Ranma 1/2 Character Alignments

[SpaceKnight of Chaos]

I think a topic like this may have been brought up once before, but... new edition, new chances, yes? The 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons uses a much simplified alignment system, as opposed to the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axis of prior editions. I'm morbidly curious about what characters in Ranma 1/2 could be considered to express which alignment, so...

For myself, I wouldn't call any character Lawful Good, and most of them would probably be either Unaligned, Good, or outright Evil. It depends somewhat on base-canon (Manga-Happosai is pretty Chaotic Evil, while Anime-Happosai is... still kind of Chaotic Evil, but capable of selflessness that bumps him a bit closer to Unaligned or just plain Evil), and the cynical side of me says that Good alignments would be the least common of all.

Lawful Good
“An ordered society protects us from evil.”
If you’re Lawful Good, you respect the authority of personal codes of conduct, laws and leaders, and you believe that those codes are the best way of achieving your ideas. Just authority promotes the well-being of its subjects and prevents them from harming one another. Lawful Good characters believe just as strongly as Good ones do in the value of life, and they put even more emphasis on the need for the powerful to protect the weak and downtrodden. The exemplars of the Lawful Good alignment are shining champions of what’s right, honorable, and true, risking, or even sacrificing, their lives to stop the spread of evil in the world.
When leaders exploit their authority for personal gain, when laws grant privileged status to some citizens and reduce others to slavery or untouchable status, law has given in to evil and just authority becomes tyranny. You are not only capable of challenging such injustice, but morally bound to do so. However, you would prefer to work within the system to right such problems rather than resorting to more rebellious and lawless methods.

Good
“Protecting the weak from those who would dominate or kill them is just the right thing to do.”
If you’re a Good character, you believe it is right to aid and protect those in need. You’re not required to sacrifice yourself to help others or to completely ignore your own needs, but you might be asked to place others’ needs above your own… in some cases, even if that means putting yourself in harm’s way. In many ways, that’s the essence of being a heroic adventurer: the people of the town can’t defend themselves from the marauding goblins, so you descend into the dungeon –at significant personal risk- to put an end to the goblin raids.
You can follow rules and respect authority, but you’re keenly aware that power tends to corrupt those who wield it, too often leading them to exploit their power for selfish or evil ends. When that happens, you feel no obligation to follow the law blindly. It’s better for authority to rest in the members of a community rather than the hands of any individual or social class. When law becomes exploitation, it crosses into evil territory, and Good characters feel compelled to fight it.
Good and Evil represent fundamentally different viewpoints, cosmically opposed and unable to coexist in peace. Good and Lawful Good characters, though, get along fine – even if a Good character thinks a Lawful Good companion might be a little too focused on following the law, rather than simply doing the right thing.

Unaligned
“Just let me go about my business.”
If you’re Unaligned, you don’t actively seek to harm others or wish them ill. But you also don’t go out of your way to put yourself at risk without some hope for reward. You support law and order when doing so benefits you. You value your own freedom, without worrying too much about protecting the freedom of others.
A few Unaligned people, and most Unaligned deities, aren’t decided about alignment. Rather, they’ve chosen not to choose, either because they see the benefits of both Good and Evil or because they seem themselves as above the concerns of morality. The Raven Queen and her devotees fall into the latter camp, believing that moral choices are irrelevant to their mission since death comes to all creatures regardless of alignment.

Evil
“It is my right to claim what others possess.”
Evil characters don’t necessarily go out of their way to hurt people, but they’re perfectly willing to take advantage of the weakness of others to acquire what they want.
Evil characters use rules and order to maximize personal gain. They don’t care whether laws hurt other people. They support institutional structures that give them power, even if that power comes at the expense of others’ freedom. Slavery and rigid caste structures are not only acceptable, but desirable to Evil characters, as long as they are in a position to benefit from them.

Chaotic Evil
“I don’t care what I have to do to get what I want.”
Chaotic Evil characters have a complete disregard for others. Each believes that he or she is the only being that matters and kills, steals or betrays others to gain power. Their word is meaningless and their actions destructive. Their worldviews can be so warped that they destroy anything and anyone that doesn’t directly contribute to their interests.
By the standards of Good and Lawful Good people, Chaotic Evil is as abhorrent as Evil, perhaps even more so. Chaotic Evil monsters such as demons and orcs are at least as much of a threat to civilization and general well-being as Evil monsters are. An Evil creature and a Chaotic Evil creature are both opposed to Good, but they don’t have much respect for each other either and rarely cooperate toward common goals.

[claymade]

Geh. I miss the old alignment system, especially for something like this, since a lot of the Ranma characters feel much more satisfyingly described using the old method. Ranma, for instance, seems to me just about a textbook example of Chaotic Good--usually altruistic, but little respect for "the rules"--so I guess in this system he'd translate to vanilla "Good".

