I'll throw in my own opinions on this:

Being able to beat Ranma isn't necessarily grounds to be branded an ANC;
as others have pointed out, Happosai from the original manga fits this
criterion. But while Happy has superb martial arts skills, he also has
some rather obvious weaknesses which often keep him from getting what he
wants. You could argue that the same isn't true for Cologne, but all of
her schemes eventually failed, and she wasn't a very persistent
antagonist anyhow.

This is one area in which Mifa seems to be lacking, IMO; she always
seems to do whatever will best suit her goals. I'm also not sure that
she even qualifies as an antagonist, given that Ranma doesn't seem
particularly concerned about getting rid of her. The reason why Shampoo
was interesting to read about in her first appearance was that Ranma
wanted to get rid of her, so much so that he was (almost) willing to let
Ryoga beat the crap out of him. That's certainly not true of Mifa in
this story. So where's the conflict?

A couple of storytelling comments. First of all, try to keep your
narration within the viewpoints of one or more of your story's
characters. This is the best way to create the illusion that your story
is actually happening, that the reader is actually experiencing it.
Never, never, never let your narrator dispel this by addressing the
readers directly, as in the "virus" discussion at the very beginning of
your story.

Also, remember that you're writing a prose story, not an anime. Anime
relies on certain visual gimmicks to make its point that you are better
off avoiding when you have the greater flexibility of being able to
describe things in words. For example:

Akane, for her part, felt her eyes slowly widening and her
temper building fast. What the hell was going on? Why was
Ranma kissing this tramp in her kitchen? Her brain was
overloaded; unable to form a coherent thought, she emitted a
growl like an out of tune motorcycle in the corner as a battle
aura popped into existence.

In an anime, when s character gets angry, they might show it by drawing
a "battle aura" around that character. But if you were actually nearby
someone who became angry, how would you be able to tell? By detecting a
"battle aura"? Not bloody likely. Your description of the sound Akane
makes is very well done; it works well in the scene, and might be enough
to evoke what you need to on its own. If not, think about what other
sensory clues would be present if the scene were actually happening (as
opposed to being shown in an anime.)

Finally, a few nitpicks. The Chinese phrase meaning "my spouse" is "wo
de airen" or "wode airen." "Wai ren" (from part 0) might be pidgin for
"foriegner," but I suspect that the "w" is a mistake and should be
removed. "Woda Airen" (part 1) would mean "I big spouse" which again is
probably not what you meant. Also, the exclamation of surprise/shock is
"Ai ya!" or "Aiya!" It is not spelled with an "h" on the end.

Hope some of this is useful. Good luck with this and any future writing.


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

             .---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 -----'