MAPPA's Ranma 1/2 remake has a date for its third season, and the cast news attached to it is the part worth stopping on. Season 3 premieres October 3rd, and Masako Nozawa is joining.
The show keeps its slot. Nippon TV, Saturdays at 24:55 JST, with Netflix picking it up right after broadcast, which is how it's worked since the remake began.
The Cast Additions
Nozawa is the headline. If you've watched more or less any shonen anime of the last forty years you've heard her, most famously as Goku, and she's playing the Grand Master of the Daimonji tea-ceremony school. Jun Fukuyama comes in as Sentaro Daimonji and Minami Tanaka takes Tsubasa Kurenai.
Mayumi Tanaka and Saori Hayami are also joining. There's a lot of speculation about the series, and I would take it with a grain of salt. Both are enormous names, but their roles weren't disclosed during the announcement. Nothing official has attached either of them to a character yet.
Konosuke Uda is back directing. Kappei Yamaguchi and Noriko Hidaka return as Ranma and Akane, which is what makes the remake work. Yamaguchi voiced Ranma in the original 1989 series, and being able to get him back wasn't guaranteed.
Three Seasons In Three Years
Season 1 aired October to December 2024. Season 2 aired October to December 2025. Season 3 arrives October 2026. MAPPA has turned Ranma into an annual autumn fixture for the last three years.
That consistency is important for a studio that has taken plenty of heat over its schedule elsewhere.
Rumiko Takahashi's original manga ran from 1987 to 1996 and has over 55 million copies in circulation. It's part of a body of work that passed 230 million worldwide in 2024. The 1989 anime is the version most Western fans are familiar with. The remake's pitch was that the material deserved a modern production rather than a nostalgia trip, and three straight renewals suggest Netflix and Nippon TV agree.
Ranma Saotome falls into a cursed spring on a training trip and comes out changing into a girl whenever he's hit with cold water, hot water changes him back, and he's engaged to Akane Tendo whether either of them likes it. Takahashi ran that setup for nine years and had no trouble coming up with stories.
The remake works in tight seasonal cours off material that's already written, and it has stayed noticeably closer to the manga's pacing than the 1989 series managed once that one ran long enough to drift into filler.
Nozawa's casting fits that. A Grand Master of a tea-ceremony school is the sort of part the original series would have handed to a comic heavyweight, and Nozawa turns 90 in October, three weeks after the premiere, with no sign of slowing down.
That 24:55 JST slot is technically Sunday morning on the calendar, which is why you'll see both October 3rd and October 4th floating around. Same broadcast, Japanese late-night clock.
Which arc are you hoping Season 3 gets to, and is Nozawa's casting the flex it looks like?
Let us know in the comments below!
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