Reid has some thoughtful criticisms I'd like to respond to. I am sorry for
the excessive overquoting, but it was hard to extract the pieces I wanted.
on 5/6/1939 6:28 AM, rcarson@rcarson.com <rcarson@rcarson.com> wrote:
As I said in response to the first part, I have a problem with the
initial depiction of Ranma compared to what we see of him/her in the
manga, but given that this apparently takes place rather earlier in the
manga than I had thought, and that prior events didn't go quite as they
did in the manga (we have no idea how things went, which is another
problem, but never mind) I'll give that a pass. The problem is that I
really don't find this version of Ranma at all interesting. She can't
apparently handle stress or conflict of any sort, preferring to dissolve
into tears at the least provocation. When she gets into trouble, she has
to wait for her friends to bail her out, instead of doing anything on
her own. I've known people like that in real life, and I don't find them
particularly interesting either. And her friends - Akane seems to be
on mood-stabilizing drugs of some sort, but then so does everybody else.
Akane, Ukyo, Shampoo, Nabiki, Nodoka - where are the little quirks and
flaws that made them interesting characters, and made them different
from each other? Sanded away, apparently. There are a number of places
in the story where you could swap names with abandon and not notice
anything wrong. Now a good deal of this is a matter of personal
preference - others may well have found canonical Ranma rude, crude,
and boring, and much prefer the kinder, gentler version. The thing
is, people say of her, "Well, she's still the same person." No,
she's not. Unless the Ranma before the story opens was already radically
different from the one we know, this Ranma bears little resemblance
to the sex-changing martial artist who showed up at the Tendos'. No,
Ranma had it right when she reflected that the old Ranma was dead.
Seriously, what of this new Ranma is in any way like the old, in terms
of basic personality? Nothing that I can see. Genma's right earlier
on. His son is gone, and now he's got a stranger claiming to be his
daughter. I mean, when I envision a Ranma that's decided to live as
a girl, for whatever reason, I see something like a cross between
Haruka Ten'ou and Sana Kurata. Heh. Instead, we get a girl who seems
like the worst parts of Miaka from FY and Usagi Tsukino, without
any of their good points (and don't get me wrong, I like both of
those characters).
I've discussed this in other messages, but I'll try another take. Here is my
take on Ranko/Ranma:
She is terribly unhappy due to her situation (being a boy). Fighting does
not intrinsically appeal to her. Since her only parent is Genma, she comes
to believe she must do these things, that they are the right thing to do.
She latches on to martial arts as something that can distract her from her
other issues. By the time she gets to the Tendou home, she's learned to
function in a very limited way: she is totally focused on martial arts; when
the subject is anything else, she is totally at a loss and has difficulty
functioning. This matches Ranma pretty well. This is also typical of people
who have trouble coping socially; they often latch on to something and
obsess about it. Another typical trait is being obnoxious and angry: Ranko
hates her situation, and she takes it out on everyone around her: her
father, Akane, you name it. Once the stress is removed, she relaxes, and
becomes a naturally less angry person. I see Ranko as being very much like
the manga Ranma, but with the anger, aggression, etc. removed. To me she's
sort of like Ranma minus maleness (I am not equating maleness to anger,
aggression, etc. by the way). She's the other parts of Ranma, the impish
humor, the send of honor, the forgiving nature, and so on.
If the *male* Ranma were to become a girl, I could see him being like the
characters you mention. But this Ranma *is* a girl, a girl who is forced to
live as a boy and is aggressive, sullen, and obnoxious as a result of that,
*not* because they are basic character traits of her personality.
Once her problem (being forced to be a boy) is removed, martial arts
diminishes in importance to her, and she discovers that other things
(socializing, having friends, music) become very important. She seems to be
a very different person, but the basic attributes (kindness, humor, etc.)
are the same. Note that only Akane makes this observation; the other
characters (Genma, Ryouga, Akane's friends) have a lot of trouble seeing
Ranma in Ranko. It's only because Akane knows Ranko so well, and saw the
kindness, humor, sensitivity, etc. in him when he was Ranma, that she can
say she knows that they are the same person, even though Ranko's behavior is
very different from Ranma's. Genma comes to the same conclusion: Ranma was a
small part of Ranko, the only part she could express when she was a boy.
Other parts of Ranko, which were suppressed, are now being expressed. Ranma
was a one-dimensional character (in this story); Ranko is three dimensional
(or at least two...).
Does that explain my thinking well enough? I'm sure not everyone will buy
this approach (clearly not everyone has), but this is the approach I wanted
to take.
I'm sorry you don't find Ranko interesting. She's very interesting to me.
It leads to a more general problem though. Where is the conflict
is this story? I don't just mean fighting - conflicts take place on
many levels, and not just between people. Here we see a number of
conflicts appear, but they all simply disappear, sometimes within a
matter of a few pages. And the worst part - without the protagonist
having done anything about it! Ranma has taken only one decisive
action in the entire story - deciding to live as a girl, and even
that ended up being forced upon her by the dissolution of the spells
on her. The Amazons decide to stop pursuing her. Kodachi loses interest
in Ranma. The feud with Ryoga is simply over. There's a possibility
of a conflict with her father, but it simply fades away when we find
out he's not really such a bad guy. The girls don't accept her - well,
after a few well-chosen words, now they do. The guys have trouble
accepting her - again, one conversation, and the problem's solved.
Will Ranma and Akane have trouble accepting the change in their
relationship? No, apparently not. What about Ranma's sexuality?
Will she have trouble deciding on a new role, and living up to it?
No, apparently that's simply going to take care of itself. What
about the Principal - without Ranma to fight him, will he run amok
throughout the school? No, a convenient off-stage accident takes care
of him. Everything that might provide some sort of conflict just
vanishes. The whole story seems to be melting into a puddle of treacle.
Next thing we know, Happosai will either fall into a volcano or
join a monastery.
It is possible to have dramatic tension without conflict between people.
There are no long-lasting conflicts between people in this story, by design.
The main conflict in this story is Ranko asking and answering the question,
"Who am I?" She has no idea at the beginning, and she tries to find out all
through the story. It's a journey of discovery. There are also tensions in
her family, between her and her father, blossoming romantic issues, and so
on. The whole story is about asking and answering this question, "Who am I?"
Maintaining the tensions in the original story (feud with Ryouga, the
Amazon's pursuit of Ranma, and so on) seemed like a distraction to me. So
yes, I ended them. If the story were about a conflict between Ranko and
someone else, then naturally I'd maintain that conflict for long periods of
time. But it's about her conflict with *herself*.
As I said elsewhere, I'm a little too Kasumi-like. I hate overt conflict.
While I think it is possible to write an interesting story without overt
conflict, it does make it a lot harder. It may come as no surprise when I
say that my favorite author is Jane Austen. There is very little overt
conflict in her work, also. Just lots of mistaken impressions of other
people, and the fallout and consequences from that. I like that kind of
writing a lot. The whole situation with the characters being mistaken about
what Genma did is similar to things in her novels (not a conscious decision
on my part, but I'm noticing it now looking back). I know this style of
writing is not for everyone. I make no claims to being a writer of universal
appeal.
I hope this explains my thinking some more. Your objections seem to be with
the approach to the piece. There is nothing wrong with that, and I know that
there are people who don't like the approach I've taken. For this story,
though, this was the way I *had* to write it. Another author would have done
something different with it.
Don't think I don't appreciate your C&C. If I have any aspirations of being
a writer with broad appeal, it's something I'll have to think about. People
are very different, and things that appeal to some will not appeal to
others. If you want to appeal to many different kinds of people, that's a
real challenge. You've given me things to think about.
Deborah