> > Namely, the long-running
> > Nodoka stories, Herb, Lime and Mint, the Shinnosuke
> > arc, Hinako Ninomiya
> Yeah, that's a good point, the Herb story arc is
> pretty cool, as is the Shinnosuke one. Maybe Ranma is
> not doomed after all.

    Herb story is no more special than the Hiryu Shoten Ha story arc.  So
far as character development is concerned, I'd say it's worse than HSH.

    There's absolutely nothing interesting about Nodoka's presence.  She's
just there, like a lot of the other people.

    Shinnosuke story arc is around volume 27 or so.  I think they're on
around volume 19 right now in the GNs.

    Out of all the people I know that watches Anime/Manga, only one person
is still buying GNs, and he's getting pretty frustrated after waiting for
who knows how long, paying way too much for what GNs are really worth, only
to have another generic volume of Ranma 1/2.  It's okay when you're reading
volume 1-38 all at once to have your generic story, but that doesn't work
when you've been waiting for a long time for the new one only to find that
it's like every other one you've read so far.  Sure the Anime club still
watches Ranma 1/2 OAVs which we show to fill in the odd half an hour we've
left over after a movie, but then again, they'd watch just about anything.

    Ranma 1/2, in general, is a very consistent average manga.  No one
volume is particularly better than any other, though of course there are
exceptions.  That works when a new volume comes out every 2-3 months, but
not at the rate the English GNs are coming out.  It's for that reason I
stopped buying Inuyasha when an unknown delay caused volume 18 to be late by
about 4-5 months than usual.

    Frankly, why are you guys so surprised?  The series ended a *long* time
ago in Japan, and it's certainly not getting any huge following in the US.
Even if it had the potential, with the rate Viz pumps out GN you can be
pretty sure most people will move on, and that's exactly what happened.

Don