In message <01HWTTSBPEIQ9D7EM2@delphi.com>, BELLAMY@delphi.com writes:

because Ranma Fan-fics are the easiest to write. It's one of the closet
Animes to reality.

.....
Ranma is the sitcom of anime.

And the one with the least point to it.  Maison Ikkoku is more meaningful,

Ranma is one of the only animes with well defined characters. Most people
can think of "What would Ranma do here..." or "What would Kuno say if..." 
many other animes lack sensitivity or are over dramatic. This can be the
result of bad dubbes/subs. Ranma is also one of the most entertaining
anime/mangas.

 That's half of it.  The other half is that the Ranma-verse has no
real closure.  Maison Ikkoku has a very distinct beginning/middle/end
and resolves all the relationships that occur.  Kimagure Orange Road is
much the same way. Tenchi Muyo has closure because it's a developing
story with no real gaps in it yet.  Trying to insert a story into one
of these is tough, since you have to be sure that it doesn't affect the
continuity, or if it does then you have to insure that the universe has
somewhere to go afterwards.

 Ranma on the other hand is very episodic... there isn't a terrible amount
of development between the characters in the span of a couple episodes.
This leaves it kinda open for people to throw short adventures into
it without affecting the continuity at all.  In additition Ranma has
a lot of different relationships (both in the romantic polygons and
the other intercharacter relations) on which to hang plot threads.
However it isn't too open, like UY, which has too *much* openness...
there's no real goal for any of the characters, just a different weirdness
every episode.  That's too boring to write as fanfic.

 It's kind of interesting if you note which TV/manga series have the most
quanitity and best quality fanfics written.  In pure quantity it's Ranma,
BGC, Robotech, and then DP.  Quality-wise, IMO at least, about the same,
possibly switching DP and Robotech (Ryan Matthews and Larry Mann's series
are great).  If you stop and think these are also the same series with
a good amount of openness and well-defined characters.  Robotech seems
to be an exception in that more often the stories have new/made up
characters since the plot focuses more on the mecha than the people.
The other thing is that these are all the more popular/commonly seen
series, most likely since the universes are good to start with.

 As Damon pointed out though, there are some other series that could
easily be turned into fanfics.  I think Ah-My-Goddess is an excellent
platform for people looking to do romantic comedy, and Gundam would be
superb for those more interested in action/mecha.  For those who've
read Gunsmith Cats, that would be another easy to work with action
series.  And the one that suprises me is the lack of City-Hunter
fiction.... Hmmm... now I've got images in my head...

 Wow.  That turned out to be quite the lecture/rant.   I'm inspired now.
As soon as I finish my homework maybe I'll go jot down some ideas for
some things.

	-DaR
--
Dan Root - dar@andrew.cmu.edu