Great story, as always, Vince!  Nice to see this one come out,
and nicely told.  There couldn't be any big surprises, of course,
but there were enough small ones, and enough other material
(especially pain) to make for a compelling read.

I went back and reread the original AMAW right after finishing
this, and found myself astonished by how faithful you managed
to be to the recap from the original. I can't think of any other
author I've ever read who managed to write an earlier-occuring
story later without leaving in numerous little discrepancies.
With yours, I didn't find any.

rope.  It parted.  "Auwe!" Kuno wailed again, making a futile
grab for the edge as he fell through the trapdoor to the waiting
crocodile.  Hiss!  Snap!  "OUCH!"

Great start.  The normal Nerima scene, applied to graduation.
Loved the way you just hint at what's come before, letting
our imaginations run riot.

     "Happy and sad both.  A lot of these folks'll never see each
other again," Ukyo elaborated, "so they're saying goodbye.  Some
are goin' off to college, some are getting jobs. 

"Some are joining secret underground ideological organizations."
;)

thoughtfulness, I really do.  It was so considerate of you not to
get any of your girlfriends in a family way while-- are you all
right, dear?"

Heh.  Nodoka at work.

     "Now you know you're not getting away with that!" Akane
huffed.  "I made them especially for you.  Try one!"

Just the slightest evidence of being older in this speech, I
thought.  Given that Akane's behavior as a whole doesn't
display much of that, IMO (not that this would be easy to
do, mind you, given the stupidities she has still to commit),
this one is nice.

hands.  "Ranma, do you WANT to be a ronin, struggling against
impossible odds?"

     The image that came to his mind was not of a student bent
over a table under a single light bulb, surrounded by books, but
of a warrior standing tall on a lonely road, ringed by faceless
enemies.  "Hey, sounds like fun."

Heh.  I can just see this miscommunication, too.  Might have
been a good place to use your patented split column mode:

   Under a single light bulb,	    On a lonely country
   seated at a table, a lonely	    road, Ranma, fists ready,
   Ranma, surrounded by		    stood, facing down
   books, wearily turned a	 	    a ring of enemies.
   page.

else he could think of.  Akane was telling him she wanted to go
to college, and that he couldn't.  She wanted to leave, not just
Nerima, but him.  She was trying to make the "sayonara" speech.

Just the beginning, but the reader is already uneasy, even
at this first misunderstanding, given that the subject is so serious.

deserve that kind of torture.  With any luck a cat would try to
eat them.

Nice little detail here.

night peevishly.  She'd show him.  She'd go away to college, and
she'd have a great time, and he'd miss her, and then he'd be
sorry.

This is just a little immature for a supposed 18 or 19-year old,
I think.  It's grating a little on my suspension of disbelief.  Not sure
what you can do about it, though; you're locked in to the
decisions Akane has to make in this one.

(Or, maybe, given what else I've swallowed from other authors,
the problem is that YOU don't really believe in this version of
Akane.)

     "Akane," Kasumi ventured, watching her hands moving in the
soapsuds, "now that you and Ranma-kun are out of school, you know
they'll bring up marriage again...."

Second time through, I find that I'm wondering what Kasumi
is thinking here in a way I didn't the first time.

appreciate it when I try to do something nice for him."  Worst of
all, he's opposed to it, she thought.  I can't say I'll marry
someone who won't say he'll marry me....

     "I really don't think he's as bad as all that, Akane."

<clip>

"He doesn't even WANT to go to college.  Well, I do."

     Kasumi sighed.  "We can't all have what we want, you know."

     "Sorry, Oneechan," Akane said with a remorseful look.  "I
know you wanted to go, and your exam scores were good enough to,
but, well....

Despite the way she catches herself here, Akane is really
coming across as slightly spoiled here.

allowed.  "Maybe."  Maybe if she really went away, Ranma would
follow her. That would certainly prove something... and if he
didn't, that would prove something else.

"and if both of you are thinking the same thing, then that
proves a third thing."

     "Oh, Akane... do you really think he'll wait four years for
you?  Maybe more?"

     "If he takes the engagement seriously, he will."  Akane
liked her idea better the more she thought about it.  She could
find out how he really felt without having to risk disclosing her
own feelings.  "If he doesn't, why should I?"  It was a win-win
situation... wasn't it?

     After Akane had dried the last dish and gone, Kasumi
continued to stand there for some time, gazing at her unsmiling
reflection in the window over the sink.

Again, second time through this is more interesting.  Is
Kasumi deciding that Akane doesn't want the engagement?
Or doesn't deserve it?

     "Is treat, is not trick," Shampoo said, pouting a little.
"Special ingredient only for, how you say, vigor."

     "Huh."  Vigor was always a good thing, wasn't it?

Heh.

     Perched atop a power pole, Ranma stared out over Nerima's
night-mantled rooftops, unseeing.  It had taken a while to sink
in, and it was still sinking.  Akane really didn't love him.  The
knowledge was a hot, jagged mass in his chest, making his breath
come in shallow gasps. 

Good description, IMO.

Akane didn't want to marry him,
didn't want to be engaged to him, didn't even particularly want
to be in the same town as him-- she actually thought more school,
a fate only a little better than death, was preferable!  There
was nothing between them.

Nice accumulation of misunderstandings here, especially
the bit about school.

this was her chance.  The look she'd given him... he couldn't
have said "no" to that look without a really good reason to hold
out.

     Like the reason he didn't have any more.

Nice passage.


I think you're achieving a melancholy effect successfully.
You're not, IMO, achieving the level of pain I experience when
I read Noakes or Zen, but then it doesn't suit the overall mood
of this series to do so.



             .---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 -----'