Ranma Saotome (早乙女乱馬 Saotome Ranma?) is the main protagonist and title character of Ranma ½. Ranma can mean "chaotic" or "reckless horse" or "a tangled thread." Saotome means "rice-planting girl".

When asked about the character's origins, Rumiko Takahashi said: "With Ranma ½, I had thought a lot of doing a series with a male/female like protagonist, and since in the greater part of my previous stories the main character had been a woman, I planned to use a man this time. I was worried about wri