--- sebastien-renon@club-internet.fr wrote:

Chris "HomerNet" McFarland wrote:

So, here we are, in the seeming twilight of

Ranma-dom. (It's a word!  

Really!)  The manga has been completely translated

and posted for a 

couple of years, the anime has been completely

translated and is now 

selling at stupidly high prices in boxed sets with

fancy graphics, and 

the general public STILL has /never/ heard of our

favorite gender 

challenged martial artist.

There is one massive difference between Ranma and
Star Trek.

More than one actually...but nevermind:-)

So, I'm sorry, but I don't think we'll ever see the
kind of revival you're talking about (if only
because Takahashi who really is the only one who can
continue or decide to let somebody else do so
probably wouldn't be interrested in doing so).

I don't know... the fanfic community has been getting
more press recently. I've seen it referenced in
TVGuide TechTV(before it became G4TV) and most
recently in Writer's Digest. It may turn out that some
enterprizing entrepreneur will see the huge amount of
ranma fanfiction, make a few license deals and voila!
we'll have more Ranma. I agree that's still unlikely
though.

Just as Star Trek died (arguably of course) with the
next generation episodes although its fans still
remember it and there are some crappy spinoffs that
are remeniscent of it, Ranma I think died after the
anime was over. Inuyasha and more recently Naruto were
probably nails in the coffin. The fan base will never
really go away. There'll always be R1/2 fanfiction and
people who will read it, but this is like seeing a
good Deep Space Nine episode or something. It just
makes you miss the good ole days that much more.

This feeling might just be my bias, as I've been
working on original stuff lately and my heart hasn't
been in fanfiction as much, (you can't serve both
Takahashi and Mamon I guess:-)), but I've heard
similar sentiments from other people. 

I think the Ranma/StarTrek analogy is accurate as long
as you keep in mind the scale. Will there ever be a
ride in vegas dedicated to Ranma? No, I should think
not. That would be kind of scary. But nearly all of
the veterans of the anime fanfiction community have
been affected by Ranma. A good many people were
introduced to anime or manga (at least in multi
volume/ episodal form) through Ranma, and now you have
children growing up watching Ranma. You won't be
finding rides, but there may very well be Ranma-only
anime/manga conventions in the future. I for one,
would certainly go to something like that.

By correlation though, one might also expect there to
to be Sailor Moon-only conventions or Dragonball-only
conventions. Time will tell. Or maybe it won't.

Otaku are a sub culture, much like Trekkies.(Though
anime is becoming somewhat more mainstream)
Ranma-philes are therefore a sub culture of a sub
culture, and that diminishes their clout by an order
of magnitude or so. Beyond that, though, I think the
comparison is apt.

I'll go back to my lurking now, watching from the
shadows, like an antiquated panty thief.


=====
http://www.geocities.com/zorukonotsu/fanfics.html
http://www.fanfiction.net/~zorknot


		
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