I enjoyed this chapter. It shows a lot of promise, though there are a few issues I am wondering about.

You write well. I like your style. Keep it up.

Now, on to the issues--

On Thursday, November 22, 2001, at 12:51  PM, Tannim Murphy wrote:

"Yeah, dad.  I'm fine," croaked Tannim.  He was mentally exhausted and
his head swam with memories.  It seemed that he was two people now.

One, Tannim, the boy who had grown up for the most part innocent.  He
dreamed of magic, and science.  Both were equal wonders to him.  A
dreamer who read more books than most adults.

The other, Hematite, older by five years than Tannim but still a kid
at heart.  However, he grew up in preparation for war.  Almost since
birth, Hematite had been trained in the Arts of Combat.  He was gifted
with the powers of the Knight of Desperation, even at his relatively
young age, due to sheer potential.  He died in battle against invading
forces, using all his strength and cunning.  Cunning, mostly, because
he wasn't very powerful.  Surprisingly, to Tannim at least, Hematite
seemed to have led a relatively happy life.  Even as he died.
Apparently fighting for one's beliefs was very fulfilling.

Training is fun, even if my father was terribly strict at times.

Tannim shook his head sharply.  That wasn't HIS thought.  It was
becoming difficult to tell Hematite's memories from his own.

The boy paused.  Wasn't this the kind of thing he'd always wished
would happen to him?  Reading fantasy books, and sci-fi novels, did a
lot for the boy's imagination.  Sometimes, late at night, he'd wish
for something exciting like this to happen to him.  Why not embrace
it?

Things got interesting...

OK, at this point, things are looking good. But then this next part seems to contradict what you're saying here. Here you say he has two sets of memories. In the next part, it's changed to two different personalities. Which will it be?

Personally, my vote is against the two personalities idea. It works great in stories like carrot's Insertion, but...well, how many stories are like that one?

Just because someone is a reincarnation with a different set of memories doesn't necessarily mean that a distinct, intact personality would come along for the ride. I think it more likely for him to think of it as "I was this other person" "I remember dying" not "this other person inside my head did such and such."

Past lives are one thing that really bother me a lot in fanfiction. Someone (usually Ranma) remembers a past life and thus undergoes a complete personality shift and abandons everything he knew before...that really bugs. Seems like character hijacking to me. Especially if it happens post-volume 38.

This was not the way past lives were handled in canon Sailor Moon...except in the case of Usagi, I suppose, whenever she takes the form of Princess Serenity...but still that bugs me. If a character gets a totally different personality, then the one we know has effectively been killed. Anyway...I see at the end of your prologue that you're not making the Ranma crew be reincarnations of anyone, so my little venting is probably not that applicable in this case...

I'd rather see you do it as you do below, with two distinct personalities, than have the more recent personality effectively erased. But I think it would be better for there to be only one personality, with the character taking stock of these other memories and deciding what use to make of them. Of course, this is a character all your own so you can do whatever you please...

And just maybe the spontaneous creation of a second personality is exactly how our brains would handle suddenly having a whole life's worth of memories dumped into our heads. Since this doesn't really happen, it's obviously hard to judge. But I guess it would be a traumatic experience, and perhaps developing a split personality would be one of the only ways to remain sane. I suppose this would also depend on the more recent person's personality to start with. A very logical person would deal with it differently from a very emotional and creative person, for example.

In this case, Hematite wouldn't really be a separate consciousness, the spirit of the dead man suddenly occupying a new body. He would be an entirely new and artificial personality which is created to parse the memories, and eventually Tannim will absorb him and be back to normal again. Except for being the sum of two people, of course.

The opening animation was good.  Better than most cartoons of the time
anyway.  The girls in short skirts didn't hurt.  Going through puberty
will do that to you.

"I think I've seen that girl somewhere before..." muttered Hematite
mentally to himself.

"Mmm...  Short skirts..."

Tannim wasn't really paying attention.

Can this really work? Does Hematite control Tannim's body as well? I'm having trouble picturing this...he's not paying attention, but his eyes are focused on the screen well enough that Hematite can be paying attention? Or do you mean he's not paying attention to Hematite's thoughts? I guess now that's what you meant, but I didn't see that until after I came back to this after Thanksgiving dinner...

