Donald Lee Granberry wrote:

I finished this chapter late this afternoon and was going to let it rest for
a day, but what the hell? This one is markedly different in tone from Part
IV. Hopefully, there's a chuckle or two in this one.

Indeed there was.  

Since I got in hip-deep on part 4, I figured I might as well throw in my
2 cents on this part, too.

Oh, the word "Ahou" or "Aho", roughly translated, means "dumbass".

<nod>  Or, if you're Viz, "jackass", no?

       Ranma Saotome woke with the feeling that someone and
stuffed his mouth full of cotton. 

"someone had stuffed", unless you dropped a verb or something
there.

       "I know that you blockhead," Ranma said with mock

"I know that, you blockhead,"

       Akari's farm get hit?"

Missing open quote.

       "To tell ya the truth, I think its just another curse

it's

They would have cut your
throat and laughed at you while they watched you thrashed
around if they had gotten the chance."

Okay, two things.  One, "thrashed" should be "thrash".  Two,
that sentence is a little clunky.  You'll want to smooth it 
out a bit.  Maybe moving "if they had gotten the chance" to 
the front end would be enough.

       "You ever kill anybody, Ryouga?"
       "Yeah, but he had it coming," Ryouga said, suddenly
looking uncomfortable. "He was trying to kill me."

Hmm.  Is that back story we'll eventually learn more about,
or just a throwaway?

      "What would I do without my friends?" Ranma asked in
mock despair as he covered his eyes with one hand.

By the way, I *really* like the interplay between Ryouga and
Ranma in this scene.  Very, very nicely done.

       "Kiss him!" Ranma shouted sounding outraged.

"shouted, sounding" would probably be better.

       "You should have seen her," Kasumi said with a sunny,
but blurry smile. 

Repetition of "blurry" in regards to a Kasumi description.  You
might want to change one to "fuzzy", "frazzled" or another
synonym.

That was when ambulances began to arrive. Tendo-ke
was nearly empty after two hours. 

Okay, style quibble.  I don't like the abrupt transition 
between these two sentences.  There's nothing wrong with
them where they are, mind you, and they don't need padding
between them, it's just that the juxtaposition is really
harsh on my mental ear.  If I were writing it, I'd do 
something like

   That was when ambulances began to arrive, and within
   two hours, Tendo-ke was nearly empty.

But -- and I want to make this clear -- this is a personal 
style point, not a hard-and-fast rule of any kind.

He found Tofu seated outside one of the
tents pitched on the opposite side of the school building
from the hospital that the JGSDF had flown in and erected.

Again, a long, clunky sentence with a lot of descriptive
clauses chained together; it's a little hard to navigate
through this and figure out exactly the mental image you're
trying to get across.  You might want to split this into
two sentences, or rearrange it so that you don't have a
long chain of prepositional phrases.

       "Oh, sure," Tofu said in a skeptical voice. "You could
have let them kill you, but I don't think anyone around here
would have been happy with that particular tradeoff."

       "Whatcha got cookin' in the pot, Doc?"

<chuckle>  And Saotome makes a hard left turn to avoid that
obstacle...  <grin>  Again style quibble; the transition of
topics is abrupt, as you obviously want it to be.  Some
readers may find it disconcerting.

       "Just heating water to make some special tea. It's an
old family recipe. Makes you sleep for three days or so."
       "That's exactly what I was gonna ask ya for. Got any
extra?"

This sounds like Ranma already knew Tofu had this tea.  If he
didn't, it might work better as "That's exactly the kinda stuff
I was gonna ask you for," or something similar.

       "Mom and Kasumi. The army came and took all their
patients, but neither one of 'em will get any rest. They're
tryin' to clean the place up now."
       Tofu grinned then said, "I suppose I should not be the
least bit surprised by that. Here."

I notice that you're not using a Tofu who spazzes at the mere
mention of Kasumi's name.  Is that a characterization choice, 
as with your depiction of Soun, or is this simply Tofu so 
exhausted that he *can't* spaz?

Ryouga, Kumon, Ranko and
Soun were working what was left of the yard. 

"working on," or "working in", depending on your needs.

      "Oh, boy. Did Akane hear her."

Question mark needed.

      "The tea, Ahou."

"Ahou" probably shouldn't be capitalized.  It's not a name or
nickname, simply an epithet.

       "Hey, no problem. Happy to help," Ranma said, making
his way towards the makeshift sink. 

"making/makeshift" grates slightly on my ear.  Consider
"improvised", maybe?

