On Feb 5,  8:59am, Todd Hill wrote:

"Why does Ranma have a sexual reaction whenever he sees Ranko's body?"

Let me start by saying that I really enjoy the CD stories.  The sexual
tension between Ranma and Ranko, the careful treading of the line,
is for me an important part of the story, part of what makes it so 
attractive.


The basic problem is that according to the mirror story in volume 35,
Ranma feels no attraction to himself in girl form... even given that
her personality is different from his own.  How much of this is the
circumstance of the story...?  *shrug*

I don't believe that Ranma's demonstrated lack of reaction to a naked
girl is necessarily one of self-preservation, either.  In a society
where casual nudity is not unknown, *nudity* per se is not an indicator
of sexual availability.  For an extreme example, consider nudist camps &
beaches.

When the sexual advertisement is sudden and inescapably blatant, such
as Shampoo glomping him in the bath, Ranma reacts like any other teenage
virgin Anime male and gets a nosebleed.  (Thankfully, not a KOR nosebleed.
Eewww!)

But what Ranma is getting from Ranko is big-L love.  Agape.  Ranko is 
drawing Ranma in, giving him unambiguous, positive feedback and making 
him *feel* loved.  This is probably Ranma's first experience with that
(within easy recall) *and* his first experience with having a sister 
(and importantly, he hasn't got "sister" reflexes in his psyche), *and* 
probably his first certain, loving relationship with *any* female (again, 
within easy recall)... so it's not surprising that he feels a sexual 
attraction to Ranko.  

Another point is that Ranma's upbringing has made him only partially 
socialized so he'll probably be following Ranko's lead in regards to what 
is common (as opposed to 'permissible'; society whether Japanese or 
Western is rife with such contradictions) in a brother/sister relationship.

I think a good case could be made that even though Ranma loves Akane (agape),
he's not totally certain about *her* feelings and more to the point she
has never consistently shown him that she loves him... so eros probably
never occurred to him.  All he really has is his own convictions and hope.

Finally, all characters grow.  They react to their environment, and change
in response to stimuli.  Ranma's little cross-universe trip was a big
stimulus, enough to make/justify quite a change in his character.  He's
getting all kinds of new stimuli in his new environment, too.  Even the
densest person is eventually affected by such things... and Ranma isn't
particularly stupid, IMHO.


    Dave.

--
David Eddy                  <dje@progress.com>
Neko-phobia 3 is currently undergoing major rewrite.