetizers arrived.

He didn't get any of that.

What starts as a simple dinner date between two people who would rather die than admit they like each other quickly spirals into a full-scale disaster - rivals ambushing them in the street, a bumbling heavenly bureaucrat offering to cure Ranma's curse, a trip to the legendary springs of Jhusenkyo, and a kidnapping by a princess with a grievance and a very powerful hypnosis.

Now the boys are captives in a magical palace maze and the girls have to go get them back. Cologne battles a ninety-foot Happosai. Kasumi navigates an army of guards with home cooking. Nabiki cleans out the entire security detail at cards. And Akane has to face down a hypnotized Ranma who has been ordered to stop her - by any means necessary.

Through all of it, a rose keeps changing hands. Neither of them will admit what that means.

*Featuring: two people who argue like they're in love because they are, a kami whose rank is "brevet third class limited probational" and whose track record shows exactly why, and a Dragon's Tooth cure that was so close.*

*
The premise in plain terms: it's a love story told entirely in near-misses, dressed up as a comedy. Every time Ranma and Akane inch toward something real, the universe intervenes - sometimes literally from orbit. The actual plot (the curse, the kami, the kidnapping) is the vehicle; what the story is actually about is two stubborn people who mirror each other's worst habits and best instincts, and who keep reaching for something they can't quite say out loud.