Ryouga, to my eyes, rides the moral alignment all the way up from Evil -> Neutral -> Good through the course of the series without ever much taking a stand either way on the Law axis. I guess he works fairly well in this system, except with "Unaligned" taking the place of "Neutral".

Mousse would be much the same way, except I think he'd veer more toward the Chaotic end of things, where that option is available.

Kuno... you could actually almost claim as Lawful Good, at least in his intent. It's a hard thing to measure, since his view of reality itself is so fundamentally skewed. It certainly seems to be what he aspires to.

Akane is the other character I think you could actually make a case for being Lawful Good. She has the altruistic angle down, even for villains many times, and seems to consider rules and social structures to be more valuable than not.

Ukyo I'd call just Good; she seems a fairly altruistic person overall. Yes, she pays Konatsu a pittance, but that includes room and board, and as we see in other arcs, she also puts up with a lot of his... eccentricities in the bargain. It does seem to be mostly compassion that motivates it.

Shampoo I'd consider Unaligned/Neutral. Capable of both nefarious and selfless deeds, perfectly willing to go to great lengths for certain laws, and perfectly willing to break them at other times, her essential element, to me, is that enigmatic, plays-her-cards-close-to-her-chest, never-quite-sure-where-exactly-she-stands mysteriousness.

Kodachi. Chaotic Evil. 'Nuff said.

and the cynical side of me says that Good alignments would be the least common of all.

*shrugs* One thing to remember is that no one follows their alignment perfectly. If any exceptions invalidated an alignment, we could never really assign most characters to anything. It's more about your general overall life outlook than what you did yesterday.

If you add to that the fact that a very large percentage of the interactions we see in the story for these characters are constrained (by the type of plot it is) to the very group of people who (one way or another) have the spectacularly largest capacity for bringing out the worst in them, I tend to weight it correspondingly in thinking about their approach to the world at large. (In other words, if you're actually willing to help the person you hate most in the world, however grudgingly, that says a lot more than you might think about your willingness to "help others", in the abstract.)

[SpaceKnight of Chaos]

Just to point things out, Unaligned basically means you don't particularly care about Good or Evil. Unaligned characters are highly individualistic - it's most accurate to consider Unaligned to cover all of the former Morally Neutral alignments in one. A character who values law above good or evil is Unaligned, so is somebody who believes that either extreme is dangerous, as is somebody who is so whimsical and unpredictable that they can be helpful, harmful, dangerous or just weird depending on their whim. Unaligned means you just don't actively "embrace" Good or Evil.

Ranma, to me, feels more of a Unaligned character type - there's some people who consider him more Chaotic Neutral under the old system simply because he can be (especially in the manga) such a deceitful, manipulative, cruel, self-centered asshole when he wants to be. He can be self-sacrificing, kindly and helpful, but usually he's fairly apathetic - don't bother him, he won't bother you, and he can be rather reluctant to help others. Admittedly, Good Is Not Nice, but still.

I think anime-Ukyo is a Good alignment, but her manga counterpart is something more of a nice-natured Unaligned, given the vicious and even psychotic extents that version can go to (like attacking Hinako because she thinks she's making moves on Ranma, or beating up Ranma as a Valentine's Present). Shampoo, meanwhile, is, as you said, very much Unaligned, with her willingness to bend or adhere to rules as she determines is appropriate for the situation, and her capacity to be both sweet and caring and vicious and cruel. Manga version leans more towards the Evil alignment, though.

Ryoga, I think, more accurately can be placed as Unaligned to begin with, a rather dark form when he's first introduced, but does lighten significantly as he gets character development. There's just a bit too much shadiness in him to truly make the whole hearted step into Good, though he could get there. A Good character wouldn't be taking advantage of a girl's naivity to sleep in her bed, even if he does get beaten up for it (and how do we know that's not a retcon anyway?).

I agree with your view that Kuno probably thinks of himself as Lawful Good, in his own weird little world. In the real world, he comes off more as Evil to me; he's not quite got the moral flexibility and lack of restraint that precludes a Chaotic Evil alignment.

Kodachi... yeah, the manga version is undeniably Chaotic Evil to the core. The anime gives her some sympathetic traits and relatively decent actions that may push her more into a really dangerous chaotic form of Unaligned. Or leave her as Chaotic Evil with Pet the Dog moments, I'm not decided myself.

I can see your reasoning for making Akane into a Lawful Good... but some of the stuff she's been willing to do, particularly in the manga, like terrorizing Ranma with his worst fear to force him to agree to her plans, really bumps her into more of an Unaligned character for me. She can be very kind, forgiving and sweet... but she can also be cruel, ruthless, and manipulative.

