PLease write a sequel.

This story is too too good to leave with out one.

Not a review of the chapter, just a request ... did you happen to get the name and/or address of the ... (no description sufficiently vile comes to mind) who asked for details of the rape? My seven-foot-tall, 395 lbs (all muscle) redneck baby brother expressed an interest.

no one ever considers an abortion.
[I think that's probably a reflection of the standard expectations of the local culture that the Ranmaverse is based in (although I never got the scenario with 'Ranma', there's never been a good enough reason for _him_ to be pregnant). Abortion may be the standard “birth control” in Russia, but to the best of my knowledge it's not nearly as popular in Japan or China. Part of it, if I understand correctly, is due to the availability/affordability of medical equipment.]

Chapter 2

"The clothes you're wearing sort of gave it away."
Ockham's Razor had finally managed to function in relationship to Ranma's life for one brief shining moment. If Ranma had known what Ockham's Razor was, he'd have appreciated the irony. Assuming he knew what irony was because a fish doesn't notice water until he is removed from it.
[True.]

When he got to the hurting people portion of his plans, the last thing it would be was accidental.
[Dark. I approve.]

Nabiki's relief was as phony as a wooden 50 yen piece.
[Points: +1]

Into the punch, he put all his fury, all his rage, all the anger he had ever felt over the things his father had done to him in his entire life.
[And drew upon the Dark Side of the force. Tomorrow Ranma Saotome will take a Darth name to officially join the ranks of the Sith.]

Ranma was ready to punch first and ask questions not at all
[Points: +1]

Chapter 3

But the martial artist's harmony between mind and body, between himself and the world, was missing. Even worse than missing, in discord.
[With all the emotional trauma, that's no surprise.]

"Go ahead and say ya wanna say.
[say _what_ ya wanna say?]

"Why is it every time I think Cologne's gone senile, she turns right around and proves she ain't?"
"Consider yourself lucky Saotome," Mousse replied. "She's been doing it me most of my life."
[There's something extremely humourous about that.]

Her name tag read 'Dr. Mame Suimono'. But a small round button she wore next to it read 'Honorary Amazon: Do Not Annoy'. Ranma hoped that it was a joke of some kind and feared that it wasn't.
[Now _that's_ funny]

For a procedure that was still technically illegal in most cases, abortions were not uncommon in Japan. The relative lack of contraception options for women guaranteed that. In Japan, it took thirty five years of wrangling and testing before 'the pill' became available to Japanese women for birth control.
[Hmm. 'Didn't know that before - all I could get were violent crime statistics, never anything on the aftermath.]

Sadly, abortion and contraception are not covered by the National Health plan and public assistance funds for either have been tied up in the Diet since before you were born.
[Good detail of modern Japan that I don't often see.]

Now he could face his parents. Now he could kill Ryoga.
[Simple and dark.]

Chapter 5

There is a major disparity between public and private schooling in Japan. Public school students are expected to attend half days of school on Saturdays two or three times per month. Private school students get to keep their Saturdays for themselves. Which explained why Kodachi normally chose Saturday to show up. She didn't have anywhere else she was supposed to be.
[And comes another target to maim in his mind.]

Then she saw his eyes and fear penetrated to the core of her being.
[At the same time, it's odd almost contrived, and yet something I almost expected for Kodachi to look him in the eye and see the madness within.]

Five small holes, three on her breast, two on her back, had burned through the teacher's clothing. Without knowing how they knew, all three understood that Hinako Ninomiya's aura draining ability was gone forever.
[Although the situation is indeed weird, I thought that permanently ending her ability without active manipulation of those pressure points felt outside the realm of suspense of disbelief.]

Second time reading this, and I thought it was well written. Glad I don't know who the insensitive * was who emailed wanting a detailed rape scene, bad enough that it happens without people wanting details.
You were right about the 'Ranma gets raped' fics though, this is the first one I've seen where he wants to and successfully aborts the child. One he wanted to abort, but if he did the curse wouldn't unlock, and another he tried but the curse wouldn't let the child die.
Hope to read more quality fics from you, though maybe not this type.

On a lark, I re-read this fanfic, and I think a second pass had softened my original criticism towards it. After all, we have all seen fanfics, some quite well written, where the premise is intimately connected to one character of another being OOC villainous ... I've seen evil Akane, Ukyou, Shampoo, Kuno, Ranma, Ryouga, Genma... Putting that element aside, the story is easier to see in its merits.

However, I would argue against your assertion that the best response to annoying "keep the pregnancy" fics (and yes, they do get sort of trite after a while) was to have Ranma raped. Not only is this a very common meme in the fandom, but the message would have been stronger the LESS perceived justification there was. In fact, I'd have avoided the authorial pitfall of the Ranma-chan pregnancy entirely, as its been done so throughly. The characterization of other main cast females can easily provide similar justification, though with obviously less of a revenge/battle aspect...

