Jack Staik <jstaik1043@earthlink.net> wrote:

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Ranma 1/2: The Third Wish

"Everything is wrong." he stated flatly, and pulled out an ornate ring

Punctuation is off here. 'Wrong' should have a comma after it, because
the verb 'stated' refers back to the line of dialog. Look for this
mistake elsewhere.

of vaguely foreign design and a pendant. Placing both on himself,he held
up his hand. "By the Ring and the Amulet and the Words I call up the
Servant - Ulg Thulnkiss'kark-"

Note this line for future reference...

Ranma barked out, "By the Amulet and the Ring, I order you to STOP!!"

... and this one.

"Y'see, doll, I am a Spirit, trapped by magic and condemned to fulfil
three requests whenever I'm invoked. Normally, there's a long and ornate
procedure for summoning me ... but a certain someone who shall remain
nameless - SAOTOME!! - managed to perform the complete invocation BY
ACCIDENT!!"

Okay, now. If Ranma's summoning of this guy was accidental, how in the
world does he know all the command phrases that he uses above?

BTW, unless this is a Will Eisner character (i.e. *named* The Spirit
rather than just *being* a spirit) 'spirit' probably shouldn't be
capitalized.

"Pursued?" Akane said in alrm. "By who?"

alarm

"Um ... that's not important right now." Ranma said.

The Spirit continued, "Then this whiner starts unloading onto *me* about
all of his problems!'Oh boo-hoo, my life is shit' - that sort of thing."
The creature looked nauseated. "Such a bellyacher."

If he's telling the truth, then this Ranma is markedly OOC. Ranma
thinking his life is shit is fanfic cliche; other than his curse,
there's no evidence in the manga that he dislikes the status quo (and
the Reversal Jewel story shows that he does like it to some extent).
Furthermore, Ranma isn't a bellyacher. When he sees something as a
problem, he generally takes action to do something about it.

<POW!!> replied Ranma's fist.

Now *that's* more like it.

The Spirit felt a sinking snesation. By the terms of his Binding, if he

sensation

failed to fulfil a request within one hour of his Accursed Master (a
technical term) making it, he would be condemned to the Bad Place for a
thousand years. And since he had fulfilled almost this same request
before, his only out was to get his Accursed Master to revoke it.

What, you mean he's required to fulfill any wish but hasn't been given
the power with which to do it? That's a pretty raw deal. What does he do
when someone wishes to be fabulously rich or something like that? How
has he avoided being damned up til now? Was Ranma his first "client?"

"Whan was the last time you could get wet back home?" the Spirit said

"When

"No, she's a good cook," Ranma answered. "She just likes to poison
people. And for the record, she only had *one* alligtor."

alligator

The Spirit danced around. "The best part! No Genma here! He died years
ago!"

"That is a good point." Ranma agreed.

Nodoka spoke up. "I can't believe you would say that my Dearest being
dead is a good thing!

I can't believe it either, frankly. This is (supposedly) the same Ranma
who stayed with Genma for years when he could've easily run out on him,
and who even went *looking* for Genma after he'd been missing (the
Yotaro story; vol. 14 part 6). Nor is it believable that Ranma would've
wished Genma dead or anyone else dead. Ranma wasn't even willing to let
*Happosai* be sent away when he was suffering from woman-withdrawl.

Just because you, the author, don't like a character doesn't mean any
given character won't like him either.

Genma was an honorable man!"

"He was a liar, a cheat, a glutton, and he'd steal anything not nailed
down or on fire!" the Spirit argued.

"That's not true." Ranma protested.

"Thank you, Ranma." Nodoka said, relieved.

"I've seen him steal things that were on fire." Ranma clarified.

Oh really? Could you possibly direct me to somewhere in the manga that
supports this? As I understood it, Genma's thefts were just a few
isolated incidents. Not that the spirit couldn't argue this line anyway,
but Ranma ought to expose it for the BS that it is.

The Spirit started to glow. "I'm getting a message!" he said. From the

Missing a quote mark.

OK, overall, could've been worse, could've been better. The storytelling
was quite thick with explanations that tended to crowd out the drama and
humor. Try to concentrate more on the story and characters and keep the
exposition to a minimum.

And, IMO, the author character biases noticeably weakened the story. As
I've said before, check out <http://ranmascan.dhs.org> for scanned and
translated Ranma manga; it's the best antidote for fanfic cliche
characterizations.