HK:

> Jesse (thought you left this debate...):

Yeah, I did, and I will again after this, but I wanted to point out a
pretty glaring error here that isn't really subjective like some of
the other points.

> Yes, I know - what I'm saying is that she mainly seems to be jumping
> upwards in the panel where she's shouting, "Pop, get back here!", rather
> than forwards, so I came to the conclusion that she's not going very fast.  

Do you really think Ranma stopped before jumping?  I doubt very much
he'd stop chasing his father, especially since you'll get more
distance if you run and jump, anyway.  Unless you're claiming this,
then he is travelling at the same horizontal speed that he was running
(at least 10 miles/hour).  Judging by the angle at which Ranma's body
is when he hits Ryoga, I'd say he's moving at a roughly 45 degree
angle.  

> Oh yeah, and there's no 'speed lines' in the impact scene, which there
> probably would have been if she had been moving fast (as everyone keeps
> saying, 'Takahashi is fond of drawing a lot of unneeded effects').  This
> could be attributed to the fact that it's a 'simple picture' (which may
> also be why we don't see Ryoga going 'urk' or something), and just doesn't
> have any unneeded detail in it.

I suspect the latter is the case.  It's like when they show a still
frame of a collision in anime sometimes - kind of a freeze in time
scene.  It's not the motion of Ranma that is significant in that
panel, it's the fact that Ryoga got knocked aside.  IIRC (I don't hang
the manga handy), there's no background drawn in either... 

Also, I don't think Takahashi draws many more "unneeded" effects than
most other manga artists.  

>>>> (I suggest you borrow someone's physics book, and read the sections on
>>>> velocity, acceleration, and the equations for falling and moving
>>>> objects, before making up such impossibly small numbers)
>> 
>>> Ranma wasn't moving forward nearly as fast as you'd like to think she was.
>> 
>> Oh... well, I guess that settles that, then.

> <ponder>  Not quite sure how to interpret that statement...

It was a somewhat sarcastic comment on how you ignored the advice to
consult a physics book, and didn't offer any argument except to say
"No.  You're wrong."

-- 
Jesse Smith
jdsmith@wco.com
http://www.wco.com/~jdsmith/
"God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." - Robert Browning