Ahem.  

I'm afraid the conclusion of this tale did not come across very
well to me.  What started out as an intriguing concept (Akane
is cursed to be a cat - the result ends up bringing her and 
Ranma closer together rather than driving a wedge between
them) transformed into a very flat "All Problems Solved" kind
of story.  In the process, pretty much every character acts
very OOC, to varying extremes.  I'm going to focus on a few
moments which stood out to me.

        "Ryouga-kun... I had no idea that you felt that way about
me," she said happily.  "Do you really want to marry me?"
    "With all my heart!"
    Akane squeezed briefly with her hand before sitting up again
and pulling it free from his grip.  She reached past Ryouga to
grab Ranma's hand.  "But Ryouga... I'm afraid I love Ranma, not
you.  I *do* hope you understand that I could never love, let
alone marry, a low-life, honourless, lying, sukebe pig such as
yourself."  Her voice dripped honey, all lovey-dovey.  "Why don't
you go and find a nice lady pig to make some bacon with instead?"
She smiled sweetly at him again and waited for her words to take
effect.
    Kasumi gasped, shocked at her sister's language.  "Akane!!"
Nodoka's eyes grew wide, while Nabiki smiled gently, shaking her
head just a little in bemusement.
    Ryouga continued to gaze star-struck at Akane for a long
moment, devotion shining from his face... until her words struck
home.  Like a sledgehammer, they bashed at his fragile heart.
"What... what are you talking about?  I'm not--"
    "I know that you're P-chan, Ryouga," snarled Akane, her face
suddenly ugly.  "You've been sleeping in my *bed*, listening to
my secrets, taking advantage of me, pretending to be my pet!
You've even watched me *change*!  Well this is the end of it!  I
never want to see you again!!  Ever!!!"

Certainly, a scene in which Akane's relationship with Ryouga is
shattered by her discovery of his alter-ego is plausible enough, but
the portrayal was not very convincing.  This does not strike me
as a very Akane-like way to handle the situation.  Yes, Akane
gets angry, and certainly she is capable of saying hurtful things
when she is enraged, but this kind of calculated emotional 
dismemberment of another person is simply not consistent with
the Akane I recognize from the source material.  The way that
she works up to this situation, lying in wait until Ryouga has 
bared his soul before she strikes, demonstrates a heart much
colder than the one we have seen in Akane.  

I believe the scene would have been much, much stronger if 
Akane had been devastated by the discovery, if she had wept
because she was hurt and betrayed by someone she trusted.
If she had said something like "How could you?  I... I believed
in you!" it would have conveyed her feelings far more succinctly,
genuinely, and powerfully than this acidic rant which you've 
written for her.  Certainly, for Ryouga, a single harsh word from
Akane is enough to send him sprinting halfway across Japan.

Also, given Ryouga's Shi-Shi Hokuden technique and his 
emotional instability, for Akane to attack him in this fashion
is as reckless as dancing on a landmine.  We have seen that
he generates a Perfect Shi-Shi Hokuden when she says 
something harsh to him, even when he knows she doesn't
really mean it.  

    "But-but it's all Ranma's faul--"
    Soun held up a majestic hand, cutting Ryouga off in mid-
word.  "I disagree.  It is most certainly all *your* fault.  I
believe that *you* are the one dishonoured by failing to appear
at the appointed time for your challenge with Ranma.  When you
appeared late, you called him coward for not appearing and
decided to follow him to China.  When he brushed past you on the
trail, you were unable to even keep your balance.  Later, when
you located Ranma in your vendetta against him, you attacked
without warning and refused when asked to state the reason for
your challenge.  Since then, you have many times pledged Ranma's
death in this pointless vendetta."  Soun closed his eyes and took
a deep breath.
    "For one who professes honour to act in such a way is...
unbelievable," he went on firmly, shaking his head.  "To attempt
to blame others for one's own faults is a dishonour.  To lie is a
dishonour.  To take advantage of my daughter in the way you
have..."  He raised an arm and pointed to the door.  "Go.  I have
tolerated you and your ways for so long for Akane's sake.  Now
that she has rejected you...  You are no longer welcome in this
house, Hibiki Ryouga.  Never darken our door again."

