Character Profile: Shampoo

A cute, uninhibited, acrobatic, ruthless, violent Chinese girl. Fresh from the cursed springs of Jusenkyo, the Jusenkyo guide led a hungry Ranma and Genma to the Joketsuzoku village, where Shampoo was defeating all challengers in their annual contest.

Ranma and Genma sat at a fully laden banquet table and proceeded to eat the food, which turned out to be the first prize in the contest. Challenged by the champion Shampoo, Ranma entered the contest and quickly defeated her. Then Shampoo gave Ranma-chan the kiss of death, a promise to track her to ends of the Earth and kill her, and proceeded to chase Ranma-chan across China trying to kill her.

Shampoo arrives in Tokyo and follows a panda back to the Tendo dojo, where she meets the boy Ranma for the first time. Shampoo attacks Akane for hiding Ranma, so Ranma defends her... accidentally KO'ing Shampoo. But instead of giving Ranma-kun the kiss of death, Shampoo declares her love for him and calls him "husband"!

According to the scriptures of the Joketsuzoku, when defeated by an outsider, if it is a woman you give her the kiss of death and kill her, but if it is a man you marry him.

Ruthless with her rivals, she tries to make Akane forget everything about Ranma by brainwashing her with the special formula 110 shampoo (Ranma uses formula 119 to restore her memory). Crushed when Ranma finally reveals his secret to her and tells her he (Ranma) is really a girl, she goes home and renews her training at Jusenkyo with her great-grandmother Cologne. Cologne knocks her into Maoniichuan, where a cat drowned 1800 years ago. Now assured that Ranma is truly a man, she and Cologne return to Japan and try to get Ranma to fall in love with her, by any means necessary, even magic. Shampoo now waits on tables at the Neko Hanten, her great-grandmother's Chinese restaurant, and delivers ramen by bicycle, occasionally running down people on the streets and rooftops.

According to the website Ranma ½ Perfect Edition, the kanji in Shampoo's name are "San" for "stagger; loneliness; centimeter" and "pu" (the Ping Ying reading of it anyway) for "uncut gem; unpolished gem," which could speak of her abrasive personality. The real pun in Shampoo's name though, is that all the Chinese characters are named after beauty products, such as Mousse and Cologne.