Ranma Saotome

General description

Extremely fast, agile, acrobatic and flexible. Can attack from just about any position, in just about any situation, in just about any way possible.
Amazingly swift at learning new techniques, he often just takes a few days (a week at most) to learn a new style (set of techniques), and sometimes in just one all-night training session, and has sometimes learned some difficult moves just from seeing them done once.
He can also generate new attacks (from scratch), or based on other moves he knows very well, sometimes almost instantly. Also, very good at analysing opponents styles, attacks and finding out weaknesses - if someone has a weakness, he'll almost certainly find it out and use it.
He's also very strong, and can take a huge amount of damage as well as very determined, and has only once ever come close to giving up - after learning the Hiryü Shöten Ha, and defeating Happosai, he thought he'd never be able to get his strength back because he thought the information was now permanently lost.
He has been taught by Genma since he was practically a baby - in all the flashbacks when he's younger, he's always wearing a gi, even when he was separated from his mother - at about 3. He has also received some training from Cologne, and in the later manga, he either trains by himself, of with his father.
He also often takes a rather relaxed attitude to combat, and doesn't fight all out unless he has to. However, he is prepared to fight anyone and anything (though he doesn't like fighting with girls, weak people or people in a weakened state) and does not appear to be afraid to face death.
While he doesn't use weapons normally, he is very adept with them, and can use just about anything as a weapon. Ranma also sometimes (literally) hangs about eg clinging to the ceiling, or hanging upside-down from the roof-edge, and also often walks and runs about on fences.
He is also very accurate at throwing, for example throwing a small pencil so that the sharpened end gets stuck while trying to go through the hole in the middle of a 50 yen coin from several meters away while clinging to the ceiling (V30.5 p73) and flicks a coin so that it knocks another out of Hinako's hand from several meters away (V25.8 p123). Also, in a rare battle with Akane she (Ranma was female at the time) hit some hoops from a huge chain (each hoop must have weighed 25Kg or so) using a small wooden bat, to very accurately trap Akane's arms and legs (V11.11 p173-4).
In combat, he almost never uses his full strength and abilities (mostly because he doesn't need to), and also he's fast enough that he can attack doing head-height kicks as fast, or faster than most people can with normal punches. Occasionally, he moves his body fast enough that it disappears in a blur, then attacks from another angle.

Estimating maximum power

Using falling approximately 100m while carrying 4 girls (Akane, Shampoo, Pink and Rink) in V29.7 page 113-114. Note, this actually hurts Ranma a lot (laid up in bed for a while), though this was after a particularly strenuous day when Ranma had taken quite a bit of damage. I'm using it though because it's reasonably easy to get a vague idea as to how strong Ranma is in this situation. However this is not necessarily a good example, in determining Ranma's maximum strength as he had been damaged earlier, and this would reduce his strength.

Equating kinetic energy and potential energy to work out speed hit the ground at gives:
gh=v² /2 where v is velocity (m/s), g Earth's gravity (10m/s²), and h change in height (m)
Therefore,
v=sqrt(2.gh)
v=sqrt(2.10.100)
v=sqrt(2000)
v=45 m/s (ignoring air friction and rounding a bit)
Say for example, Ranma used enough strength to deccelerate them in 0.1 seconds then, he would have had to use enough force for a 450m/s² deceleration.
Using F=ma (Force=Mass*Acceleration), and taking total weight to be 300Kg
F=450.300
F=135KN (which is approimatly 100x more than most humans could manage)

Using the Potential Energy equation to estimate power output:
PE=gmh=10.300.100
=300KJouls
Taking energy being done in 0.1 secs, then power:
P=300000/0.1
P=3MWatts
Using the PE equation, to estimate maximum weight he could lift above his head (ie 2m):
PE=gmh Then using: PE=300KJ, g=10, h=2, then m is:
m=PE/gh
m=300,000/10.2
m=15,000Kg
Ie Ranma could lift 15 tons - though not necessarily hold it for a long time. In comparison Lime catches a boulder (V24.10 p154) in one hand which would weigh (taking radius as 1.5m, density as 5tons/m³ ) about 60 tons.

Fist-speed (a la Kachü Tenshin Amaguriken)

Now, in V6 (Viz GN5) when Ranma is fighting Ryöga who's just learned the Bakusai Tenketsu, Ranma hits Ryöga several 100 times so fast it looks like one punch. Now lets say that to do this he punches Ryöga 200 times in 0.1 seconds. From looking at the picture it doesn't look like Ranma's arm movement covers a particularly large distance, say 0.25m each way - punching forwards, and taking the arm back. Therefore each punch takes 0.5m at at rate of 2000/sec. Which means his fists move on average 1000m/s. Now, this is 3 times the speed of sound, though we don't get any sonic booms. Also, since this is the average, the maximum would be higher, say about twice as fast.

Body speed

Ranma is never actually seen to be running especially fast, but I'll use some standard Newton equations to work out how fast he's moving while jumping along at high speed. When he's jumping along, if he's taking off at 45 degree angles, then his horizontal speed will equal his vertical speed. Since vertical acceleration (is a constant (ie g), his speed can be worked out from his height above the ground. Say he jumps about 20m high, then (from earlier equation) his vertical speed will be sqrt(20*10*2)=20m/s, and his actual speed sqrt(20² *2)=28m/s. This is about 3x faster than the fastest runner, and he can keep this up for quite a distance - a couple of 100m doesn't even tire him.

Damage taking ability

When Ranma is learning the Hiryü Shöten Ha, Ryöga happens to punch him into the side of a mountain (V13.7 p106-7) and Ranma makes a crater about 3m wide and 1m deep in solid rock. You could take an estimate of the volume of rock compressed, and how much energy this would require, but I wouldn't know how. Anyway, after taking such a strong punch Ranma is only dazed (not unconscious) and can still fight, and this is also when Ranma has lost his strength.

This was taken from the Ranma 1/2 FAQ website http://www.wot-club.org.uk/RanmaFAQ/. I take no credit because I'm too lazy to write this kind of stuff. I merely fixed some errors. Please visit their site. Preferably within this year.