After a particularly destructive fight inside Furinkan High’s gymnasium between Ranma and Ryoga, principal Kuno has finally the perfect excuse to get rid of his son’s nemesis and expels him. Unfortunately, due to Furinkan’s bad reputation and Ranma’s notoriety no school around is willing to accept him.
This doesn’t sit well with Nodoka, who doesn’t want to have a dropout as a son and sees only one possibility for him to finish school: sending him to her old school, Tootsuki Culinary Academy. She knows that cooking is not a career Ranma has ever envisioned, but Tootsuki is probably the only school that will expect him. As a former 3rd seat it shouldn’t be too difficult to get her son accepted, especially since his cooking is quite good. With her coaching it shouldn’t be too difficult for turn him into an excellent cook, especially if he puts as much effort into that discipline as he did into martial arts. She could even apply there as a teacher to keep an eye on her son.
Genma is not very happy with Nodoka’s decision as it would keep him away from Akane and Ranma is of two minds. On the one hand he doesn’t want to leave the Tendos as he’d miss Akane and the others, although he’d rather die than ever admit it, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to disappoint his mother.
He asks the Tendos for their opinion and Nabiki says right away that she doesn’t care. Soun is not very happy as it could possibly jeopardize the plan to get the children married, and Akane pretends that she doesn’t care as it’s Ranma’s life and that he has the right to do whatever he wants. Kasumi on the other hand, much to no one’s surprise wholeheartedly approves of the idea, especially as at one point she would have liked to attend Tootsuki herself, but didn’t want to abandon her family.
Nodoka calls the headmaster of Tootsuki and after explaining the situation Ranma gets accepted on a probationary basis. Nodoka also manages to get Kasumi enrolled without telling her. It would be criminal to let the young woman’s culinary talents go to waste. Thankfully Tootsuki had quite a unique curriculum and age didn’t really matter. She was sure that Kasumi would do well and graduate after a few months and in the meantime she could help Ranma.
Things start slowly, without any of the usual chaos in Ranma’s life. Nodoka got a job as a teacher for traditional Japanese cuisine and Kasumi does very well herself, impressing all the teachers with her skills. Unfortunately, the good times don’t last and very soon Shampoo and Ukyo apply for a scholarship and with their great skills get easily accepted and Kodachi throws some money around and gets accepted too.
And Tootsuki will never be the same.
Since cooking duels and improving one’s skills is practically what Shokugeki no Soma is all about, crossing it with Ranma ½ shouldn’t be too difficult, especially since Ranma starts out as a rookie and is in the beginning no match for the big names at the Academy. However, under Nodoka’s and Kasumi’s tutelage he improves very quickly.
Now, the big problem with this story is Akane. There’s simply no way to have her attend Tootsuki Academy. I doubt that Soun would let Ranma leave without Akane, but I can’t imagine Akane leaving her life and her friends at Furinkan quite behind. A possible solution would be to have Soun ask Kasumi to act as a chaperone and keep hm away from other girls.
At first I wanted Kasumi to have been a former Tootsuki Alumni, but there would be no way to come up with a plausible reason for Ranma and Genma not to be aware of that.