On Wed, 7 May 1997, Joseph Palmer wrote:

OK, I've got volume 28 open in front of me.

*(SPOILER AHEAD!) In volume 28, the infamous Ryuu Kumon storyline, there
are... what? One and a half jokes?

<snip jokes, that I have to admit -were- in the story but since most of
them were one-panel or background gags I didn't consider them. Point
taken, though.>

OTOH, you get to see someone's life
getting torn to pieces utterly and irrevocably, on such a scale that even
Ryouga would feel sorry for Ryuu,

	Torn to pieces? I don't see it. Better to find out now that he was
	practicing sneak thief-martial arts, rather than later.

Look at it this way: Ryuu had his father die before his eyes, thanks to a
technique that Genma invented (actually, it was Ryuu's dad's fault, but to
him the Yamasenken was the only cuplrit.) He had lived in poverty way
before then, and even though he had no money or resources he left to find
the Umisenken despite being only six years old.
	Later, he spent all of his life searchng for the Umisenken,
nurturing the dream that someday, when he found it, he could pair it up
with Yamasenken and rebuild his Doujou. Never did he get angry at the
Saotomes because of his father's death or his own plight: all he cared
about was the Doujou. However, since it was difficult for him to acquire,
as it was, he had to take the name Saotome himself in order to find
someone who could lead him to the Umisenken.
	After who knows how long, he finally met someone in the Saotome
family, who happened to be the wife of Umisenken's creator. Then all of a
sudden some stranger shows up and fights him for no apparent reason (Ryuu
didn't know who Ranma was until MUCH later.) But it's pretty clear he has
a deep grudge against Ryuu, who has no idea why he's even fighting that
guy.
	-THEN-, turns out the guy is the real Ranma, and Ryuu tries to get
the Umisenken from him. After all their battles, Ranma demands that Genma
teaches him the Umisenken, which he does. Meanwhile, we see how Ryuu
becomes fond of Mrs. Saotome, since she reminds him of his own mother
(who, BTW, is thought to have died before the Doujou's destruction
--Ryuu's also an orphan.)
	So , by the final battle, we see Ryuu, hopeful and waiting to
acquire the Umisenken at long last, so his misery is over and he can begin
to fulfill his dream. But Ranma uses the Umisenken itself against Ryuu,
defeating him --I mean, he was beaten by the same technique he wanted to
learn!
	After the Yashatankaiho, when Ranma unearths Ryuu, we see how he
just "plummets" (figuraively, and thanks to the background effect) to
despair. Now he knows he'll never rebuild the doujou, and what's worse, he
learned that the technique he spent ten years of his life looking for was
actually a burglary methodology. Pretty low blow there.
	Maybe from Ranma or anyone else's perspective, Ryuu was just
defeated and end-of-story. But what about -him-? he's aware that his hopes
and dreams have been shattered, and that he has nothing to live for now.
He has no friends, no family that he knows of, and no one except Mrs.
Saotome that has EVER given a damn about him.
	So maybe Ryuu just took the Umisenken and tried to use it to rob
and steal, so he could gather enough money and build a new doujou, but
that's HIGHLY unlikely. Ryuu has more honor than many of the characters in
the series, and I doubt he'd stoop to that. Besides, part of the agreement
was that, if he lost the fight, he'd seal up the Yamasenken. What good
will it do to have the Umisenken if he can't pair it up with Yamasenken
anyway?

 > 	Perhaps someone would like to write a fict about Ryuu,
 > 	He finds the second scroll... What then?

<grin> That's exactly what I'm currently writing, aside from Lightbirds.

and what's worse no epilogue was given
whatsoever.

	Not for him, but we do find out the final disposition of the second
	scroll.

Yeah, it was recycled. The last frame we see of Ryuu is the most memorable
in the story, tho', at least from my perspective.

Ryuu is, of course, my favorite Ranma character right after Ranma-chan. I
like him the way Blade likes Tarou, mostly for similar reasons. However,
the first time I read volume 28 I thought, "What a bastard! How can he
trick Mrs. Saotome that way?!" I actually hated him. But then I bought
that volume, and after seeing it from Ryuu's POV I realized I had
misjudged him.

How do we know that Ryuu didn't commit suicide right after
his fight with Ranma? As far as dark and gritty goes, the end of the Ryuu
Kumon

	Kumon translates to "Anger or Anguish"

Fits him pretty well, ne?

storyline is the darkest and most depressing I've seen in the manga
canon.

	Agreed. 10 of 418 total parts of Ranma 1/2
	That's 2.4% of the pages, roughly.
	No one was killed, and the all of the "Akane hits Ranma"
	were comic, not because of jealosy.

The death of Ryuu's father is the only one that has been clearly seen in
the manga.

	What did Shakesphere say through Jaques? (sp?) Something like:
	"I can suck the melancholy from a song the way a weasel sucks eggs."
	I don't see it as dark enough to color the rest of the series,
	It adds contrast though.

Exactly. I wasn't saying that one single story can give a dark mood to
Ranma 1/2, but I was pointing out that even in the manga there can be very
serious themes.

	I also suspect that Takahashi was under some pressure from Shonen
	Sunday to put more fight scenes into the series. We'll never know,
	but I wonder how the series would have looked if it had only been
	a series of Manga, rather than a weekly serial in a boys magazine.
	(P.S. much of the the rest of Shonen Sunday is a LOT like your
	favorite arcs, page after page of angst and darknes.)

It's not that I like angst and darkness ;P but that I like to see variety.
I don't like stories where everything's "pink-colored."

The Zephyr
al709382@campus.ccm.itesm.mx