Hi Gary, 

You raise some very, very good points, here.

Matthew Campbell <mgcampb@clemson.edu> wrote:

Now, Ranma and Akane are going to married.  Shampoo hears about it.  By 
all that she thinks she knows, these two do _not_ want to get married.  
Their parents must be forcing them.  Even if she didn't love Ranma, even 
if she didn't love him at all......  Ranma saved her from the ghost cat. 
She owes him a debt, and now it's time to repay that debt.  She'll stop 
the wedding, the wedding that Ranma has repeatedly told her that he 
_does_ not want.

This isn't directly related to the argument here, but... Bob, Matthew...
have either of you actually *read* the ghost cat story? The only thing
Ranma did to "save" Shampoo is to beat up Genma when the cat possessed
him. Looks to me like a convenient excuse to pound dear old Dad. Nor did
it seem to me that Shamps was in any real danger; the cat seemed pretty
incompetent.

I think someone else took care of this one, but I was referring to the story
arc where the Cat Ghost tried to freeze Shampoo into her cat form and force
her to marry him.  As you can imagine, Shampoo wasn't very happy with the
idea. Interestingly, she also didn't seem to see the parallel to her
situation in relation to Ranma.

As for Shamps and Ukyo doing Ranma a favor by bombing the wedding --
personally, I don't buy that for a second. There would've been better
ways for them to get Ranma away from the Tendos if indeed they thought
he had wanted to get away. I do agree, though, that the Ranma and Akane
in this series could've deterred their unwanted suitors much more easily
and mercifully. At the very least, they could've avoided encouraging
them (e.g. the contrary jewel story). I think Bob has some explaining to
do.

Here's a possible explaination for that sort of thing. First, several of the
suitors have shown that they will hear what they want to hear. Ranma tells
Ukyou "I like you and think of you as my best friend" and Ukyou reacts with
something along the lines of "Just as I thought. Ranma really loves me and
wants to marry me." I disagree with your statement: "the Ranma and Akane in
this series could've deterred their unwanted suitors much more easily and
mercifully." All the characters, with the exception of Ranma and Akane
themselves, are the same as in the canon, and none of them were going to
take "no" for an answer. I think  examples can be found where they tried to
do just that and had it back fire or just be ignored. In addition, Ranma and
Akane always have the problem of maintaining the secrecy of their masquerade
hanging over them. So, for example, Ranma had to go along with being
officially engaged to Nabiki for a while, because anything he might do to
stop that would endanger the secret. Finally, and I know this may sound like
a cop out, Ranma and Akane are imperfect and can definately screw up... and
do from time to time.

Best,

Bob Barnes
rbarnes@moscow.com
Moscow, Idaho

When opportunity comes, the trick is to CATCH the red hat.