On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, Jamie and Bridget Wilde wrote:

In the end, Ranma being simply cruel, manipulative, and evil actually
winnowed the depth of his character and left him two-dimensional. What
made the Ranma of IMBS so fascinating was the ambiguity of his
character. 

Well, let's face it, it HAD to end with a resolution on just
what the hell Ranma was.  You can't stay ambiguous forever,
unless you're planning a sequel.

And they aren't.

Though I will say I disagree with the ending Mike had.
Ranma's evil, but with good buried deep inside.

A touch that the pro-ranma folks imho would point out.

Very few fanfic stories have _truely_ evil people in them,
not evil as in 'bwahaha now here is my evil plan' evil or
'you cannot stop me I am an unstoppable force of evil' evil,
but the kind of evil you see in the newspaper when you read
about a body count that stretches from coast to coast, or 
corpses hidden in the basement with bits kept in jars
in the kitchen.

IMBS Ranma came so very close.

-rod m