I've been tossing this idea around for a while, might as well post it
here, for this is one of the last public communities I know of that still
has some semblance of intelligence (tOWS went down hard last month when
reality caught up to ideals...)

    I'm not sure how many of you actually played Chrono Cross, but I thought
it'd be kind of interesting to write Kid in the environment of Ranma 1/2.
Kid seems to have a liking for the present 2000 AD Tokyo, and Ranma 1/2 is
more normal than most Anime inspired universes I can think of that she might
want to visit.  I want to see if I can capture her spirit that Mitsuda, the
composer of The Girl who Stole a Star and Radical Dreamers understood, but
the plot writers did not.  I don't think there's a more misrepresented
character ever.  She not only has to fight against some of the worst
translation to ever see the face of the RPG history (perhaps someone more
knowledgable in Japanese can verify this, but I'm almost certain she talks
like, say, Ryoko of Tenchi Muyo, as opposed to, um... bum off the street),
but she's also caught in the storywriter's stupid pursuit to surprise an
audience.  Of course you cannot understand who Kid really is, because she
was never allowed to be herself by the plotwriters so you cannot understand
her until the very end.

    Anyway, enough fanboyish rambling from me.  Here's the part I think you
can understand without even knowing who Kid is.  I used to play around with
the idea of writing a 'normal' friend for Akane, but I couldn't find
anything really exciting going on because everything in Ranma 1/2 revolves
around Ranma.  I think I want to try this with Ranma.  For obvious reasons
ordained by Chrono Cross Kid will never fall in love with Ranma (actually, I
might just take a shot at breaking her up with Serge somewhere else... Serge
doesn't deserve her!), but Ranma is the kind of person she'd like to be
friends with, I'd think.  She's an intangible personality to write, for
though on the surface she seems to be like Akane, upon closer inspection one
finds that she is not trying to hide either of her sides.  She's gentle and
she's wild, and usually both at the same time.  I want to write about Ranma
1/2 and not about its cliches, including romance.  I suppose it might not
really be Ranma 1/2, but I always wondered how Ranma would react to someone
who is completely outside of the mess that is his life.  I think Kid will
enjoy following Ranma around, because she loves adventure, and adventure
abound around Ranma.  She doesn't even have to be necessarily powerful (the
game stats suggest she sucks, though the plot indicates that she should be
quite a capable fighter).  She's even similar to Ranma in style, I'd think.
Not so much as doing whatever it takes to win, but like the Anything Goes
School she seems to be more focused on agility and technique over brute
force.  It's hard to imagine that slender body of hers can win by brute
force.  I think Ranma could use someone who is just a friend and not after
him for anything in particular.

    Ultimately, I'm toying around with the idea that, although the English
translation mistranslated the Frozen Flame as the Unstealable Gem, it is an
interesting connection.  The Frozen Flame is a promiser of miracles and
grants power to those who hold it, but it is ever so elusive and denies the
grasp of all those who seeks it, except the girl who's born from the same
flame, Kid.  Perhaps she too, is the Frozen Flame.  Its existence is an
oxymoron, and Kid's existence shows a similar pardoxical truth.  Take the
girl at the opening at the Sands of Time, and take the same picture at the
ending at the Sands of Time, how can they possibly be the same person?  And
yet both of those two contradictory images are Kid, and she never tried to
hide either.  Obviously you can't just touch her and have your wish granted
like the inanimate counterpart, but Kid makes miracles happen.  If Serge is
really the Arbiter of Time as his list of cool nouns indicate, then Kid
ought to be the Goddess of Fate.  The battle before Lynx, the save game file
reads, "For whom does the Goddess of Fate smile?"  And it's actually a
simple answer if the Goddess of Fate is an allusion to Kid (who should've
been a central part in that battle, but poor story writing made what should
be their most important adventure into... well... something else), for she
always smile upon Serge no matter what happens.  I think you can see where
I'm going with this, for Ranma would obviously want to get a cure for his
curse, but how can he catch a girl who has eluded the grasp of even time
itself?

    Well, it'd probably be a while before I actually get anything concrete
down, but then again, you never know.

    By the way, I've been writing two short pieces on Kid, one trying to
capture the side with the cheerful, optimistic girl with the power to heal
the world, and the other one trying to capture a darker side of her... that
girl that forsaken the safety of the world as her defiant answer to a world
that did not love her.  If anyone is interested in reading them, I can send
them over email or something (as always, everything I write is subject to
change, but since these pieces are very short, I think they're less likely
to change than others).

Don