I'd rather see a single-personality Tannim make the connection between the TV show and his own recently-awakened memories...

The Sailor Senshi had an advantage in numbers, as they practically
knocked everyone over in their way to the table.  The Lovely Angels
had combat experience, leaving a trail of devastation in their path.
Keiichi, well, didn't have much; but he was pretty close to the table
to begin with.  Ranma was able to by-pass the problem of the crowd by
head-hopping his way from across the plaza.

Do you plan to have these characters from other series involved in your plot? If not, I'd advise that you don't give them cameos either, because their presence usually necessitates some underlying tenets of the universe being different. Yeah it's funny, but I think it introduces many more potential complications than necessary. If you do plan to have them involved in the plot, though, then that makes it even MORE complicated...

The fact that they were all devastatingly cute did slightly worry him,
however.

All of them?

Minako eagerly contributed to the conversation, slightly irritated
that Makoto got in a word before her.  "I heard there are a bunch of
martial artists in Nerima that could easily beat anyone else in the
world."

"That's just a rumor," scoffed Rei.  She secretly wondered if her
Handsome Rescuer (which he was now dubbed in her mind) was from there.
The fire reading she had done the night afterwards had, strangely,
only showed two things.

Was there a prologue to this that I missed? (OK I found it at FF.net. It might have helped to mention at the beginning of your post that there was a prologue available.)

A compass whose needle was continually
spinning, and a cute black piglet wearing a yellow spotted bandana.
The Shinto priestess wondered what they meant.  She continued aloud,
"They also say that one of the martial artists is a guy who can turn
into a girl."

"We're famous?" asked Ranma in his usual tact.  He was surprised by
this revelation.  Sure, he wanted to be the best, but it never
occurred to him what kind of publicity he'd get.

I like this bit, with the Nerima people being famous, but the stories about them being a bit garbled.

The youma pointed an accusing finger at Ranma.  "You're one of those
Sailor Senshi chicks, ain'tcha?  I heard about youse guys!" spoke the
youma in impossibly accented Brooklyn Japanese.

Is this making fun of the NA dub or just being a parody element? The rest of your story doesn't really seem to be a parody, so I'm not sure that this sort of element is really appropriate.

On second thought, you do have a few more of these elements, and it doesn't work for me. Parody elements in an otherwise serious work can bring the reader out of the story, which isn't good. By serious I don't mean that it's not humorous, but that it's meant to be taken seriously. If that makes any sense at all. What I'm trying to say is that it's possible to have humorous elements, or even parody elements, without breaking the fourth wall. Comments like "Brooklyn Japanese" stick out as "Hello reader, this is the author speaking to bring you something clever."

An animalistic growl of irritation escaped from Ranma's throat,
unconsciously tapping into a small part of the Neko-ken.

Why? There's nothing cat-like near. And why bring it up just to growl?

She angrily
grabbed a thermos out of what looked to be thin air, and poured the
almost-scalding water upon herself, triggering the transformation.
The martial artist had fought Mousse enough times that he was able to
duplicate the blind duck's technique rather well.  Even if he didn't
use weapons, the Hidden Weapons technique was very useful for carrying
hot water.

A handy trick for Ranma to pick up, but this seems like a magic wand you as the author have waived for convenience sake. Ranma doesn't learn every single technique he sees. The Breaking Point, for example...unless I'm mistaken, he never uses it...he didn't go through the necessary training for it, and probably wouldn't want to. Anyway, we don't know how Mousse does his technique, and the only indication Ranma knows how is where the heck he's able to pull those dresses out of when he wants to pretend to be Ryoga's fiancee or something. And a couple times when he pulls out mallets a la Akane (but even Soun does this).

Of course...this is an attempt to apply real-world sensibilities to a manga with many impossible elements...

I think it would be better just to say he pulled a thermos of water seemingly out of nowhere, without linking it to Mousse's technique. Except...since when has he ever prepared hot water like this ahead of time? Someone just happening to walk by with tea for him to grab, yes, but Ranma actually getting a clue and bringing a thermos?

