Subject: Akane and love
From: "Don Wang" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 04:54:49 -0800

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    I recently read an article on poor female characters and Akane was 
one of the characters brought up.  Now I'm obviously in the Akane camp, 
but I think it brings up a lot of valid points.  It goes without saying 
Akane is *clumsy* in love, and that is fine for a while, but for the 7 
years or so of time that the series portray?  Now that I think about it, 
that really borderlines on stupidity.  How many times does she need to 
be 'in love but can't say it' before it gets boring, if not just stupid?

    Of course, it's not like Ranma is exactly blameless.  I talked to my 
roommate in high school and he says that their relationship would be 
classified as 'falling in love' but not 'love', and it is rather 
childish, since their relationship never progressed to love, minus a few 
select moment.

    I write Ranma 1/2 fanfiction, and I find myself increasingly unable 
to write Akane in a love relationship.  I love writing her in a non 
romantic situation, and Ranma 1/2 has done a respectable job of giving 
her a personality in such conditions.  But in love?  Well, I can write 
it, but it is boring, and it'd be out of character if it's not, so why 
bother?  You can't write anything than either an in character 
stereotypical reaction (Ranma no baka or the like) and if you want to 
write anything interesting, it's pretty much guaranteed to be out of 
character so why use her name?

    On another note, my friend recommended me Fate/Stay Night for a game 
with a real love story after I complained how no one seems to be able to 
do a good love story in games/anime/etc anymore.  Despite the 18+ rating 
this game is Anime and RPG perfection.  I have nothing but awe for this 
great game, and I recommend anyone who can read Japanese check out the 
demo at www.typemoon.com.  As this is one of the most text-intensive 
games I've ever seen (each of the 3 main stories clocks in at hundreds 
of pages a piece just for the important dialogue) it'd be meaningless to 
play this game without being able to understand Japanese at least 
somewhat, though the quality of the story transcends the language 
barrier (but not completely, of course).  I don't think I can ever look 
at CGs the same way after looking at Saber's 2 frame Excalibur animation 
that EASILY surpasses the best CGs consoles or computer has to offer.  
The funny thing is that if her ultimate move had any more frames of 
animation it'd actually look worse...

"Avalon... the promised land I believed in.  Your power shall not 
penetrate this sanctuary!  Come, Promised (Ex) ---- Victory (Calibur)!"
Saber versus Gilgamesh, Fate arc
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