He broke for lunch
with everyone else. Ukyou charmed Nodoka and Kasumi into
trying "her new tea recipe".

Another abrupt transition.  You might want to make the second
sentence a separate paragraph, or the start of one.

Soun and Ryouga carried them off to the large bed
Soun normally slept in fist floor. 

Typo here -- you probably mean "slept in on the first floor".

 Ranko was still just as male between the ears as he was,
right? 

Ranma, master of avoiding the obvious.  She's already come
out and told him that how she's feeling about being female
is changing, after all...

       Ukyou had not been kidding about the dishes. Ranma had
not realized that dinnerware came in so many different sizes,
shapes and colors. They seemed to have enough inventory on
hand to open a sizeable depaato, or department store, of
their own. He had hoped the activity would keep his mind off
some of his worries. He was wrong.

Hm.  This paragraph reads like it was transplanted from the
first dishwashing passage.  Surely he noticed the wide variety 
of dishware then?

       "Shit, I'm turning into a Kuno," Ranma muttered under
his breath as he pulled the plug out of the sink.

Hm.  We see a lot of Ranma's thought processes throughout this
story; witness the "who's sitting next to who" paragraph.  That 
we don't before he says this, so that it seems to come out of 
left field, strikes me as a little off.

         "You're the only guy I know who could fall in love
with himself and be jealous of himself at one and the same
time, Ran-chan--'Course, it's no surprise that you're in love
with yourself. That's old news."

<chuckle>  Nice summary of what I suspect is a core theme/issue
for the entire story.

       "To anyone who knows you and no one that knows you is
the least bit surprised!" 

I'd put a comma after the first "knows you", just to make that
flow a little better.

        "No matter where you go, there you are!" Ukyou said
cheerfully.
       "Yeah, and so here I am! How did I get here again?"

By the way, I like the Ranma-Ukyou interaction here just as 
much as I liked the earlier Ryouga-Ranma conversation.  Very
good stuff.

      "That guy would move heaven and earth, for you, Ucchan."

The comma after earth should be removed.

       Ukyou rolled her eyes in response. She walked over to
one of the stockpots heating over a field burner and tried to
lift it.
      "Hang on a second, Ucchan," Ranko said. "I'll give you a
hand with that."

Um.  Did Ranko just drop her Umisenken?  There's no indication that
she's even in the vicinity.  You should at least note that she's
come into the field kitchen.

       Ranma began to tremble. He squeezed his eyes shut in an
effort to damn the tears 

Unless he's consigning them to hell (which he may well be --
you might be playing a word game I'm too dense to appreciate),
you mean "dam".

       Ranma breathed out huge sigh as he sat down. 

a huge sigh

whispered, "Now you listen to me, you blockhead! I can't know
what you are going through right now because I wasn't there
with you yesterday the way I have always been, 

You know, I thought this was interesting in part 4, but didn't
comment -- she's talking like she always was a separate individual.
I wonder if that's just a turn of phrase, or if we're supposed
to suspect it's literal...

        Ranma stared down into Ranko's eyes, barely able to
see anything but the deep love she felt for him. A love he
shared because they were literally, part of each other.

The second sentence is actually a fragment.  You should turn
this into a single sentence by eliding them with a long dash.

       Ranma put his arms around Ranko and hugged her back.
After a moment, he felt the presence of a third person. He
opened his eyes and looked up. It was Akane, and she was
crying.

Hm.  Nice cliffhanger -- is Akane crying because the love 
between the two Saotomes has broken her heart, or is it out
of sympathy for Ranma, and in response to the deeply 
emotional scene we've just witnessed?  The answer, I suspect,
depends on whether people like Ranko and Akane just teleport 
into the outdoor kitchen without warning, or if they walk up
and have a reasonable chance of overhearing things... <grin>


Again, despite all my quibbles this was quite good.  (I am
way *way* too picky about style and grammar issues, which is
one reason I don't do much C&C -- I note that few people seem
to appreciate my comments.  But it's an occupational hazard
of being a professional writer...)  I'm looking forward to
the immediate "what's next" and the long term "what now";
face it, Don, you have me well and truly hooked on this 
story!

-- Bob

===============================================================================
Robert M. Schroeck          rms@eclipse.net         http://www.eclipse.net/~rms
===============================================================================
Please to remember
Eleven September --
Hijack, destruction and plot.
Our outraged reaction
To terrorist action
Should never be forgot.
===============================================================================

             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'