Popverse's top stories of the day

• Dune: Prophecy creators promise to bring the "complexity" and "grand scale" of Frank Herbert's books and Denis Villeneuve's movies to TV
• Marvel's TV head says there's "absolutely" a future for Jon Bernthal's Punisher after his Daredevil: Born Again appearance
• Meet the Grim Reaper of The Walking Dead TV show cast, and what goes into killing someone off in the show

Anime remakes are becoming more common, but one of the most exciting is the Ranma ½ remake coming as part of the Fall 2024 anime season. More than 30 years after the first anime series finished airing, MAPPA is making its own anime adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi’s iconic shonen manga. The Ranma ½ release date is rapidly approaching, with Netflix bringing the series to international fans.

The new Ranma ½ anime series was first announced in June 2024 and is being produced by MAPPA, the studio behind Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, and the last few seasons of Attack on Titan. Though the first 12 episodes were leaked online earlier this year, the Ranma ½ remake series will debut on Netflix on October 5, 2024.

It might seem odd that Ranma ½ is returning so long after the original series aired, but it is important to remember that the manga actually ran until 1996, four years after the first anime adaptation wrapped up. While some of the stories in subsequent chapters would be turned into films and OVAs, this is an opportunity for MAPPA to adapt Ranma ½ with the benefit of hindsight, fixing some of the pacing issues and potentially covering the full run of the story.

The only issue is whether we’ll get the full run of Ranma ½ in this new anime adaptation. The manga had more than 400 chapters across 38 volumes, making more than enough content for multiple seasons. MAPPA is notorious for taking several years between seasons or outright cancelling projects that have gone on too long, so hopefully the same fate doesn’t befall Ranma ½.

The new Ranma ½ anime will debut on October 5, 2024 on Netflix.

Each week, Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• How Jujutsu Kaisen subverted Shonen tropes to become one of the most popular manga of all-time
• A World without Goku: How Akira Toriyama's death could make Dragon Ball Daima the end of Goku's story
• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why I don't talk about Rurouni Kenshin as an anime journalist
• The anime industry grew 22% in 2023 - here is why we think it happened
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead