C. Jones writes:
Shades of John Hinkley.... I can see this turning into a real
psychological thriller. Nabiki is being stalked by a mysterious,
scary person, while Kunou continues to play the buffoon at school.
Ranma is forced to deal with it and eventually protect Akane, Nabiki,
himself, et al when Kunou finally goes into desparation mode.
(Scratches chin dubiously.) Eh, maybe. This is the kind of story
I call a "Masks" story, after Bob Barnes' "The Masks We Must Wear." In
such a story, one or more characters turn out to be quite otherwise
than their normal depiction, as he, she or they have been playing a
role for some reason.
The common flaw in such a story is the difficulty in making it
pluasible that the character, Kuno in this case, would have acted
the way he did in 38 volumes of manga if his motivations were as
the author has told us. Here, I'd have to say that, on the evidence,
Kuno's plan wasn't a very well-conceived one. He seems to spend more
time with Ranma than with Nabiki on the whole. Kinnosuke, now, there's
a guy who got to spend some time with Nabiki. Possibly Kuno wasn't
clever enough to come up with a variant of Kinnosuke's scheme.
Moreover, looking at stories like the Wishing Sword, the Magic
Umbrella, and the Man-Cherry Tree, it seems pretty clear that Kuno's
primary obsession is the pig-tailed girl, and that Kuno is unaware
of Ranma's curse. You could come up with ways around those and similar
incidents, but it means making your story convincing is not going to
be easy, by any means.
I don't want to come off as too discouraging - the "Masks" kind
of story can work - but it does take a good deal of effort to pull it
off if you're trying for anything more than a spamfic.
Reid Carson
rcarson@rcarson.com