Philip Hacker wrote:

"Do you have any idea what would happen if our secret got out?"
Futaba explained. "We'd all probably become scientific guinea pigs or
something."

Ranma considered it for a moment. "All right. You have my word of
honor that I will never tell another soul about your weird problem."

Honor is extreamly important to Ranma, I don't see why he would give

his

word of honor to someone he just met, I could see it more likely he

could

offer to exchange this for them keeping his curse a secret.

Possibly, but Futaba has just outlined the importance of keeping the
secret: it is almost a life-or-death matter. If the secret gets out,
none of them will be able to live private lives any more, and would at
best become the targets of racism. Ranma is aware of the gravity of the
situation.

There seems to be a certain conflict between the Ranmaverse and the
Futabaverse on this point.  Ranma's curse is public knowledge, yet he
never has any problems.  (Well he certainly has _problems_, but you know
what I mean.)

Thanks. The main points of this scene are to introduce principal Kunou
and to allow Ranma-chan to be registered as separate from the male
Ranma. It'll be fun seeing Ranma try to act feminine.

Is Ranma actually going to care very much about keeping his own secret? 
He promised to keep the Shimeru family secret, not the cursed springs of
Jusenkyo.  Actually, it might be kind of fun to have it revealed to the
school a few chapters in.

"Akane, did you have any idea you were engaged to a genderbending
freak?"

" ...  Not a clue."

-- 
Matthew Campbell 
E-mail me at mgcampb@clemson.edu

"For the engineers among us who understand that the obvious
is not always the solution, and that the facts, no matter
how implausible, are still the facts..."