Catching up on some backlog... As always, all comments are merely the
opinions of one cranky reader who doesn't like much anyway. :-P

"Brad Angell" <oddball22@hotmail.com> wrote:

       "Oh, hello there," the eldest Tendo daughter said to the soaking
wet girl in the red chinese shirt. "Who are you?"

Be on the lookout for repetitive descriptions. You've got the same
phrase "soaking wet" here as well as a couple paragraphs before.

        "Wahhh!" Ranma lost her balance as she was pulled foreward, the
other girl falling backwards. Ranma grabbed Kasumi around the waist and
attempted to soften the fall.

       *Whump!* *Goosh!*

IMO, a prose description (even a very abbreviated one) would work better
here than just sound effects.

       "Kasumi, who's at the do-" Akane paused, taking in the scene of
her older sister moaning as she lay on the floor, a topless pig-tailed
girl half-draped over her and feeling her up.  "Oh no! Kasumi's being
molested!" Akane leapt into action. "I'll save you, Kasumi! Hyah!*

While I think the general idea here is a good one, using a humorous
misunderstanding to mislead Akane into violence, I think the jumping to
conclusion here is a bit much. You may want to add some more misleading
evidence, perhaps some conveniently mis-timed lines of dialog.

       *Wham!*

        The golf swing was perfect, even though Akane did not play
golf. She was proficient with her mallet, however.

The mallet is a sight gag generally equivalent to bapping someone in
anger. I'd recommend you don't use it in a case such as this one where
she's making what's meant to be a serious attack against a (possibly)
dangerous opponent.

       "Hey, what didja do that for!?" Ranma demanded to know as she
pulled herself out of the wall, scowling at the gi-clad girl who had
knocked her into it. "You psycho or something?"

       "You were molesting my sister, you bimbo!"

And the insult here seems a bit precipitous. In the early manga, Akane
had motivations for being hostile towards Ranma: his beating her in
combat pretending to be a girl, seeing her in the shower, not to mention
the threat of the engagement. None of this applies here.

        Akane and Kasumi blinked, not prepared for that pronouncement.
They looked the strange girl up and down with identical expressions that
seemed to suggest their guest could use a straight jacket.

strait-jacket.

       "And put your shirt back on!" came the shouted commanded from

command

        The boy's punches and kicks cracked like lightening, as he

lightning
("lightening" is the process of becoming less dark)

       "Uhh, sorry," Ranma replied, now in boy-form. He spied his pack

boy form.

        Ranma rubbed the bumps on his head, while adjusting himself on
the pillow to ease the bruises. It's wasn't very easy, with the rope

It wasn't

        Nabiki turned and smiled at the boy sitting next to her. "I'm
fine, Ranma. You came just in time." She turned back and glared at the
pig-tailed boy. No one had ever seen her nude before, and she was
decidedly unhappy about that.

NABIKI: Yes, I really wish people could've seen me nude long before now.

       "You can't be Ranma," Akane told the cursed boy. "He's Ranma,
Kasumi's fiance. And at least he's not as perverted and rude like you."

Suggest: not perverted and

(Presumably she doesn't think Faux Ranma is perverted at all. ^_^;;)

       "Now, now Nabiki, it would seem we have a genuine problem," Soun
informed everyone, then turned to the bound pig-tailed boy. "And if you
really are Ranma Saotome, then you must marry one of my daughters to
inherit the dojo! There's Kasumi, 19, though she's currently engaged to
the other Ranma. Nabiki is 17, and Akane is 16. Pick one of my two
younger daughters, and she'll be your fiancee!"

Suggest writing out the numbers in words, e.g., nineteen rather than 19.

As this is a bit precipitous of Soun, you may want to have some fun with
it. Maybe a little speech about what a good thing this is because two
engagements are better than one, or some such.

        Akane had never seen Nabiki generate a battle aura before, nor
did she think Nabiki had the strength to pick up and slam the table down
on the bound pig-tailed boy. She shrugged.

       "Now that," the youngest Tendo stated, "he had coming."

He did, but did we? :)  Since this is Nabs rather than Akane, couldn't
she do something different, just for variety?

        Ranma froze. "Urk! Uh, no! I was just thinking about this
Amazon that chased us around China, trying to kill us!"

       "I wonder why," Akane drawled. "So, you do kempo?"

       "A little." A slight feeling of unease appeared in Ranma's
stomach.

        An eager look appeared in Akane's eyes, even while she assumed
a fighting stance. "Let's spar, then! Don't worry, I'll go easy on you."

You might want to develop a better reason why she does this. In the
manga, she felt sorry for Ranma (who she believed to be a girl),
something that seems unlikely to be true given the events we've seen
here so far, or at least needs to be developed more to be plausible.

        Akane paused, surprised at the question. "What? Not really.
He's a nice guy, unlike someone else I could mention. And Kasumi seems
to really like him for some reason." She resumed fighting.

       "Well, you're older sister doesn't seem very bright, ya know?"

your
("you're" means "you are")

The insult here seems a little gratuitous. Ranma's certainly capable of
putting his foot in his mouth, but IMO he could do it in a more natural
way.

Ranam replied, leaning to the side to avoid a straight punch. "He could
be just using her. How much do ya know about him?"

        The pace of Akane's attacks accelerated. "Don't call Kasumi
stupid! And Ranma is very kind and gentle with her." She grit her teeth
as her opponent leapt over her mid-level kick. "And he actually fights
back when we spar! So why aren't you? Afraid you'd lose?"

        Ranma easily danced around a few more aggressive attacks.
"Well, if you even had a chance of actually touching me, I might
consider it."

       "Are you saying I'm slow?" Akane growled, as Ranma flipped over
her body.

       "No, that's not what I'm saying," Ranma countered, causing Akane
to pause. "Wait a minute, yes, that is what I'm saying!"

This bit was better done, IMO.

        At any rate, he figured this other Ranma probably had something
to do with the fact that this family seemed to be a little upset at
himself. It wasn't like he hadn't tried to be nice. Ranma figured he

at him.

(Use "himself" only if he's both the subject and object of the verb,
e.g. Ranma was angry at himself.)

just needed to confront this imposter, and then he could force the fraud
to reveal who he really was.

        Ranma was convinced this pretender was up to no good. After
all, if someone didn't have anything to hide, they would use their own

he would just use his own

        Kasumi giggled, then leaned into him, resting her head on his
shoulder. "You are very sweet, Ranma-chan. I guess that's why I care
you, dearly."

why I care for you dearly.

        Ranma spit out dirt as stood back up. "What was that?"

as he stood

        Ranma frowned and dropped, sweeping his leg out and taking Ryu
off his feet. Before he could follow up on the advantage, however, his
opponent had kippup'ed back to his feet, now holding something in his

had what?

DAISUKE: I had the kippups yesterday. *kip* *kip* There I go again!

HIROSHI: No, idjit. It's like when you tell your friends to kippup, or
they'll be left behind.

        Before the really Ranma had realized what his adversary was up
to, he realized his arms were bound to his sides by thick rope.

Suggest you reword to get rid of one of the repeated "realized"s.

       He began to chuckle, picturing his defeated foe on the ground,
while the Tendo's apologized for thinking he was the fake. The chuckle

Tendos

        He shakily stood back up. He was still quite sore from his
earlier bout with the fake Ranma, but felt he could still take this
clown. "Alright pal, you asked for it. You're gonna regret messing with

"All right, pal,

        For several long moments, Ranma contemplated the blades of
grass before his eyes, marveling at how different they were close up.
Some had a darker shade of green, while others were different lengths.
There was even a ladybug perched atop one, staring at him. Ranma thought
that it looked it was laughing at him, but that was just on the
principal that it was female.

principle

       "Multiple compound fractures, bruises, contusions, and internal
bleeding," The coroner replied, a small man in his late 30's by the name

30s
(or, preferably)
thirties

of Yoshiro..

        Ohara whistled as he studied the girl. "Wow. She'd be quite a
looker without, without all those injuries. Wonder what got a hold of
her? A wild tiger or bear?" He looked over at the coroner. "So, what was
ultimately the cause of death?"

       "Good question," Yoshiro replied, leafing though a folder. "Took
us awhile to figure it out, but it turns out to be `blunt force trauma
to the head.'" He looked up. "Bascially, she was hit with a large object

Why would that take a while to figure out? ^_^;;;

YOSHIRO: The caved-in skull fooled us at first. We figured, termites.

of considerable weight. Well, either that, or the wielder was pretty
strong."

       Ohara shook his head. "Shame. And she was such a looker, too.
Cute pigtail, too."

Hm. Well, I'm not gonna mallet you for it ^_^ but this ending didn't
really work for me. That, IMO, would require enough comic distance to
not feel sorry for Ranma when he essentially gets bumped off by author
fiat -- which in turn would mean either making what happens to him more
his own fault, or simply making the whole story enough of a farce or
spoof that nothing gets taken seriously. In general, I think you've done
a pretty good job of manuevering Ranma's more unappealing qualities into
play in this story, but it's not enough for this, IMO. (And without this
last bit, there isn't much of a sense of closure, as it just kinda
trails off.)

One idea would be to rework it into a "Ranma goes back in time and tries
to start over" story. You might need an alternative explanation of why
Genma is absent (as him being killed due to Ranma altering the timeline
would probably take the story in too angsty a direction and force Ranma
to reconsider what he's doing too soon), but Ranma's advance knowledge
would put him in a more powerful and hence less sympathetic position,
and the chances for humorous misunderstandings would abound as he starts
referring to things that the others don't know about yet.

Just an idea I'm throwing out; if it doesn't grab you, feel free to
likewise throw it out. :)


Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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