This post contains spoilers for all of Ranma 1/2, which finished airing in the 1990s.

I just recently finished watching the show on Peacock, as you probably guessed from seeing recent images I’ve posted featuring amusing captions/subtitles. There are seven seasons of the show, and it seemed like, as we started getting toward the end, things were going to be resolved. There was an episode where Ryoga’s feelings for Akane are revealed in a letter (that he forgot to sign), so when Akane writes him back and his newly-found dog delivers him the letter he realizes Akane might actually be in love with him. Ryoga then goes off with the dog to continue getting lost across Japan.

But nothing else is resolved. Not Ranma and Akane’s engagement; not Dr. Tofu’s infatuation with Kasumi; neither the Shampoo-Mousse-Ranma triangle nor anything having to do with Ukyo; and even the Kuno family remains unresolved (although they got some resolution when it was discovered that the principal of Furinkan High is Kodachi and Tatewaki’s father). The final episodes of the show are absolutely ridiculous, and not in a good way: Ranma’s mother returns, and Ranma’s father is afraid to reveal himself and his son to her because he vowed to commit seppuku if Ranma wasn’t manly enough by the time they met again.

To be honest, I felt completely cheated by the ending. There was a moment where we thought Ranma might actually meet his mother in his male form and we’d have some sort of resolution, but it doesn’t happen that way and in the end everything goes back to normal. The show ends with Ranma and Akane heading off to school; there’s not even a special ending theme, like most anime series would have.

I am hopeful that the new version of Ranma — currently airing on Netflix in the US — does a better job of wrapping things up when it finally does end, whenever that may be. It’s extremely frustrating to me as a writer when plot threads are left dangling at the end of a show, unless said show was cancelled — which it doesn’t look like happened with the original Ranma 1/2. I know there’s a manga as well, but I don’t read graphic novels (in most cases) so I won’t know if the author completed the various storylines in that medium.

There was so much more that could be done; Ranma and Akane could finally have admitted that they care for each other, even though they might not want to get married. Ranma could have come around and stopped denigrating Akane. There could’ve been some sort of resolution to the transformations caused by falling in the cursed springs of Jusenkyo. Hell, Ranma could’ve started a polyamorous commune with Akane, Shampoo, and Ukyo, and they all could have lived happily ever after.

If there’s one loose thread I could deal without, though, it’s Happosai. I realize that it’s a Japanese cultural thing for old men to be infatuated by young women’s underthings, but it’s just not funny to me. Hopefully they left that out of the new iteration of the show. You can do a lot with Happosai without him being interested in women’s underwear.

Take a lesson from the end of Ranma 1/2. Don’t leave your threads dangling unless you have another season guaranteed or another book coming in your series. You’ll just piss people off.