Mousse is probably more of an Evil character who, primarily in the manga, manages to develop into Unaligned. Unlike Kuno, who has never tried to kill Ranma, and Ryoga, who didn't even seem to really want to kill Ranma when he was upset over the curse, Mousse showed in Japan trying to murder Ranma. And over a girl who, in her own words and Mousse's admittance, was never interested in Mousse in the first place. I might even consider him Chaotic Evil, if not for the fact he displays a bit too much restraint - merely pinning a random male customer to the wall with daggers for flirting with Shampoo instead of impaling him, for example. Then again, that could be seen as an example of Chaotic Evil being held in restraint through intimidation and strength, the only way it works.

Nabiki is undeniably Evil, somewhat more Chaotic Evil in the manga, and Kasumi is a Lawful Good type.

[truedemonicfire]

I'm going to use the 3.5 system for this. I am not a fan of 4th edition by any means. Also the fact that 3.5 uses a system that has a broader sense of what a character is and not a good guy/bad guy system.

Saotome Ranma fits chaotic neutral to the point where he dosen't care about the way things are, he can be very manipulative, but he has a kind heart and trys to do what is right without hurting people too much. He is fairly apathetic to things when he doesn't have an ulterior motive behind it. When someone he cares about is involved, he gets himself involved to help them, sometimes they don't realize that(Akane most of the time). Mousse is also chaotic neutral in the sense that it is all about him and what he wants. He becomes a little less selfish later on.

Saotome Genma/Tendo Nabiki are both Lawful Evil. They use the honor of others to maipulate those people to get everything they can out of that person. Genma uses honor for food and that normally backfires. Nabiki motives are obvious and I have a hunch that Nabiki considers Ranma an idiot for not caring about wealth, with shows shortsightedness, a normal trait of Lawful characters. Remember that Mephistopheles, the silver-tounged devil is a lawful character.

Both Tendo Akane and Hibiki Ryouga are Lawful Neutral. Akane crosses into the good more often, but she slips when she thinks of herself. She also uses honor to manipulate as well as fear. Unlike other characters, she feels remorse for those particular actions. She often trys to help (remember the Hiryu Shoten Ha?) and the reasons aren't hidden. Ryouga doesn't manipulate. He cares about his personal honor, but he doesn't care about anyone elses. When he helps, he has ulterior motives and in the beginning he was crossing into the evil spectrum. Towards the end. he did help just to help.

[claymade]

Saotome Ranma fits chaotic neutral to the point where he dosen't care about the way things are, he can be very manipulative, but he has a kind heart and trys to do what is right without hurting people too much. He is fairly apathetic to things when he doesn't have an ulterior motive behind it. When someone he cares about is involved, he gets himself involved to help them, sometimes they don't realize that(Akane most of the time).

The largely sitcom-ish nature of the manga doesn't give him as many chances to show it as a more dramatic manga might, but Ranma's helpfulness has been seen to extend even to people he doesn't really know, or even flat-out enemies. (For example, his jumping in to save Plum before she even knew who she was, or his rescue of Herb.) It's stuff like that which I think pushes him more toward the Chaotic Good side of things.

Just to point things out, Unaligned basically means you don't particularly care about Good or Evil
...
Unaligned means you just don't actively "embrace" Good or Evil.

More generally, this is I think why I pushed so many of them toward the Good side--looking at it in terms of the way they think about such questions, rather than trying to tally up their actions. I would certainly agree that most of them would be pretty weak examples of the Good alignments, what with all the stuff that they pull, but in terms of their fundamental outlook, I don't read it as so much of a "I philosophically distance myself from the very concepts of good and evil" as much as a "I believe in good and evil, and I believe that it ought to be followed... even if I often don't live up to it due to my own weakness."

[truedemonicfire]

[quote="claymade"]
The largely sitcom-ish nature of the manga doesn't give him as many chances to show it as a more dramatic manga might, but Ranma's helpfulness has been seen to extend even to people he doesn't really know, or even flat-out enemies. (For example, his jumping in to save Plum before she even knew who she was, or his rescue of Herb.) It's stuff like that which I think pushes him more toward the Chaotic Good side of things.

I never meen a a pure chaotic neutral character. He fluctuates between neutral and good whlie stying in chaos.

[Southern Cross]

I agree with Akane being Lawful Neutral (with good tendencies),but disagree about Ryoga Hibiki.
If anything,that pervert's Chaotic Neutral,being so self-centered.
Furthermore,I think all the Kunos are of Evil alignment,with Tatekawai and Kodachi being Lawful and Chaotic Evil respectively.(Their father seems to be Lawful Evil).
I also think that Nabiki's Neutral Evil. She only cares about herself,but she doesn't annoy people on a whim.

[truedemonicfire]

I agree with Akane being Lawful Neutral (with good tendencies),but disagree about Ryoga Hibiki.
If anything,that pervert's Chaotic Neutral,being so self-centered.
Furthermore,I think all the Kunos are of Evil alignment,with Tatekawai and Kodachi being Lawful and Chaotic Evil respectively.(Their father seems to be Lawful Evil).
I also think that Nabiki's Neutral Evil. She only cares about herself,but she doesn't annoy people on a whim.

There was a reason why I said remember the "silver-tounged devil." And I agree the Kunos are all evil.

[FriendlyEL]

My views, although I don't really feel like explaining now:

Ranma: Chaotic Good
Akane: Lawful Neutral
Nabiki: Neutral Evil
Kasumi: Lawful Good
Genma: Lawful Evil/True Neutral
Soun: Lawful Neutral/Lawful Good
Happosai: Chaotic Evil
Kuno: Neutral/Chaotic Neutral
Kodachi: Chaotic Evil
Kunochi: Chaotic Neutral/Evil
Ryoga: Chaotic Neutral in beginning, leaning more towards Chaotic Good in the end
Shampoo: Lawful Evil
Mousse: Chaotic Neutral
Cologne: Lawful Neutral
Ukyo: Leaning between True Neutral and Neutral Good

[Cheb]

Wrong.
Ranma - Neutral Good. He has a code and principles he follows strongly, even when it's against his liking. That's not something a chaotic character would do.
Akane - Lawful Good. Neutral? With her over-eagerness to help other people? Don't make me laugh.
Genma - I cannot say, but surely not Evil. Nabiki and Kodachi are the only Evil characters.
Kunou - Lawful Good (at least as he sees himself).
Shampoo - Lawful Neutral (I thought of her as Evil but later I saw how wrong I've been).

[Knight of L-sama]

Kunou - Lawful Good (at least as he sees himself).

I'll second that, though he might slide towards Neutral Good since he tends to ignore things like school rules a bit too readily at times. The fact that the world he lives in is only loosely connected to the one occupied by the rest of the cast (In the metaphorical sense, just to be clear) doesn't really have that much bearing on alignment.

[Wyrd]

Wrong.
Ranma - Neutral Good. He has a code and principles he follows strongly, even when it's against his liking. That's not something a chaotic character would do.

By d&d standards(prior to the current edition) someone with their own personal code of conduct that they follow regardless of what society or those around them might think qualifies as chaotic good. Chaos sometimes means random, and sometimes means a focus on individuals in D&D alignments, just as Lawful sometimes means patterned, ordered, rigid and sometimes means a focus on society as a whole. Menzoberanzan, city of the Drow, is a Lawful evil society because it is very strictly regimented and advancement outside of the system of 'impressing your boss' happens for entire houses, not individuals, despite some of the otherwise chaotic aspects of the society.

Genma - I cannot say, but surely not Evil. Nabiki and Kodachi are the only Evil characters.

Sometimes selfish and self-centered can be enough to qualify someone as evil. While Genma is not malicious, he does not worry about the harm he causes to others in his attempts to get what he wants, even/especially if he doesn't actually deserve it. One big example was the Dragon Whisker incident, where he knew the harm that taking the whisker could do to Ranma but didn't care at all because HE could get his hair back. Coupled with his willingness to to con people on a very regular basis, the use of his martial arts skills and panda form to get whatever he wants at the moment pushes his selfishness past neutral levels and into the range of evil.

Kunou - Lawful Good (at least as he sees himself).

I agree here. He is delusional, making his actions quite chaotic, but it is the decisions one makes and the reasons for them that determine your alignment. Within the realms of his delusions, he is the good guy supporting the traditions of the past.

[FriendlyEL]

Kunou - Lawful Good (at least as he sees himself).

That's the problem though. He is delusional and unaware of the world around him to the point that you cannot truly say he has an alignment (To be fair much of the cast has this as well, but he's probably one of the most extreme cases). This implies insanity, which in Dungeons & Dragons alignment is Chaotic Neutral, unless they are malicious in which case they are Chaotic Evil.

As for Genma, I probably was being slightly harsh saying he was "evil" as he is never truly going out of his way to be malicious. But as Wyrd mentioned his sheer selfishness can cause him to knowingly harm people to get what he wants, even people he considers close friends or even family. And by the way, I don't generally view Nabiki particularly malicious either, but is much like Genma very selfish. Does that mean she is not evil?

This is one that I did have somewhat of a hard time deciding on. He seemed to be a borderline case.

[Cheb]

Use the CRPG paradigm where Chaotic/lawful and Evil/Good are measured in a scale -100 to 100