BTW, I won't be posting comments on part IV, except for a few general
remarks below. I've read through it and other people have already said
pretty much everything I would have.

Donald Lee Granberry <noharness@mac.com> wrote:

      Dawn the next day proved an eerie experience for all of
greater Tokyo. The most terrifying thing was the profound
silence that greeted them at dawn.

Suggest dropping the "at dawn," since you've already identified that as
the time.

Tokyo, on any given day,
was normally a roaring monster of a city by sunup. Today, all
that could be heard was the call of birds and the ever
present whirring made by the cicadas. Soun and Akane took the
Tendo pull cart, while Ranma and Ranko took one borrowed from
a neighbor and began making their way toward the warehouse
district in the northern part of Nerima. The noise of the
carts trundling along seemed painfully loud in the eerily
unnatural quiet of the damp morning.

And more from the Department of Redundancy Department here. :)  Maybe
you could drop the first couple of sentences in this paragraph
altogether since you make the same point here.

      They reached the warehouses without any notable
incident, save having to stop and move a few pieces of debris

>from their path. Much to Soun's surprise and delight, a

single security guard was manning the first warehouse they
tried. He had been on duty for two days running without a

Suggest something like:
tried, on duty for two days
(or)
tried, having been on duty for two days
(since the next sentence is also a "he did that")

      "No, Baa-san," the man replied with curt bow of his

with a curt

      "True, but most of them think you, or Kasumi one, no a

or Kasumi, know a

     "I'll get the rice in," Soun said. "Ranma, you go see
about Doctor Tofu. Make sure no one is giving him any trouble.
No, not you Ranko, you stay here and help Nabiki. Akane, you

not you, Ranko; you stay

      "Don't try to cook any meat over this stuff," Ranko
warned Nabiki, "it's pine and it'll make the food taste bad."

Nabiki. "It's
(you'd need a sentence break there even without the explicit
attribution)

      Ranma was not at all happy with what he found at the
Ono Clinic. People were literally piled around outside while
four rough looking characters were talking to Tofu. At the
distance from which Ranma first saw them, it looked as though
they might even be threatening Tofu. With two more jumps he
knew they were threatening Tofu. One of them was down, thanks
to a shiatsu strike by Tofu. Two of them seized Tofu by the

Suggest: thanks to a shiatsu strike.
(everybody knows Tofu is the one who does that, and you've got enough
mentions of his name as is. :))

      Ranma turned to say something to Tofu, but the lanky
doctor had already gone to look at patient. Ranma walked over

at a patient.

      "Yeah, they're loaded down with kids and sick old folks
that ain't got no where else to go. The hospital's

nowhere (one word)

     "Drop a little lower and swing left, Major," Abe said
into the intercom. The Huey dropped lower and swung a little
to the left. The individual, it looked like a girl in
oversized male clothing, was standing on the roof of a

If this is one of Ranma's usual outfits, I'd drop the "male"; I think
his stuff would be considered unisex.

private residence shouting and waving. Abe shook his head. No
one seemed to understand that a person riding in a helicopter
could not hear a person shouting from the ground. He noticed
that there was a large number of people and around the place
and that several cook fires were burning in the yard. Good!
He thought. Somebody's showing some initiative. Then the kid

he (no caps, as it's actually in the same sentence as "Good!")

     "We're trying to get the cooks and infants out of the
sun," Nabiki said. "I think we'll have enough rice and water
to last us another day, provided we don't have too many more
people show up. Ranko here will show you where Tofu's clinic
is. You need to get over there right away. I think they must
be pretty desperate. My Dad went over there about an hour ago

dad
(no caps when it's not used as a name)

to see if he could help and hasn't been back."

     "All right," the startled Tanaka said.

     "Oh, I'm sorry," Nabiki said, giving Tanaka quick bow,

giving Tanaka a

     "Gun down!" Tanaka bellowed, as his training took
control. Sight picture, squeeze. The M16A2 rifle barked. For
reasons that Tanaka did not understand, the tinkling of
ejected brass always bothered him more than the muzzle blast.

I like the description here; it shows Tanaka's hardened callousness,
more through what isn't said than what is.

Well, I have to say the action in this part didn't interest me all that
much. While there was a good amount of real-world research and detail,
the goings-on here didn't provide much of a challenge for Ranma. There
were a fair amount of troubles here, but neither he nor the rest of the
cast had to really reach or learn anything to deal with them -- except
for Tofu, but the chapter really concentrated on Ranma more than him.
Nor did the split make it more difficult for Ranma -- in fact, it
actually helped, by letting him be in two places at once.

The good news is that I liked the next part, which I've already read
through, quite a bit better in this regard. Having to deal with the
Yakuza people, being unsure of whether attacking them would be a good
idea in the long run, was much more of a challenge. Maybe this part
could work as a build-up for that one, if you do more to foreshadow the
upcoming battle.

I'm still going to have to see how the duplication plotline goes before
making an overall judgement on it; certainly for now, I'm very
interested to see what develops next.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.akane.org/gary/comics.html

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