Ukyo Kuonji

Ukyo Kuonji (久遠寺 右京 Kuonji Ukyō) is a fictional character in Rumiko Takahashi's anime and manga series Ranma ½. She is named after Ukyō-ku, the western side of Kyoto. "Kuonji" means "eternity."

History

Ukyo Kuonji is an okonomiyaki cook who is Ranma Saotome's oldest known friend. She apparently hails from Osaka, as she speaks in the Kansai-ben dialect of Japanese. When 6 years old, during his more than 13 year long training trip, Ranma met Ukyo, who was with her father, an okonomiyaki vendor. During the time they lived in the same neighborhood, they had a game in which they play-fought every day. If Ranma won, he got a free okonomiyaki from Ukyo's father. Needless to say, he managed to defeat her every single day.

Eventually, Ukyo's father suggested to Genma Saotome to engage her to Ranma, and to throw his okonomiyaki cart in as a dowry. Genma agreed. Unwilling to let go of the okonomiyaki cart, but not wanting to break the conflicting promise he made to his friend Soun, Genma asked little Ranma which he liked better, Ukyo or okonomiyaki. The young boy, eating an okonomiyaki at the time and unaware that his friend was a girl, quickly chose the food. Thus, Genma stole the cart and left a furious Ukyo behind. The other girls at her school mocked her for not being feminine enough to keep her fiancé with her. Because of that, she decided to give up on her feminity and learned to act as a boy. She then spent the next ten years training in the martial art of okonomiyaki to prepare for her revenge against the Saotomes.

Ukyo caught up with Genma and Ranma ten years later, at Furinkan High school. Ukyo, still posing as a boy, beat up Genma, and then transferred into Ranma's school. Ranma remembered 'him' immediately, and had a hard time understanding 'he' wanted revenge. Akane believed that Ukyo was Ranma's brother for a while after hearing and misinterpreting a yelling match between Ukyo and Genma. Finally, Ranma and Ukyo dueled on an enormous okonomiyaki grill. During the bout, Ranma discovered that Ukyo was a woman and why she hated him. Ukyo finally stopped fighting when Ranma said she was "cute." However, this in turn angered Akane Tendo, the daughter of Soun engaged to Ranma. Upon seeing the two quarrel and Akane "congratulating" Ranma on his "cute" fiancee, Ukyo forgave Ranma and re-established their engagement the next day.

Later, Ukyo made a plot to have Ryoga date Akane. Ranma tries to break her plot, turning into a girl and disguisings himself as Ryoga's "fiancee". Ukyo gets angry for interfering and removes Ranma's wig. Afterwards, she discovers Ranma's curse but thinks it is amusing and keeps pouring cold and hot water on Ranma to change him back and forth from boy to girl.

Near the end of the series, Ukyo meets Konatsu, a crossdressing young ninja who falls in love with her. While Ukyo has no actual feelings of love towards Konatsu, she still appreciates him as a friend, and allows him to live and work as a waitress in "Ucchan's," the okonomiyaki restaurant she owns.

Character

Overall, Ukyo is a charming, determined and reliable girl and gets along with Akane most of the time, apparently including spending time socially independently from Ranma, given that they've been shown to skip school and eat at a restaurant together with some of Akane's friends. However, she is not above trying to hurt Akane or to guilt-trip Ranma into being with her if it suits her needs. She often tries to break Akane and Ranma's engagement indirectly, but they are mostly unaware of her plotting because it generally backfires before it gets anywhere. Ukyo has dragged Ryoga Hibiki into her plans a few times, but is constantly infuriated and whacks him due to his lack of judgment, direction sense and shyness/'cowardice'.

Ukyo has shown charitability by temporarily hosting the Tendos (as a favour to Ranma when they lost their house to the Gambling King), and permanently providing room and board for the poor male 'kunoichi' Konatsu, due to feeling empathetic when hearing about his horrible background, but the latter also serves as an extremely cheap workforce. She generally seems dependable to her friends, as she turned very concerned and immediately ran to the aid of her fellow okonomiyaki cook 'Occhan', when she thought the latter had been hurt by a 'cursed spatula'.

She is extremely principled and proud of her work, to the degree that she got sick and felt the need to devour a poisonous jar of okonomiyaki sauce, which had fermented since she prepared it as a child, as self-punishment when it turned out horribly (due to Ranma's accidental interference). She has been rather unconcerned about skipping school, since she learns more by visiting/eating at other restaurants. She seems very business-minded, being very excited at the opportunity to "make a killing" ('Tsubasa Kurenai' & 'Onsen Race' arcs), and strictly manages her finances (second Konatsu story), but occasionally feels the need to take a vacation from the "salt mines" ('Tunnel of lost love'). Beyond her regular occupation she has been shown to work extra as a shinto temple priestess ('Trouble with Emas').

She has no shown 'feminine weak spots' in her mostly resilent/tough, hardworking character and, unlike Akane, she is completely unfazed by a cave full of ghosts, and likely against similar traditional 'female' fears.

Her style of fighting is a legacy style from her father based on their food preparation, and highly reminiscent of ninja patterns, but this status as an apparent "ninja-cook" has never been expanded upon.