I enjoyed reading the story. I liked the fact you chose to do an orginal route with the plot device. I also like the interesting way you characterized Genma and Nodoka

Awesome. Simply [blank]ing AWESOME.

If you fix the relatively small problem that caused my previous rant and the usual gramatical faux pas, you will have something that possibly surpasses "Bitter End" as the ultimate Ranma dark-fic rather than merely closely approaching it.

This is not "damning with faint praise", this is comparing K2 with Mt. Everest. (K2 is possibly the tougher climb.)

Moose Breath

I've really only read up to chap 2 so far, and I appologize if my comments have been previously discussed. I am on a slow dial-up (no, I didn't repeat myself; this connection is slow for a dial-up) and don't usually have the time to read the reviews.

My concern is that the curse locks after less than 48 hours, maybe less than 36. This is a factor in almost all the "pregnant Ranma" I've read.

IRL, depending on the exact meeting point between the egg and sperm, it can take up to four days before implantation occurs. Without implantation, there is no pregnancy. My memory of estimates from the 1980s is that for every 400 fertilizations, there are less than 175 implantations, and that of these, only 125 last long enough to be "known" pregnancies, resulting in 100 live births (only 3 of the last 25 are lost to abortion in the US). The vast majority of those lost are due to bad genetic matchups resulting in a non-viable zygote or host/zygote mismatch.

Since a truly viable zygote can be very vociferous in finding a suitable host (one story I've heard involved a zygote implanting on the woman's large intestine after getting loose during a full hysterectomy; she delivered by c-section), I wouldn't be supprized to hear that Ranma could switch genders for a day or so before locking as female. This would make the source of the lock less obvious. A possibly more swallowable scenerio would be that Ranma was out for several days from the drugs instead of just overnight.

The body "knows" when it ovulates. It also "knows" when a successful implantation has occured. It has no way of "knowing" that a fertilization has taken place until the zygote hits the uterine wall. The surface of the egg changes with fertilization to prevent more sperm from entering. This change is what allows implantation, non-fertilized eggs just "bounce" on through. If a zygote has not implanted within a certain period of time, the uterine wall is sluffed and a "period" happens.

It can also happen that a zygote implants too soon. When this happens it is called an "ectopian pregnancy", the zygotes has implanted in the fallopian tube, which is almost always fatal for the fetus (can't say always, ever) and possibly for the mother. Definitely not fun, but this would be the result of Ranma implanting less than 36 hours after being inseminated.

Ranma would not be ovulating as a man. The drug load and the stress of the fight could make him ovulate immediately upon changing, or this could happen every change, but it still takes time for the sperm to swim through the uterus and up the fallopian tubes to meet the egg, which in this case would be just emerging from the ovary. It then takes three to four DAYS for the zygote to traverse the fallopian tube down to the uterus and implant. Insemination several days after ovulation could result in near-immediate implantation if conditions are perfect. However, trying to allow unfertilized eggs to survive a gender switch would result in Ranma impregnating himself on a regular basis as sperm would do likewise.

Please find some reason to hold Ranma female for about a week after the "deed" before the attempt to switch back to male. Having him too groggy to leave the clearing of the fight, except possibly to a nearby stream for water, for several days and/or being found and treated with ice-packs for the bruising to block the action of any warm water sponge baths should do it. You don't specify the day of the fight, but there was no hue and cry when he returned so it probably was less than 24 hours from the fight to Sat night/Sun morning.

For "magic" to "work", it has to follow some sort of rules like everything else, if not the same set as everything else. (If it's the same set it isn't "magic", it's technology we don't understand.) Otherwise, anything can happen just because somebody wanted it to, and that never happens. There are always other rules that are followed.

Finally, please realize that a bad story doesn't get this kind of a rant from me. I just quit reading those. I intend to finish this one. I'm just wanting an even better reason to "suspend disbelief".

Moose Breath

I want to thank you for finishing this story, and add two things to my earlier comments: I think that you have one of the best characterizations of Genma I have ever encountered. And I think that you are quite unfair to Akane.

Let me explain that last: although the scene in the park was very good, you repeatedly state before and after that point that she never/rarely trusts Ranma and expects him to always trust her. Although Akane is guilty of jumping to conclusions more or less throughout the manga, so are nearly all the other characters, including Ranma. When it comes to trusting, Akane definitely trusted Ranma about as far as she could throw him IN THE BEGINNING (and keep in mind how far she could throw him). As the series (especially the manga) progressed, Akane mellowed out more and grew to trust Ranma more.

