Two Singer-Songwriters Take the Love Triangle
The Season 3 theme song picks lean young. Fumino (ふみの) was a finalist on "No No Girls," the girl-group audition run by BMSG and rapper Chanmina, and debuted on January 11, 2026 as the first artist on NO LABEL ARTISTS, the self-production-focused label Chanmina runs. Her debut single "favorite song" hit No. 9 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, and within half a year she had landed two consecutive TV drama theme songs. She released her first album in September and launched her first solo tour alongside it. Her opening theme, "Sunao Miman" (roughly "Less Than Honest"), is released through NO LABEL ARTISTS and Universal Music. Fumino wrote the lyrics and co-composed the track with SANGWOO and Natsuhiko Okamura, who handled the arrangement together.
In her comment for the release from ShoPro (Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions) on the Japanese press-release service PR TIMES, Fumino said she got hooked on the show while writing the song and tried to fold the two-sidedness everyone carries, and the frustration of not being able to be honest, into the track.
The ending, "Kawaikunai" ("Not Cute"), comes from Yuika (『ユイカ』), a 21-year-old singer-songwriter from Nara. Her 2021 TikTok upload "Suki dakara." caught on with teens, topping a poll of 20,000 teenagers as the love song that most made them want to fall in love. She went major in 2024, sold out her first live show that June, played her first nationwide tour of Zepp venues in 2025, and has now run the "Yuika Asia Tour" two years running as her songs chart on Spotify's viral lists across Asia. She wrote and composed "Kawaikunai" herself, with Ryō Hanai on arrangement, and it goes out through Virgin Music and Universal Music.
Yuika's comment zeroes in on the same beat Fumino picked up on. Beneath all the fantasy elements, she said, Ranma and Akane's inability to be honest with each other is what she related to most, and the show's careful handling of small emotional wobbles convinced her that what people love hasn't changed even in Japan's current Reiwa era. She added that the artists on the Season 1 and Season 2 themes were all people she respects, so she wrote this one determined to stay as close to Ranma 1/2 as she could.
The Trailer Brings Goku and Luffy's Voices to the Tendo Dojo
The third trailer opens with Ryoga being hugged by someone who greets him with "Welcome home, big brother" ("Okaerinasai, onii-chan"). From there, "Kawaikunai" kicks in over a run of scenes centered on the Season 3 romance between Ranma, Akane and Ryoga. Ranma is voiced in his male form by Kappei Yamaguchi and in his female form by Megumi Hayashibara, with Noriko Hidaka as Akane and Kōichi Yamadera as Ryoga.
A "new chapter begins" caption then flips the trailer to the season's newcomers. Tsubasa Kurenai is voiced by Minami Tanaka. Masako Nozawa (Son Goku in Dragon Ball) plays the Iemoto, the head of the Daimonji family's martial-arts tea ceremony school, and Jun Fukuyama (Lelouch in Code Geass) plays Sentaro Daimonji, the school's heir. Two more roles are listed only as "???": one voiced by Mayumi Tanaka (Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece), the other by Saori Hayami (Yor Forger in Spy x Family). Who they play is not disclosed.
The back half of the video switches to Fumino's "Sunao Miman" over the kind of slapstick martial-arts comedy the franchise is built on. The video is the first public airing of both songs, ahead of broadcast.
MAPPA animates Season 3, with Kōnosuke Uda directing (he also serves as sound director), Kimiko Ueno on series composition and Hiromi Taniguchi on character design. The current anime launched in October 2024 as a from-scratch adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi's manga, which ran in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1987 to 1996. Bringing back the original voice cast was a big part of the buzz at launch. Season 2 followed on Nippon TV in October 2025.
A Live Watch Party with Ranma's Two Voices
The official Ranma 1/2 account on X (@ranma_pr) will host a live X Spaces watch party on the night of October 3, 2026, when Episode 25 (the Season 3 premiere) airs. Yamaguchi and Hayashibara will talk over the episode in real time. The stream runs from roughly 12:45 a.m. to 1:40 a.m. JST (Japanese listings give it as 24:45–25:40 on October 3), starting just before the broadcast and continuing through it. The stream is audio only and free; viewers watch the episode on their own TVs while listening. ShoPro notes the lineup and content may change without notice.
Looking Ahead
Ranma 1/2 Season 3 premieres October 3, 2026 on Nippon TV in the late-Saturday-night slot (12:55 a.m. JST, listed in Japan as Saturday 24:55), then rolls out across NTV affiliates nationwide. Netflix streams the season exclusively right after broadcast. The first two seasons streamed worldwide on Netflix week-to-week with English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and other dubs, though ShoPro's release only spells out the Japanese streaming arrangement, so check Netflix's own listing for Season 3's regional timing.
Rumiko Takahashi's original manga is published in English by Viz Media in a 2-in-1 edition. Takahashi was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Hall of Fame in 2018, won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2019, and received France's Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2023. Her works had passed 230 million copies in circulation worldwide as of August 2024.