Notes towards Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating

[deleonjh]

Here are my original notes for Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating. Note that you shouldn’t look here if you don’t want to read spoilers. Feel free to drop me a line or ask me anything about this story.

Anyway, the story is about Ranma and Akane actually being ex-significant others at the time of their fateful meeting at the beginning of the series. The chapters would all be titled as if they were actual titles in a dating manual, so Chapter 1 is Meeting Women, Chapter 2 is Getting to Know Each Other. The back story is that this whole thing is actually the aftermath of a botched time travel scheme.

See, Happosai has a vintage doll from a "gentleman's store" (aka novelty sex shop) he'd bought way back when. I think I just made up the term "gentleman's store", I'm sure they were called something else, but that would be the euphemism Happosai uses. Barbie dolls were actually modelled after a doll originally produced in a Belgian novelty sex shop in the 1930's, at least I think it was Belgian. So the premise isn't as outrageous as you'd think.

Ranma and Happosai's minds in the original timeline get transported back to their bodies 2 years in the past. So Ranma's 14 again and Happosai is back in the cave. I might forget about Happosai at all and just make Ranma the sole time traveller. The timetravel story would end with Ranma and Akane's very brief relationship and the timetravel doll being destroyed or lost or something.

Ranma and Happosai's knowledge of the original timeline would have disappeared once the past had been changed and the doll had gone, so Ranma just remembers going out with Akane and nothing about time travel.  He went to the Tendo dojo to find Happosai's old stuff and maybe a way to reverse things but he ended up meeting Akane.  Maybe he remembers it as going to the dojo to train or something, since that is the story the time-travelling Ranma would have given.  The whole dating and leaving bit would have to make sense both as something a time travelling Ranma had bumbled into and as something the original 14 year old Ranma would have done.

So the Ranma series is starting over again but with that one change that snowballs over the series.  How did things go differently with Ryoga and Ranma?  Did Ryoga ever meet Akane, for example?  Akane would have been even more boy hating, what with having been the victim of Ranma the lothario (from her perspective, though it was actually Ranma trying to fix his screwup and return things to their original state, but he remembers it as giving up girls for the sake of martial arts).  Or think about the ice skating duel, the kissing scene would have been way different. 

Akane after Ranma gets kissed by Mikado: I knew it, I knew you were gay!
Ranma: It was an accident!
A: Sure it was you perv.
R: I'll show you!

And then they actually make out.  Afterwards they brush their teeth and gargle manically when they realize they'd just kissed their ex.  The whole Ranma sneaking into Akane's room scene would also be different.  I think it would be more interesting to have Akane actually discover Ryoga's curse and leave Ranma and Ryoga lying on the floor clutching their groins.  Then Ryoga is pursuing Akane openly and there might be a love triangle.

I think adding two contradictory currents of mutual loathing and sexual tension would add all kinds of comedy to what has become hoary old storylines in Ranmafics. Of course, the changes would be cumulative and the relationships at the end would be different from the canon ones.  I dislike fics where everything goes absolutely the same except just one thing since you're essentially re-reading the manga in textual form, so why not just read the original anyway?

I meant the whole thing to end up with Ranma and Akane actually getting back together again.  I decided the ending would be when Ranma's mother discovers the truth, mostly because I didn't like the canon ending and found it too full of spectacle and thought the better ending would have been with the Saotomes and Tendos having become one big family in the Tendo dojo (cue Louie Louie music and everyone jumping in the air).