The first 'Fire Soul Bird' from the Sailor Senshi finally gained the
attention of the beast.  The creature roared in defiance as it settled
for firing several dark energy blasts in the direction of the fuku-
clad super heroines.  While most of the Senshi were able to jump out
of the way, Sailor Venus was still stunned at the sight of such a
handsome young boy taking on a youma by himself she wasn't paying as
much attention as she should have.  By the time she noticed the
attack, all she could do was brace herself for the impact.

What continuity are you following for the attack names? Not that I'm really familiar with them, but something rings NA about this one. I could be totally wrong...

"BWAHAHAHA!"  Ranma cackled toward the heavens as he raised his fists
in triumph.  "Finally!  A punching bag that won't break!  THANK YOU
KAMI-SAMA!"

Nice element. The natural thought is that Ranma would just start firing ki-blasts upon finding out punching it wouldn't hurt it. I like that he'd try anyway.

On a scale of one to ten on the Akane Cooking Factor, this was
beginning to look like an 11.  Half-cooked and burnt meat lay
scattered about the kitchen, some of it on plates.  The lettuce had
been thoroughly washed in turpentine, and the salad dressing was
composed of varnish, cooking oil, and something from an unmarked
bottle she found underneath the sink.  Bits of sugar had somehow
wormed it's way onto the dessert, though purely by accident.  Most of
the confection was covered in salt, baking soda, and anything else
white she could find around the kitchen.  To top it off, most of the
almost un-recognizable produce was covered in something that was,
quite frankly, un-recognizable.  And glowed slightly.  All in all,
this wouldn't have been so bad if Akane hadn't decided to take on the
difficult job of cooking Western food.  Since she only knew vaguely
what it looked like, and nothing of what it tasted like, she was
improvising more than normal.

Akane's cooking...it seems to be based on fanfiction rather than anything else. Her cooking is not THAT bad. She did manage to make normal-tasting curry. And she also is not completely oblivious of her cooking problems...during the Shinnosuke incident, she knew it was the water of life making her food taste really good, not any sudden jump in skill.

"-new combatant seems to be holding his own against the youma.  Could
this be another ally to the Sailor Senshi?  This reporter can only
speculate at this time, but it seems that-"

The news sure got there fast. When you talked about the fight from Ranma's point of view, it seemed like he wasn't fighting the youma for any real length of time before the Senshi showed up and he saved Minako. Now it seems like it must have been longer, for the news to be there already.

Normally, Akane would hit/mallet/inflict pain on Ranma immediately and
walk off in a huff.  That would pretty much be the end of things,
besides residual feelings of resentment.  However, since there was no
Ranma to immediately hit, Akane was forced to contain the feelings of
rage.  Unlike in most people, rage leaving after a period of time,
Akane's temperament only caused the rage to grow.

Exponentially.

"-looks as if the new arrival could be involved with Sailor Venus!
Certainly they appear to have some degree with familiarity with each
other, judging by the way he grabbed-"

The TV set met its unfortunate demise due to bludgeoning with a large
table.

If this is a post-volume 38 fic, I think you're going to run into trouble if you keep along these lines. Not that a lot of readers will mind, I suppose, since so many writers decide to break Ranma and Akane up. The ways they do it hardly ever seem consistent or believable though, and usually involve a lot of wand-waving.

When was the last time Akane hit Ranma in the manga? The worst they did during/after the wedding was angry words and facing away from each other. Anyway, this issue is long and hotly debated.

It's a lot easier to change characters from canon if you change circumstances earlier on, but if you try to change them to the way you want them and still have had everything in the 38 volumes happen, that's a lot less plausible.

I'll frankly amit that I've spent a lot more time reading fanfiction than I've spent on canon sources. Many multiples of that time. So why do I even bother to mention inconsistencies, if my own views are obviously affected? I guess because I think all these made-up characters deserve a chance, and it annoys me to see certain ones of them so constantly demonized.

On a completely unrelated note, another thing you haven't yet dealt with in the story is the age difference between the various casts.

Peter

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