Criticism at the top, comments at the bottom.  Snippage throughout.
(There's very little to criticize, so why quote the whole thing?)

And now, a little

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"And then when Sanma split from you, the baby didn't split with her."

Why didn't the baby split with her?  Without an explantion, I'm going
to have to believe that Ranko managed to get herself pregnant the "old
fashioned way"!

Maybe you could state something like, "The second time you split, the
magic only affected your body."  I forget what she did.  Drink it?  Use
it like an ointment?  In either case, there's a plausible reason for
the baby not being affected.

I can try to clarify Akane's theories here, but keep in mind this is just
Akane guessing at what might have happened. With Cologne gone, it's
unlikely the exact reason for the pregnancy will ever be found/discovered
(although, she is fairly close to my 'vision' of the conception of the
child).

Akane says that she can't concentrate on Ranko and keep a three-way marriage
from blowing up.  Now, obviously you need Akane to think this in order for
the wedding scene to work, but I was expecting one of the Ranmas to make a
point like this:

"If you say you're going to marry us when the baby's born anyway, and you
just want to take care of Ranko, why not just marry us all now, and we'll
let you care care of Ranko?  At least this way, we won't completely feel
like your leftovers.  Isn't it enough that Ranko's going to get your
attention for the next seven months?  Does she really need to be the first
to be married to you, too?"

How would Akane respond?  I don't know, and I think maybe I should.

I'll think about this, but keep in mind that a part of Akane has been
unable to make the leap into marrying all three of them. She had just got
the nerve to marry Ranma and Ranko when Sanma came into the picture. So
part of her decision to marry just Ranko is just an excuse for her to
avoid the question of marrying all three. As the Akane in 2057 has
stated... it's a decision she will regret for years to come.

In the end... Akane wants to marry all three right now, but she can't
take that last leap (cold feet times three) onto the altar with all
three. So she's using the pregnancy as a crutch to get at least one
wedding done and then handling the other two later (putting off the big
decision).

I'll see if I can expand the discussion between Akane and Sanma/Ranma to
incorporate this idea... but of course the final choice will have to be
the same.

A part of me wants Akane to choose all three (and she would have
eventually gotten the nerve to marry all three), but in the end... the
pregnancy is the key event than sets Akane and the three Ranmas' lives on
their destined path. For better or worse...

The only downpoint for this part was (IMO) the lack of explanations.
If they were cleared up, I'd have a lot easier time willingly suspending
my disbelief.

Well, some explanations would be spoilers for future events and the exact
method of the pregnancy would be almost impossible to prove how it
happened (it's not like it was an intended effect of Cologne's magic
chicken bone). Needless to say, Akane's theory is fairly accurate as to
how I envisioned the spontaneous pregnancy taking place.

I had to hold my tongue during the recent 'Can Ranma be raped'
conversation on the FFML, because one early option when I was plotting
events for CMD was for Kuno to be the father. He would have impregnated
Ranko during the brainwashing incident in CMD13, but decided that would
have sent this story down a very dark path that I didn't want to go. CMD
has some sad and some dark moments, but that would have been extremely
traumatic for Ranko to have to bare Kuno's child and would have also
caused other plot problems down the road.

So the need to carefully plot events so Ranko could be pregnant for over
two months without knowing (as other events and plots worked themselves
out) became necessary. And there are other plots/events that became
possible after using this unique way of making Ranko pregnant. But I
can't talk about those. <evil grin>

As for Yukiko: CMD16 will clear up how she ended up at the wedding with a
different name and a haircut.



-=-
Jim Lazar

E-Mail - mailto:jimlazar@earthlink.net
FanFiction - http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlazar/anime