GURPS Martial Arts as a reference

[Maximara]

While this board is request for information I thought I would be a good idea to provide a possible reference (or rather two): GURPS Martial Arts. The reason I say two is there are two editions of this book -- GURPS Classic and GURPS 4th edition.

These books were made to create martial styles for RPGs but they can also serve as a reference so see what real world styles the Ranma cast may have gotten their styles from. In some respects the older book is the better for style names and descriptions as several of them didn't get to the later edition but the later book is better organized in terms of inventing a new style and the styles that did get carried over are better descripbed.

For example, Mousse's "hidden arts style" seems to be a variant of An Ch'i and Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū (ie anything goes) is merely a beefed up cinematic version of Bruce Lee's Jeet Kun Do with a little of Cinematic Pakua and Pak Hok thrown in. However An Ch'i and Pakua are only described in the Classic edition but the 4th edition's description of Jeet Kun Do is IMHO better and Pak Hok only appears in the 4th edition.

Similarly, while Kuno is often stated to be a Kundoist his weapon of choice (bokken) implies he is more a Kenjutsuist. "It [Kendo] is to real-life swordmanship what fencing is to swash bulking swordplay. Many Kendo maneuvers will get killed in real combat" (GURPS Martial Arts Classic edition)

The books are good if you have plans for Ranma to face or add many other styles. On a side note, most of the style in Ranma seem to pull from Pakua concept of Ki-Chi mastery though not much else.

[three headed dog]

merely a beefed up cinematic version of Bruce Lee's Jeet Kun Do

That makes sense since Takahashi did say:
"I used to watch a lot of Jackie Chan movies. There is also, of course, Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon"

Also in the same interview she says that Spiderman was an influence: Takahashi said (Amazing Hero's 1990) that she really liked spiderman during her junior highschool years (also that she collects the comic Animerica Vol. 9 No. 6)