Michael:
> There is good fan fiction and there is bad fan
> fiction.  How many classic anime series still have a
> rather large community of fans writing fan fiction for
> it?  Not many as I can see.  While Ranma 1/2 may not
> be in the same category as the original Gundam,
> Macross, or G-Force (not the original name for that
> anime, I forgot what that was) but its still a classic
> none the less.  It was born from the mind of Rumiko
> Takahashi, the mind that created Inuyasha and before
> Ranma there was Urusei Yatsura...a series that defined
> the "Awkward in Love" anime/manga genre.

	A classic isn't indicated by its current popularity or sales,
otherwise Yugioh would be an instant classic.  Not that I dislike Yugioh,
mind you, but to be called a classic, it has to have actual merit and
withstand the test of time.  I don't really see people getting Ranma 1/2
after it stopped serializing/anime translation.  

	As for Ranma 1/2 fanfiction, I think it's just a really
writer-friendly environment.  Ranma 1/2 actually takes places in somewhere
that remotely resembles reality.  Despite all its zaniness and crazy
supernatural things going on, it's still a story about people and their
interactions.  It's, ultimately, a story about real-life, even though the
characters are hardly normal, and thus it's a friendly environment to write
in.  Because Ranma 1/2 takes place in *real life*, for better or for worse,
you can pretty much relate anything in reality to it.

> I write mostly Ranma 1/2 fan fiction, and I have many
> more Ranma centric fics planned for the future after
> my current batch are finished.  I use the manga as a
> reference when studying the personality of a character
> because you see so much more of it in Takahashi-san's
> work.  The stories and situations are so much more
> interesting in the manga rather than the anime which
> deviated from the canon of the manga soon after the

	The manga isn't exactly the center of character development.  Aside
from Akane, all Ranma 1/2 characters are more or less 1-Dimensional, and
Akane isn't 1-dimensional because she's more like 1-dimensionally normal so
there's some fluctuations to her personality, as opposed to everyone else
being just 1-D extreme.

> first season.  I was disappointed that two very
> powerful stoires from the manga were overlooked when
> the anime and the movies were made.  These are the
> Prince Herb and Saffron Sagas.  Ryogenwara, the forest

	Herb and Saffron are the generic superhero sagas, and they're a
cheap but perhaps effective way to develop drama.  It is easy for heroes to
act brave and move their relationship along in the face of death.  

	It is far braver for Akane to show some signs of nicety (and she
actually does this a lot) over any little thing, then hugging Ranma or even
saying I love you after she and Ranma just had a close encounter with death.
Take the onsen race.  There's no pressure, no struggle with death (well,
Akane can't swim, but it's not like her life was ever in danger).  But she
still has the courage to tell Ranma she's glad to help him and so on, and
likewise Ranma, in a very rare moment, acknowledges Akane's kindness openly
without having some dramatic near-death encounter.  That says a lot more
about their relationship than the I love you after Ranma thought Akane died.


	It is easy to laugh at the face of death when you are at the face of
death because there's not much to choose from.  It's quite a bit harder to
laugh at the face of death when you're given a choice to avoid it.
Dramatic, near-death encounters are sometimes necessary, but they should not
be the only source of character development.

Don
"So tell me why is it a bad thing for a girl to come to a boy's room alone
at night?"
Illyasviel Von Einzbern, not that she doesn't know the answer. :)

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