Soun comes across as quite the stuffed shirt here.  While it is
certainly plausible that he would step up to the plate and be
courageous if he perceived a threat to one of his daughters, this
speech of his does not make any sense.  You have suggested
that he is keeping Ryouga's secret because of his Bushido honor,
which is one explanation as to why he might not have revealed
P-Chan's identity to Akane.  However, if you establish that he has
felt this way all along, why did he wait until now to bar Ryouga
from his home?  How is allowing him to continue to come around
something "for Akane's sake?"  If Soun hated Ryouga so much,
he would assuredly have taken the boy aside and made this 
speech - there's no violation of honor in that.  He could have 
declared his ban on Ryouga and kept the reason to himself -
as head of the household, this is well within his rights.  To paint
Soun as having been hostile towards Ryouga for so long is to
portray him as a complete hypocrite.  

front of her.  "Do you really hate me?" she asked in a small
voice.
    "To tell you the truth," he said harshly, "I never liked you
in the first place."  The cracking of his knuckles was loud in
the silence of the forest.  His eyes glowed, the position of his
arms with his hands held together at chest height emphasizing the
obvious power of his chest and shoulders.
    Ranma lowered her hands and looked up at him, her eyes large
azure pools.  "If I die," she said in a quiet voice, "will you be
happy?"
    "Uh?"
    Ranma read his face for a long moment, then turned away from
him, still on her knees.  Still in that quiet voice, she said, "I
understand."  She closed her eyes and tilted her head forward.
"Go ahead and kill me, then."
    "Ra... Ranma?"
    She looked up at the full moon, eyes shining.  "I'll do
anything for you.  Anything...  Even die..."  She continued to
gaze at the moon for a long moment, filling her heart with its
beauty, then closed her eyes again and tilted her head forward,
stretching her neck for her love, waiting for the end to come.
    She prayed it would be quick.  She brought her hands up in
front of her face in an attitude of prayer and made her last
wish, silent tears leaking from her eyes as she readied her soul
for death.
    For what seemed like a very long time, nothing happened.
Then there was a rustle of cloth, an intake of breath, and then
Ryouga yelled, beginning his kiai...
    "IYAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Unquestionably, this was one of Ryouga's darkest moments.  If you choose
to perceive this as his character-defining episode, then that is certainly
your prerogative.  The author's message by including this scene is
very clear - "Don't feel too sorry for Ryouga, THIS is who he really is."

However, I believe it is a disingenuous bit of storytelling to re-write
the scene.  If you are recounting a scene from the manga, it behooves
you to do it accurately.  When it came down to it, Ryouga could not 
bring himself to kill Ranma.  Ranma was aware of this.  This casts
a very different light on the whole situation.  Ryouga definitely comes
across in a negative way in this scene, but Takahashi makes it clear
that, at heart, he is not a cold-blooded killer.  

I also found the way that Akane so quickly forgave Ranma for any
blame in the P-Chan affair to be extremely unconvincing.  I miss the
real Ranma in your story - he's a wonderful character, in a large part
because of his flaws and failings.  This Samurai Ranma, who bears
the cross of his own honor so nobly, this martyr who is so easily 
absolved from all blame in this tale, is not nearly as interesting to
me.  

Again, this started out as a promising idea.  I wish you had just 
stayed focused on Ranma and Akane and the way they handled 
her curse, rather than insisting on wrapping up all the conflicts.
The last chapter, especially, came across as very mean-spirited
and vitriolic, especially towards Ryouga, Kuno, and Shampoo.  I
find stories that degenerate into transparent character slams to be
very disappointing, especially when written by someone who so 
clearly has talent and ability.

If there are certain characters which inspire in you nothing but 
spite and revulsion, my suggestion would be to simply leave them
out of your stories.  There are plenty of perfectly good Ranma 
stories which do not involved the entire extended cast.  I do not 
mind stories in which a character or characters fall, or their mistakes 
catch up with them.  There are many stories out there in which 
characters that I like meet a bad fate that I believe are well-written 
and enjoyable - similarly, there are stories which give positive 
treatment to characters of whom I an not particularly fond that I 
believe are also fine pieces of work.  The difference is that the 
characters are allowed to stand or fall  upon their own merits.  
I appreciate it when an author struggles to give a character a fair 
shake in spite of his or her own  prejudices.  I did not see 
that in "Nekophobia."  As a result, the story was a very 
disappointing experience.


Grayson Towler
grayson@rigroup.net

http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless