I don't see much C&C for this.  I rather especially liked the Ranma/Dragon 
Half angle, so I figured I'd offer up my thoughts...


*****Grammar Flaws

I don't see too terribly much in the way of grammatical errors, with the 
notable exception of one major one:  the use of single periods in place of 
ellipses.  I get the feeling, though, that this might be a flaw in your 
text editor or word wrapper; you might want to check those out.  Aside from 
that, there's a couple lost commas and such which I'm too tired now to go 
through line by line and find.  Gomen.  ^_^;;



*****Story Flaws  (Note that these are only my perceptions of and opinions 
on the story and may or may not have anything to do with reality.)


~~Tenchi and Pacing
You're focusing too much on the Tenchi side of things, at this point.  At a 
wild guess, this chapter is a 50/50 split between Ranma and Tenchi in terms 
of word quantity.  In terms of action, on the other hand, it's wildly 
biased towards the Ranma portion.  When it gets to the Tenchi parts, the 
whole thing drags to a screeching halt.


~~Excessive Akane Abuse
Akane-as-ragebucket was slightly overdone.  Akane-as-punchingbag was _way_ 
overdone.  The ragebucket part could easily overlooked if Ranma's reaction 
was toned back to realistic Ranma levels.  Ranma doesn't absentmindedly 
slip off hundreds of punches and kicks on instinct.  (And quite frankly, 
the whole "Ranma punches enemy X number of times" thing is a pet-peeve of 
mine; any more than a half-dozen is simply "a lot", and any attempt to get 
ridiculously specific simply strikes me as Dragonball Z-esque 
ego-masturbation.  "Ranma struck 841 blows in four seconds!  Ooh...aah....")

A much more likely scenario would be:  Ranma reflexively sidesteps the 
boken's downswing, fluidly extends his arm to the side and absently 
delivers a palm-thrust to Akane's sternum, flinging her five or ten feet 
through the air and in to the wall hard enough to crack the plywood and 
knock her unconscious.  This would do just as well at horrifying Akane's 
family while avoiding the whole martial arts wank-fest problem, and could 
just as easily fulfill any long-term Akane injury needs you may or may not 
have.  (A person with a good grasp of Wing Chun or Jeet Kun Do can crack 
ribs with a one-inch punch.  In the Ranma world, a miscalculated palm 
thrust could easily crack the sternum, crush ribs, pulp internal organs or 
shatter vertebrae, not to mention the possible concussion or brain damage 
from bouncing one's head off the wall that hard.)


~~Tofu, Cologne, and Secret Societies
Anytime someone needs a member of a secret society in Nerima, they 
invariably trot out either Tofu or Cologne...or both.  Apparently, any 
affiliation with the occult comes with an automatic membership in every 
esoteric secret society known to man.  Frankly, I have a certain amount of 
trouble seeing either of these two as secret-society fodder, for various 
reasons:

Tofu:  We're gonna have to assume that Tofu had fairly good grades in grade 
school for him to be accepted by any secondary educational institution 
who'll teach him to crack backs and stick needles in people, so no long 
journeys to far off mystical lands or obscure parts of Southern 
California.  He was probably just an average with an interest in martial 
arts in general, then focused on Tai Chi before deciding to do the 
chiropractic/Chinese medicine thing.  After high-school he probably had to 
spend a fairly packed six years in secondary education to earn the 
requisite diplomas so he wouldn't get his ass kicked for malpractice or 
some such.  This dumps him in his practice in Nerima at the age of 24, 
right around Kasumi's early/mid teens.  Between establishing a practice by 
himself (does he even have a receptionist?), learning occult miscellania, 
and developing an unhealthy fascination with Kasumi, he doesn't have time 
to attend proper secret society gatherings and social outings before the 
Ranma storyline starts.  Now, anytime after Tofu vanishes from Ranma manga 
canon (or Falls Down An Open Sewer And Dies) is certainly fair game for 
secret society initiations, indoctrinations, parties, and whathaveyou, 
though this story obviously occurs well before this part of Ranma canon.

Cologne:  Let's be honest here.  She's the leader of a backwards, isolated, 
inbred little village that just happens to be surrounded by an unholy 
quantity of disgustingly-overpowered magical peoples and lands.  ("Inbred" 
in the sense of their culture and laws, not their genetics...although you 
have to wonder, considering how excessively zealous they are in pursuing 
new blood.  I don't recall seeing enough people in the few Joketsuzoku 
scenes in canon to constitute a viable gene-pool....)  If it weren't for 
Jusenkyo/Jusendo and their resultant probability twisting and magic 
bleedoff, I sincerely doubt that the Joketsu would have a hundredth of the 
magical artifacts and knowledge they do have.  As she is, I don't think 
Cologne would accept any secret society head honcho as an equal -- she just 
doesn't have enough respect for anything non-Joketsu to do that.  At best, 
she might work with them in some form of barter/mercenary arrangement.  The 
one big caveat to this would be if, whether by magical influence or 
(in)breeding, the Joketsu happened to have the world's highest 
concentration of Slayers, in which case Cologne has probably wrangled 
herself some fairly hefty influence with the council (and is probably 
sorely pissed that Shampoo didn't manage to inherit the gift).

In the meantime, how about some variety in the secret society affiliates of 
the Ranmaverse?  How about the ladle-lady, who keeps splashing Ranma 
because he positively glows with Slayer potential to her 
watery-but-experienced eyes?  How about Gosenkugi, the slightly-dishonest 
and more-than-slightly-incompetent 
junior-assistant-cadet-trainee-janitor?  What about the Kunos, who, while 
they may be a bunch of fuckin' loons, are quite possibly the most brilliant 
family of prophets seen in a millennium?  It doesn't necessarily take 
competence to phone in a potential Slayer to your superior, and there's an 
endless supply of potential incompetent lackeys in Nerima.


~~Nerima Wrecking Crew and Destructive Tendencies
200,000,000 yen in damage, front page news coverage, and the JSDF wasn't 
called?  Suspension of disbelief fails violently right there in the first 
paragraph.  Not good.  Even in the Ranmaverse, I have a hard time believing 
that damage and publicity like that wouldn't cause a mass influx of people 
with crewcuts in camouflaged trucks with roof-mount high-caliber automatic 
weaponry.




Geh.  This is all I can come up with right now.
I rather like this so far, even though I don't really know where it's going.


Need sleep...

--MFeltmate


             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'