On Fri, 11 Jul 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:

On Friday, July 11, 1997 10:52 AM, John "Firehawke" Peasley
[SMTP:firehawke@bbs.yab.com] wrote:

Also, I state for the record that Akane has NEVER had a mallet 
except in a single OAV. This is a convention used in fanfics mainly,
and I'm not sure how it became canon.

It's canon because she uses mallets all the time in the manga.  I think
you're using an anime-only perspective.

In the Early to Mid manga Akane uses a variety of implements to hit Ranma 
with, the most common actually being a kendo training sword, and these 
items are always shown existing before Akane grabs them.  The Mallet 
appears in the same section of the series as the worst clunkers of the 
stories.  The section where Takahashi was *not* even close to her best.  
Most people with access to VIZ comics won't have seen the Mallet yet, 
it's still a ways off.  The 1st movie is the thing I blame for the 
mallet, before then it was a rare carry-over from Urusei Yatsura (where 
*EVERYBODY* had access to the things) but after that I kept on seeing 
AKane with the stupid thing.

NOTE:  The Mallet is the mystically appearing dimensional mallet.  
Regular mallets appear every now and again as well, but are outnumbered 
by kendo swords, tables and other pieces of scenery, not to mention 
Akanes own fists and/or feet.

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