In a message dated 8/2/99 12:16:47 AM Central Daylight Time, ami@ML.usagi.org 
writes:

<< Or just plain heat.  In the first movie Ranma was surrounded by hot
 water and it was coming up from the ground from all sides so he didn't
 need to do the spiral.  That was how he could do the HSH.  The second
 movie as it is noted, the attack the two sisters used was a spiralling
 heat attack.  Personally, I don't think he even needed Akane and could
 just have fired off the HSH. >>


or you could just realize that all these discrepencies are laced into the 
fact they were anime only ie complete bullshit when it comes to evidence.

U2R