Animate Times published a joint interview with Megumi Hayashibara, who voices Ranma's female form, and Noriko Hidaka, who voices Akane Tendo, on October 5, 2026, marking the start of Ranma 1/2 season 3. The season began airing on Nippon TV on October 3, 2026, Saturdays at 24:55 JST, rolling out across the Nippon TV network in stages, with exclusive streaming on Netflix immediately after broadcast.
The cast is returning to the series after some 30 years, and Hidaka said that everyone felt a certain weight because of it. Since the season opens with Ranma's female form, she added, Hayashibara carried a share of her own. Hayashibara said she went into Ranma's first appearance in episode 1 feeling as though getting through that scene would mean everything was finished, and that for that episode alone she rewatched not only the manga but the earlier anime. Most of her effort went into what she called a purely technical matter: tuning her voice back to the key she had used back then. Only from episode 2, with the first episode behind her, did the work become enjoyable. She described the new season as having a softer, gentler tone, and said she kept that in mind while building her performance.
At the time of the original production, Hayashibara said, the studio side had not been without a proposal to have a single actor play the part, but the decision was made to go with the two of them, and episode 1 started on that basis. The sound direction for the female form was very detailed: cute, with a high voice, and she was told to go higher and higher. That created a practical problem, since a cute voice made it hard to kick, while tensing up made her sound like a boy. Over the long original run, she said, male Ranma and female Ranma gradually came to sound alike, so in the later stretch her voice was much lower and sounding like a boy was acceptable, with the pitch pushed up only when the character used being a girl to her advantage. For the first episode of the new season, she held herself to that earlier memory.
Hidaka said the more serious material in season 1 stands out to her now. With the new season full of the gag exchanges and strong personalities the series is known for, she almost wonders what to make of threads such as Akane's girlish feelings for her first love, Tofu Ono, voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa. That stretch of the show has a different flavor, she said, and she remembers it fondly. She also pointed to Akane's sense of inferiority as a younger sister who could not be like Kasumi, voiced by Kikuko Inoue. Akane had grown her hair out of a wish to be like her older sister, Hidaka said, and after cutting it she began walking on her own feet. Hayashibara said the Akane who wanted to be someone else was gone.
Asked how Akane feels when Tofu appears again later in the story, Hidaka said she thinks Akane is no longer thrown by him. Hayashibara added that Akane still admires him and stays on her best behavior in front of him, while with Ranma she has no need to be a good girl and can simply be herself.
Hidaka said Hayashibara's tuning was so precise from episode 1 that she and her co-stars wondered whether they themselves were up to it.