On Wed, 22 May 1996, Ken Arromdee wrote:

It doesn't really make sense to change things so that Ranma is really female,
but leave everything else unaltered.

Well, I beg to disagree.  Isn't it the rule to alter only *one* variable 
at at time if you want conclusive results?  :)

All the things you state in your comments are quite right.  The fact that 
Ranko is actually a girl completely changes the impact of the basic setup 
(with all the boys after Akane and everything), *but* that was the 
*point* I want to make with this story.  It doesn't stand in the way of 
what I want to say - it *is* what I want to say. :)

For instance, Ranma refusing to fight Akane, and only dodging,
doesn't work at all with Ranma really female--the reason he doesn't want to
fight Akane is that boys don't fight girls. 

Gah! *Good* call!

I *thought* about that and concluded that Ranko obviously couldn't have 
the same arrogant "boys are better than girls" attitude.  But I didn't 
notice that the attitude towards fighting with girls would be different, too.

Thanks for pointing this out.

And having Ranma run into Akane's
hundreds of rivals at the first day of school is a meaningless scene if there
is not something between Ranma and Akane.  Changing potential romantic
interest to friendship (by changing Ranma to female) drastically affects these
scenes--they become almost completely pointless.  Similarly, having Kunou in
love with Ranma is much less funny if Ranma is really female. 

I knew in advance that these scenes would not add to the humour of the
series *in and off themselves*.  On the other hand, some of them (e.g. 
Kunou's love to female Ranma) are cornerstones of the original series and
not to examine the impact of the changed situation on these relations 
would kinda defeat the purpose of an elseworld story, ne?

To me the point in writing a parallel universe story is to change a little
thing and then examine how that change *within the original setup* goes on
to effect more and more changes until you have a completely separate
continuity. 

You can't use
the same scenes with the water temperature or genders reversed--although the
scenes could _happen_ that way, they don't make for much of a _story_.

Yep, because of that I don't intend to follow the Manga *that* closely 
after the first five parts.

(By the way, I wonder what Nodoka is doing in this series.  She would have to
know that Ranma is female, and could not have accepted any promise about
raising Ranma to be manly.  Having Tsubasa or Konatsu show up might be
interesting, too, especially with Ukyou at the same time....)

Heh heh, Nodoka *will* appear.  And Genma doesn't have to worry about her 
finding out about Ranko's curse - He'll have run for his life anyway!

Also, you used a bit too much US manga stuff ("she's a couple all by herself").

Indeed.  I *wanted* to vary a lot more by cross-comparing the Viz version 
with the fan translations and then finding my own paraphrasing.  But, 
alas, I don't *have* the fan translations and the arizona server is still 
down. :(

          http://enterprise.mathematik.uni-essen.de/~bastian/
                           Comics reviewed.
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