By the Hinako story arc (right after Herb in the manga), when Ranma was following the teacher around trying to get her aura-draining technique, Akane dismisses the paranoid worries of her classmates and Ukyo that Ranma was romantically interested in Hinako with "you've got to be kidding" and is the ONLY fiancee NOT to attack her after the supposed date. Afterwards, she blows her stack once she walks in on Ranma bending Hinako backwards over a desk, his hand cupping her breast, yelling, "Give it up!" Can you honestly blame her for not "trusting" that the situation was innocent?

Ranma's relationship with Akane remains rocky right through the end of the manga, mostly due to continued misunderstandings, stubbornness, and poor communication -- on BOTH sides -- as well as outside interference. But I deny that Akane was mostly untrusting of Ranma, and that Akane trusted Ranma much less than Ranma trusted her.

No doubt I'm making too much of this, given that Ryoga is unabshedly wildly OOC -- suddenly he's a serial rapist? -- but this story seemed to be written with the idea that he was the only one OOC, and that is not the case in regards to Akane.

That doesn't stop this story from being very, very good.

Hey. Good story. I like how you made Ryoga a bad guy fo once. It's easy to see him in this kind of role. I also like how you went against the grain and had Ranma get an abortion when he got pregnant. I would have liked to have seen a fallout between Akari and Ryoga, or even confirmation that he was dead, like Akari finding his corpse or something. That'd have been a good dramatic couple of scenes.

I'll definitely be checking out some of your other stories. This was a good one.

You'll forgive me ahead of time, I hope; it is not my habit to write unflattering reviews. I only make occasional exceptions.

Even granted that you wrote this originally as a spamfic, and thus to be taken with a grain of salt, I could not follow the premise, even at the most basic level. The "Ranma has been raped" thing has been done from almost any and every possible angle, including the excellent " Lost Innocence " – however from the very start of this fanfic we are presented with a situation that ostensibly follows the manga, but completely disregards the manga sources of characterization. From the first sentence, we are presented with conflicts with the canon. Literally the entire first paragraph suffers under such a yoke, betraying the spirit of the characters themselves in what: an attempt to force a cliché situation that will allow you to present Ranma with the opportunity to have an abortion?

Why even bother making Ryoga the antagonist here, when he quite plainly is not that character. We aren’t even given a sort of progressive character development as to why he decided to rape Ranma (when, previously, being kissed or even hugged by Ranma-chan fills him with revulsion and disgust)… even putting aside the patently ridiculous notion that end-manga Ryoga would even still be seeking ‘revenge’ on Ranma and throwing away canon-established principles. You’d think, if he felt that way, that the character would have attacked Ranma during the failed wedding?

Enough. I didn’t start this review to turn it into a rant.
I will endeavor to look into your other Ranma fanfics another time. I will also do as suggested, and not this fic “too seriously,” though it is plainly written in a tone that begs the contrary…

Good story, really well thought out. Though, I REALLY have a hard time envisioning Ranma having an abortion.
But, there's a few things, SO, Ryoga raped and then killed Nabiki? And Ranma and all the others never found out her involvment in Ryoga's "victory"? And Ryoga didn't know of Ranma's abortion of his evil deed? That seems to be an important bit that may have helped the story greatly.
And honestly, the end seems a little anti-climactic with no final decisive blow, or truth letting.
I give it a B+ , thanks.

Great job so far on Nabiki btw. Glad to see you aren't using fanon on her (though you've always been some what better about avoiding fanon then most).

Mouuse calling Cologne "Old Monkey"? ^_^ funny.

And so it seems you actually had him go through with an abortion. eh, well it is a difference. Personally I was hoping you'd at least have the good doctor help him consider what he was deciding. A little more thought and such. Then again, I have no idea how much actually abortion clinics do to try to educate people.

I suppose considering my own life, I always cheer when I see people at least attempt to see both sides of this debate. Oh well.

There's a good reason abortion isn't ever seriously considered in these sort of fics. The general idea is that Ranma would never take the life of an innocent person. An extension of this is that he would see an unborn child as an innocent person, one that shouldn't die. This is simply the sort of personal everyone seems to think Ranma has and I don't completely disagree. Is this canon or fanon? I don't know.

The anime never says anything that disagrees with this, but they don't deal with anyone being pregnant so there aren't any examples of Ranma saying how he feels about the subject.

Oh the horror of an Akane cliche. ::sigh:: At least you didn't add something about it being toxic and just that no one would eat it...

Oh the horrors, Ranma with child... oh wait, I've already done that twice. Not a bad start, so you can be sure I'll read the next chapter.