The problem I had with this, though, was that it smacked of a Character
Slam.

Only natural, considering how completely Ryouga's re-telling of events 
is so vastly removed from reality.

I refrained from commenting on this and the OOC bits, but since you 
opened the subject...

The difference, to me, is whether the author gives the character a fair 

shake -

whether he or she lets the character stand or fall on his/her own 

merits.  When

I see a Character Slam, though, I see an author who is merely venting 

his or

her particular dislike for a character, shaping the story deliberately 

to do that

character a bad turn.  It can ruin a good story for me.  When it's the 

entire basis

for a story, I have a real problem with it.

There is no such a thing as a 'good' character slam when it comes to 
Ranma. None of the characters were meant to be slammed.

Ryouga is revising history here - and that's not necessarily a bad 

thing, because

people do that, but it came across to me as very unbalanced.  The "love 

that

was plain to see" between Ranma and Akane is a real stretch, especially 

in 

the earlier stories where Ryouga is more actively attempting to take 

Akane away
>from Ranma.  After all, Akane frequently showed Ryouga genuine, open 
affection

(always as a friend, from her perspective, but it's very easy to 

misinterpret that

sort of thing when you're young and in love), and even went on dates 

with him.  

He has a case for thinking she might love him someday.  

And you'll note that Ranma would gleefully use Ryouga's one-sided love 
for Akane.

That he would give up on Akane when she openly declared her love for 

Ranma

seems very in character to me, but that it would drive him to kill 

himself does

not.

Killing himself because he's depressed would be act of supreme weakness 
for a warrior following the way of bushido. He would commit honourable 
suicide only if he had lost so much face that he couldn't live with 
it--like Akane finding out about his curse.

Now this really is a stretch, even in miserable state in which Ryouga 

must have

been to write such a letter and commit such an act.  This is the same 

Ranma

who has donned a dress and pretended to be Ryouga's girlfriend, 

fiancee, and

sister on various occasions.

And posed as Akane for him, constantly ridicule him and bait him with 
'P-chan' in front of Akane, runs away from a duel with Ryouga, and, the 
most malicious thing I remember Ranma doing to Ryouga, was when he 
deliberately tried to get Ryouga lost so he could steal Ryouga's 
Mushroom of Years for himself.

 Ryouga, of all people, has seen Ranma at his least
honorable.  For him to say that Ranma is "a good man" after all or 

something 

seems likely, but for him to say he's "the most honorable of men" 

strikes me as

less than throughly plausible.  

Part of the humour of Ranma's character is exactly because he's such a 
petty, lazy and shameless excuse for a 'man among men'.



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