File:Ranma19 105 Ukyo.jpg

Ukyo in the manga

Ukyo is technically a loose rival of Shampoo and Kodachi, and has had a brief skirmish with them when their attacks against Nabiki accidentally hit Ranma, and with Shampoo during the onsen race. However, she has more recurrently allied with them in battle. In the aforementioned Nabiki situation, against Miss Hinako, to gain a fake 'engagement ring' from Ranma & Genma, or interrupt Akane's wedding. While the latter two have explicitly murderous intent, Ukyo has been left more ambivalent, likely simply intending to beat her targets unconscious, as she simply wished to scare Nabiki into giving up her and Ranma's temporary engagement. In the anime they allegedly fight each other much more frequently.

She's stated outright that she feels a strong romantic attraction/love towards Ranma ('Reversal jewel' arc), and has been willing to give up her shop ('Gambling King' arc) and almost her entire lifestyle ('Secret Sauce' arc) to be a good wife for him. Though, while Ranma has shown concern about her feelings and considers her a good friend, he has also made it clear that he does not feel the same in return, and went to extremes to get rid of her when she got too close (also 'Secret sauce' arc). Unlike Shampoo and Kodachi however, he does not consider and treat her as a pest. He usually calls her "Ucchan" and she calls him "Ranchan" ("Ranma-honey" in the English dub), the nicknames they used for each other as children.

Ukyo still wears a boy's school uniform (from her old school in the manga) to Furinkan High even the other students know that she is a girl. She does, however, wear the girls' gym uniform, and she's not particularly masculine in her overall behaviour, beyond a brusque and short-tempered lack of patience, and has both behaved like a demure dedicated wife against her fiancée and used 'feminine allure' to get 'aloha virus' infected classmates into a hot spring containing the antidote. She's easily embarrassed by affection and has reflexively whacked Ranma when pushed to declare her love or if he calls her cute. That said, she seems extremely horny towards him. She eagerly urged Genma to 'remove his fingers' from the crotch of a nude photograph of adult Ranma ('Weakness moxibustion' arc), unashamedly/cheerfully entered to 'wash his back' when he was nude in the bathtub and yearningly urged him to join her in bed 'just like when they were children' (another 'Secret sauce' arc). She also considers herself more feminine and physically attractive than Akane.

She has been romantically pursued/stalked by Tsubasa Kurenai, whom she considered a nuisance that should repeatedly "be given a few hard whacks" to be discouraged. More importantly, she has housed the effeminate, subservient, and generally inept Konatsu who deeply loves her. But despite his loyalty she merely feels sorry for him. The Memorial Book/Art of Ranma ½ described it as a completely one-sided, unrequited love.

Oddly she seems to have some strict standards for (attractive?) masculine/'real man' behaviour and has shown great derision towards Mousse for 'disappearing' without her during a race and, repeatedly, towards Ryoga's extreme shyness, despite that both technically are far sturdier/tougher than herself in several respects, but on the other hand thought Ranma's curse was funny and doesn't seem to mind Konatsu all that much.

In the anime, she wore a girl's school uniform once and many guys at school promptly fell in love with her, thinking her to be a new student even though she still carried her trademark spatula. Ironically, the only male student besides Ranma to immediately recognize Ukyo that day was the usually clueless Tatewaki Kuno, who was completely smitten as well.

Ryoga and Ukyo as a couple is implied or joked about in the anime, but this pairing seems unlikely in the manga, given her general annoyance with him. They were also implied to have been cursed to permanently loathe one another, and never become a couple, due to "The tunnel of lost love".

Special Techniques

See also Ukyo's techniques.

Ukyo is a talented martial artist, with her art based on cooking okonomiyai. She uses food-based techniques to stun, restrain or confuse opponents in somewhat archetypal 'ninja' reminiscent patterns (shuriken, confusing fog, blinding flash etc). She also uses a large spatula as a two handed weapon and has a bandolier of smaller spatulas she uses as thrown projectiles. She is strong, agile, and has a versatile range of attacks, making Ukyo a force to be reckoned with, and undoubtedly one of the most skilled female characters in the story.

File:Ukyo - Speed.jpg

In the manga, exactly how she ranks is debatable. During her introduction, Ukyo gave Ranma far more trouble than Shampoo ever managed, but Ukyo's better performance is at least partially due to being surrounded by a hot grill and that Ranma initially held back. However, she also managed to fight and parry with Ryoga for a brief time before being overcome. Ukyo here only had one very brief skirmish with Shampoo, during the onsen race (beyond a couple of brief or off-page free-for-alls against her and Kodachi), but it was interrupted before it had time to start. The only shown interchange consisted of Shampoo being kept busy deflecting Ukyo mini-spatulas, while their feet were tied to Ranma and Ryoga's respectively. Although Ukyo refrained from using her more powerful special techniques.

In the anime continuity they fight each other quite frequently but mostly off-screen. However, in the Episode 'Ranma the Lady Killer' Shampoo and Ukyo fight to exhaustion against each other showing them to be equals. This battle occurs directly after Ukyo trained to fight Crepe King Joe, but it is unclear if it is strictly restricted to hand-to-hand, and 'conventional' weapons (giant spatula/chúi), rather than signature moves.

Trivia

• Ukyo has been compared to Sango from Inuyasha. This rationale comes from the fact that they both have long hair, carry a large primary weapon on their backs, and are even both voiced by Kelly Sheridan in the English dubs.

References

• Ukyo at AnimeInfo
• Ukyo at Furinkan.com