Akane Tendo (Ranma 1/2)

Akane Tendo (天道 あかね Tendō Akane?) is the leading female and deuteragonist of Ranma ½. She is the youngest of Soun Tendo's three daughters and one of the heirs to the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts. In the Krazy Kids series, she transfers to Howard D. McMillan High School and is the host of the Martial Arts Club.

Appearance
Akane is the shortest of the main characters, being shorter than Ranma Saotome in his male form, but about the same height as his cursed form. She has short black hair (blue highlighted in the anime) and brown eyes. At the beginning of the series she had long hair, but after it was cut off during a fight between Ryoga Hibiki and Ranma, she kept it short for the rest of the series.

She usually wears the girls' uniform for Furinkan High School, but has a wide variety of outfits. For training or anticipated combat, Akane wears a light yellow gi and is barefoot.

Personality
While Akane is generally shown as compassionate and helpful towards anyone in trouble, she's also a vulnerable, stubborn, relentless and very short-tempered girl. She frequently becomes angry and jealous, and is apt to hit Ranma when this happens, often a reaction to Ranma's own bad traits like his smart mouth and insensitivity, but also due to rampant paranoia and willingness to generally believe the worst of the situations she finds him in. Despite her temper, Akane has a more prominent gentle side. She has come to the aid of her rivals, even consistently feeling compassion towards or helping people who try to make her life miserable (or in the first case even kill her), like Shampoo, Happosai or Kuno. She has repeatedly expressed extreme disapproval in attacking or hurting anyone unable to defend him or herself, and refrained from striking Ranma or Sebastian Mengoni when one is turned into a small child despite being insulted. She has also apologized for her behavior, once she has had time to cool down or learn the facts, and consistently risked her own life trying to help Ranma without a second thought, showing extreme courage in this regard given her own comparatively limited skills/increased danger. For example, she chose to use a magic paper doll to take the damage for Ranma rather than herself, when both were bitten by lethally poisonous snake-herbs/wines, effectively consciously trading her life for his, and entered the Orochi's mouth in an effort to save him from being eaten.

Most of her flaws can be attributed to insecurities about her own attractiveness, skill, or lack of traditionally feminine talents. Despite this, she seems to have an appeal to the opposite gender. Ryoga, Shinnosuke, Kuno and Gosunkugi have all been in love with her and she's considered attractive by her schoolmates, but given that she seems generally, but not consistently, oblivious to the first case and the others have largely been of a highly negative nature (constant assaults from Kuno and sports club members, general stalking from Gosunkugi) this has not served to build up her self-esteem. Her insecurity often leads her to overreact upon finding Ranma in compromising positions and to punt, repeatedly whack, stomp, or attack him with bokken, shinai, mallets, arrows, stones, tables or any other available blunt object. Ranma seldom seems injured in the following panels, but in the Reversal Jewel story, she punched him so hard into the horizon that he was in a full body cast. Although in the anime this was also due to sustaining a follow-up beating from Kuno and Ryoga.

She's also once stated a remarkable double-standard in this regard as she was burning with outrage and vowed to never forgive him if he deigned to strike her even once during her relentless assault while wearing a 'battle dougi' that greatly enhanced her fighting power. During the 'Nabiki's fiancé' arc she got upset just from overhearing an affirmation that a dejected Ranma found this treatment very taxing (though she only clobbered him after he derisively insulted her as well), so while she's remorseful about specific instances, and has gradually strengthened her restraint as the series progresses, she doesn't stop the pattern as a whole.

Akane has difficulty trying to sort out her feelings for Ranma. There are times when she is on the verge of telling him how she really feels, but this is almost always interrupted by comedic circumstances, and they return to their usual barbs and antics, but she is consistently worried when he is endangered and overjoyed when he turns up safe.

Akane does have a need for being comforted when sad or scared, but they are both usually too uncomfortable to interact in this manner. Unlike most other main female characters, she's expressed great, traditionally 'feminine', fears of ghosts or reptiles and can be extremely frightened simply from a scary story, being in a casino, or imagining Kuno drugging girl Ranma.

Despite not being as technically skilled as several other characters in martial arts, she takes pride in her legacy and position as the scion of her father's Tendo-Ryu, and never backs off from a fight or rejects a challenge.

Akane seems to get along well with people who are technically her rivals, like Ukyo and Cologne. She tends to be naive in often wishing to believe the best of everyone even when repeatedly proven to the contrary, as with Nabiki or Shampoo. The two most notable exceptions are Ranma and Kuno. In the former case attributed to her own insecurities being fueled by regular insults and the very awkward and chaotic semi-relationship, and in the latter due to intense harassment.

Ranma easily owes Akane his life several times over (though the opposite holds true as well). She is kind, helpful, self-sacrificing, forgiving and somewhat naive towards people in general, even technical enemies, being the only character in the series who can almost match Kasumi in her ordinary mood. She's also very appreciative if Ranma treats her with consideration, and is consistently worrying about, cheering him on, or going to extremes to assist him. When severely upset however, she undergoes a bipolar shift into a state of arrogant derogatory insults, unreasonable paranoia and self-righteous violence, on average treating Ranma worse than his arrogant and extremely insensitive behavior justifies, but she can just as swiftly switch back to being very kind again and make a shamefaced apology whenever she realizes a mistake. Kasumi’s initial assessment that "She's really a very sweet girl. She's just a violent maniac." has consistently held true, if usually only in Ranma's case. That said, Ranma has also been beaten up several times by his other paramours, Akane is simply around him more often. It is also more evident in the anime than in the manga.

In Krazy Kids, she has a huge crush on Bryan Gul due to him having the ability to defend himself. She would often cling to him for love, but due to Bryan's hatred of clinginess, he starts to run away from her occsasionally.

Trivia

 * Despite popularity with many of the male characters in the series, Akane initially claims to hate boys, possibly due to her initial views on them as being chauvinistic, arrogant, genderist, egotistical, perverted, deceiving etc. Some of these regards to Ranma Saotome, Tatewaki Kuno and Happosai and a few possible exceptions to these are Ryoga and Dr. Tofu.
 * The Spring of Drowned Akane at Jusenkyo was not a pre-existing cursed spring, but was created by Kiima in order to impersonate Akane to seduce Ranma and recover the Kinjakan. As such, it does not have a Chinese name. It is unknown if the spring was sealed/destroyed afterwards, or if anyone could potentially use it.
 * In the English dubbed version of the anime, Kasumi Tendo's "violent maniac" quote in reference to Akane's nature is replaced with "she's a very sweet girl, she's just a little high-spirited".
 * Noriko Hidaka (Akane's Japanese voice actress) would voice Kikyo in Rumiko Takahashi's subsequent series Inuyasha.
 * In Takahashi's subsequent manga series Inuyasha, one of Kagome Higurashi's best friends at school is also named Yuka in the anime.
 * Akane shares similar traits with Kagome Higurashi from Takahashi's subsequent series Inuyasha such as their violent tendencies towards the main protagonists as well as punishing said protagonists in one way or another should they anger them.
 * In one of Akane's dreams in Nightmare! Incense of Spring Sleep, it is revealed that she has a slight fear of Kodachi, Ukyo, and Shampoo, but this might be because of the side effects of the incense.
 * Akane's hair has gotten shorter in The Ova's.
 * Akane makes a cameo in episode 4 of Kyokai no Rinne, another work of Takahashi, as a doll in a claw machine, along with Ranma, P-chan, Genma's panda form and Lum from Urusei Yatsura.