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*Skips all the martial arts posts*

Colin Keefe says:

>Well, I can speak of my own personal experiences... I got into
Ranma not aware of Akari and Konatsu, and indeed, only found
out about them after I had already formed some preconcieved
notions about Takahashi's pairings.... in that Ryouga and
Ukyou, since they were the only ones without pairs, should be a
couple.<

Yes, I have to agree with you here. One of the things that made me wonder 
about that is that by the manga, Takahashi seemed to contemplate the idea of 
pairing Ryoga and Ukyo early on and later scrapped it. Ukyo's introduction 
didn't need Ryoga that much, she could have used Kuno in her 'date plot', Not 
that Kuno would be a nice choice, but it could have been done.
 

Then there's the way Ryoga and Ukyo met; their fight scene had that 'these 
characters will be a couple' flavor Takahashi sometimes uses. There's also 
the onsen race in the Zekkyo springs; which I used to believe was the story 
arc that established who would get paired with who in the end. 
 

Then I remembered the 'Tunnel of lost love' story wich was presented later in 
the manga. I believe Takahashi used Ryoga and Ukyo there just to please fans. 
It is quite possible she was already thinking about introducing Akari and 
Konatsu and Takahashi just wanted to give the fans one last glimpse of what 
Ryoga and Ukyo as a couple would look like; but by this point in the manga 
both characters, as I see it, had very little in common to pair them up 
without an insane ammount of job.
 

>Of course, people can go on and on about how wrong Ryouga and
Ukyou are together, and to be honest, I have to agree with
them. However, I still remember thinking back when I was first
into the series that you know, these two lonely hearts deserve
each other....< 

Same here. I guess it was probably easier for Takahashi to introduce two new 
characters instead of figuring out a way to pair two already existing ones 
that had very little interaction between them.
 

Facer.



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