Heights of Ranma Characters

Part of Doug's Ranma 1/2 Resources for Fanfic Writers

Here are suggested heights for the major characters of Ranma 1/2, using the Atsuko Nakajima character designs. These heights are from the OAVs, not the television series, and certainly not the manga!

Characters listed in order of increasing height.

Methodology

I created the lineup from the file r-cast1.jpg, taken from Thomas E. Cardwell II's Ranma 1/2 Universe homepage. I rotated the image 0.6 degrees clockwise to create a level baseline.

I scaled the image so that Girl-Type Ranma would be 300 pixels tall. This would let me use a scale of 2 pixels =1 cm, and gives girl Girl-Type Ranma a height of 150cm. I picked this height as it matches the heights of other short anime girls: Merle from Vision of Escaflowne, and Usagi (Serena) from Sailor Moon.

Kodachi's height came from the credits for Tendo Family Christmas Scramble OAV, where Ukyo, Shampoo, and Kodachi walk side by side. Using a T-square, I measured their heights. Ukyo's is 2cm taller than Shampoo, and Kodachi is the same amount taller than Ukyo.

Here's the final lineup.

That's Too Tall!

"Kuno and Soun are six feet tall! They would tower over typical Japanese!" True, but they're characters in a show where all the other characters have with the same "Occidental" designs depicted above; note the bust sizes of the female characters.

However, I am nothing if not accomodating. For those people who want more "realistic" heights, I am providing an alternate list of numbers based off the same characters designs, but using a different scale.

A More Realistic Approach

The average height of a Japanese woman is 150cm; the average height of a man is 164cm. (Engel) We can scale the heights of the Ranma characters so their average height meets this national norm.

Before calculating this average, I removed the heights of Cologne, Happosai, and Sasuke, as they are clearly caricatures. This is an attempt to derive realistic heights, so our data points should themselves be realistic. With these characters removed, the average female height is 159cm, and the average male height is 172cm.

The female heights scale to the national average with a multiplier of 94.5%; the male heights scale with a multiplier of 95.3%. I took the average of the two, 94.9%, and applied it to all the characters' heights. The results are below.

I personally find these numbers less satisfying. I can't picture myself being the same height as Soun, or that none of "Ranma's Girls" top an even five feet tall.

Credits

dougmacd.net > Ranma 1/2 Resources for Fanfic Writers > Character Heights

Thanks to Vince Seifert for the following reference:
Engel, Heino. Measure and Construction of the Japanese House. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1985.

Ranma 1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi / Shogakukan · Kitty Film · Fuji TV. Exclusively licensed throughout the United States and Canada by Viz Communications, Inc. Character designs by Atsuko Nakajima. Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi. English version © Mixx Entertainment, Inc. Original Japanese version © Kodansha, Ltd. and Naoko Takeuchi. Vision of Escaflowne © Sunrise · TX. Distributed exclusively under license by AnimeVillage.com. The text on this page is copyright © 1999-2001 by Douglas MacDougall.