eating cucumbers without permission...

This image comes from somewhere in Ranma 1/2; I think it’s from the third volume or thereabouts. It’s the first appearance of Shampoo [Xian Pu], a Chinese Amazon currently out to kill girl-Ranma, but added as the wife of boy-Ranma in the following issue.

According to Ranma fanon, those giant lollipop maces she’s carrying are called “bonbori”. The word appears in hundreds of stories, plus character profiles, dictionaries of anime words etc. It’s widespread. It’s entrenched.

I’d taken it at face value until I ran across this author’s note from grookill:

The melon hammer is often called a “bonbori” in Ranma 1/2 fanfictions. I wasn’t sure of the spelling, so I took to the web and did some searching for “bonbori”, and all that I could find were either fanfictions or references to the Bonbori festival in Japan.

Ah, yet another proud example of the wisdom of crowds. According to this FAQ…

[…] I asked a Ranma specialist. His answer was : “They’re bonbori, aren’t they ?” Hey, they mustn’t. “bonbori” is Japanese ancient candlestick. Who can fight in lamps ? (^_^; And then, he asked a weapon specialist, and we got the correct answer at last.
They are so called sui, a Chinese weapon which was made of wood, metal, or wood coated with metal. Fighters use that sphere for offense and defense. Especially, sticking “sui” in front of enemy’s eyes makes the enemy miss them.

You can buy lamps that look very similar to Shampoo’s weapons (which do look just like ornate melon hammers); my guess is that someone made a sarcastic reference to them — “Why is she hitting Ranma with bonbori?” — and nobody got the joke. I’d be interested in more details if anyone has them.

Most Western anime fans can’t speak Japanese, and those that do can’t be faulted for lacking expertise in Asian weaponry, but it’s still amusing.