I pulled this off the web archive; my incoming email isn't working right
now.

David Johnston <rgorman@telusplanet.net> wrote:

Gary Kleppe wrote:

This really needs to be Hiroshi and/or Daisuke here; it's completely out
of character for Ryoga.

Your criticism is off-target.  The author clearly wanted a sort of
mirror universe where everyone is pretty much the reverse of their
standard personality (but still endowed with the same abilities).  

If that was the intent, then yeah, but it's not at all clear to me that
it was. A lot of the characters aren't changed much if at all. Pretty
much everybody except for Ryoga, Kuno, and Pantyhose is pretty close to
canon or at least a reasonable (future) extrapolation of it. What's
more, the ones who are changed don't seem so much reversed as just
blandified.

There's no point in criticising a story entitled "It Would Never 
Happen in the Ranma Universe" for being OOC.

Well, the author didn't tell us how to interpret that title. I took it
to mean that he was showing us an event that would never have happened
in the manga, for obvious genre reasons. Now if what you're describing
*was* his intent, that's fine, but in that case I think he has to make
it a lot clearer by having everybody behave in radically different ways.

The real question here is what the point of the story is.  
It's just not very funny (or dramatic) as is.  So everyone's
reversed...so what?  The truth is a friendly happy relaxed Ryoga
isn't as interesting as the usual one, nor is an altruistic
helpful Nabiki.  One traditional, but effective approach
is to cross over the two universes so that, for example
unchaste but charming Ranma suddenly finds himself in 
chaste but boorish Ranma's universe talking to a malicious
greedy Nabiki under the impression that she's his good friend
and future sister-in-law who he can always rely on to help
him with good advice.  Complications ensue.  It worked for
Star Trek and it might work here.   

That's got possibilities, yeah.

One of the girls suddenly stumbled against Ranma in a
mass of golden hair and falling flower petals.

�Whoops! Careful,� Ranma gently caught the girl�s
shoulder and helped her up. �Are you okay?�

The girl straightened her flower tiara and peered up
at Ranma. �Yeah, thanks! I�m so sorry. This is my
first time. I�m such a klutz!� She grinned perkily up
at him, her large cornflower-blue eys twinkling.

eyes

Is she supposed to be Japanese? Very few Japanese have golden hair and
cornflower-blue eyes, you know.

But she does.  Even in the manga she has pale hair and eyes and
looks pretty much like a shojo heroine.

If this is Azusa *Shiratori,* yes. I assumed it was just someone else
with the same given name, particularly since I'd expect Ranma to
recognize Azusa S.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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