Happosai



Happosai (八宝斎, Happōsai?) is the founder and grandmaster of Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū (無差別格闘流?, School of Indiscriminate Grappling). He often alternates comically between his role as an evil grandmaster and a more playful role as a sexual pervert. As a very hedonistic short, old man, he openly makes perverse activities his proud hobbies (much to the shame of his own disciples), committing indecencies willfully such as groping women, peeping at women bathing or undressing, and stealing lingerie (he is often found carrying a big sack of lingerie leaping from house to house). He goes into withdrawals if he is unable to participate in such activities, which causes him to almost die at one point. He attempts to model himself as former ladykiller, but in reality, he was turned down by every woman in the Amazon village, including Cologne, during his youth. He is very sadistic and vengeful, using his two students, Genma and Soun, as slaves and attempting to cripple Ranma for life by taking away his strength. Nevertheless, considering that both Soun and Genma have shown themselves to be powerful Martial Artists, have displayed abilities similar to Happosai, coupled with that their master returned to the Tendo Dojo to train either of them as an official heir to his school, this implies that Happosai did afford Soun and Genma at least some advanced training (though evidently nowhere near enough to outweigh all the injustices he dealt them).

Despite his small stature and age, Happosai is arguably the, by far, most powerful known martial artist in the entire series. Even without employing special techniques, he is able to effortlessly defeat Ranma, Ryoga, Genma and Soun combined within seconds, or overpower Taro's monster form with a single finger. His defining and most often employed weapons are cannonball-like fuse bombs, ranging from regular to small house-sized, which he can seemingly instantly conjure out of nowhere when needed. He possesses knowledge in ancient martial arts techniques, near-forgotten pressure points on a human body, recipes for alchemical concoctions with various effects, and knowledge of many Chinese and Japanese magical artifacts. Other techniques include turning his body substance similar to air for invisibility, chi-blasts, momentum negation or redirection, and crippling fear generation. He has an enormously powerful large skyscraper-sized battle-aura (looking like a giant version of himself), which allows him to increase the scale of his fighting to great kaiju proportions for prolonged periods of time, and pushes him far out of the league of virtually any other character. Ranma and his fellow fighters have wisely optioned to simply stay out of sight and run for their lives on the rare occasion when the grandmaster has been in this mode. His main weaknesses are that he is seldom remotely serious and he is susceptible to sucker-attacks while he is distracted by lingerie and women.

Happosai is voiced by Ichirō Nagai in the Japanese anime and by Paul Dobson in English.[19] &nbsp