If Ranma had been Lum's opponent in the Tag Race...

[SpaceKnight of Chaos]

I only recently began watching the Urusei Yatsura anime on Youtube, but I've grown to enjoy it. The characters are certainly quite... uh... "unique", and it has its own particular style. Being a major fan of Ranma 1/2, however, I found myself wondering: what might have have happened if, instead of Ataru Moroboshi, the Oni's tag race for Earth had been fought between Lum and Ranma Saotome? How might the race have gone? What might the fall out have been, Ranma certainly not being inclined to make Ataru's canonical mistake? And how would Ranma have won, anyway?

And I have little doubt Ranma would have won, in the end. Whereas Ataru is a determinator who can pull off feats of superhuman physical ability when highly motivated (by a pretty girl), Ranma is a superhuman. He can't fly, but he can run at speeds that probably wouldn't be too far removed from an Olympic candidate, keep up such speeds for minutes, maybe even hours, he leaps multiple stories in a single jump, is a master acrobat, probably wouldn't be too phazed by a lightning bolt if Lum panics and starts slinging them at him (admittedly, she didn't in the canon race) and, most importantly of all, he cheats worse then the devil himself.

...What? I like the guy, but I'd be the last to call him some sort of moral ideal.

Also, would anything change depending on when in the Ranma timeline the race took place? The basic idea assumes it happens during/after the canon events of Ranma 1/2, after the whole entourage of maniacs is installed in Nerima, but what might be different if the race happened...
Before Ranma even went to Jusenkyo?
Just after Ranma returned from Jusenkyo, but before he first went to the Tendos?
Very early in the series, before Ukyo or even Shampoo have shown up, while Ranma is still squabbling most viciously with Akane?

[Dumbledork]

I don't like Urusei Yatsura at all and totally despise Ataru. He's the kind of guy I can't stand at all.

Now for the race, that would be easy for Ranma.

1) He could change into a girl and wait for Lum to come lucking for male Ranma. And then he could just grab her horns and demonstrate the curse.

2) the Oni have no clue about the earthling's abilitites. In the first episode she didn't make much of an effort to dodge Ataru's first attack. Ranma is much faster. He would grab her before she'd have time to react.

[Mark Davis]

Well first of all, part of the drama of the original tag race was that Ataru was so inept and uniquely unqualified to be the savior of Earth. If you replace him with Ranma you're going to have to work pretty hard to make the tag race at all interesting.

Second of all, it might be very interesting to insert Lum into the whole fiancee mess. In that case I think I'd want to do it early in the series, but after Shampoo and Ukyo have shown up (or just before, if you want to include their arrivals in your plot). Lum is a bit like Shampoo in that she comes from an alien culture and considers herself married to Ataru (or Ranma in this case), and is not shy about professing her love. She's also a bit like Akane in that she gets jealous and frys her boyfriend quite a bit. The caveat is that Ataru so clearly deserves it. He incurs Lum's wrath in ways that possibly even Ranma would find appalling (although Ranma would just be more appalled at what a useless, brainless, uncoordinated fool the boy is, I suspect).

Anyway you would need to establish early on what it is about Ranma that would set Lum off. Ranma may be a womanizer deep down (as the reversal jewel story suggests), but he's rarely open or obvious about it. Would simply having the other girls around set Lum off? Would Ranma ignoring her or being his usual callous, mouthy, insulting self set her off? It's going to be pretty boring if she doesn't zap him on occasion.

It would be interesting seeing Lum battle the other girls, and I have no doubt a few battles would take place. She has no martial arts ability but can fly and zap, so a battle with any one of the others could be fun.

Anyway there's some material there for an interesting story if you do it right.

I like Ursei Yatsura. It's certainly more joke-driven and slapstick than Ranma 1/2 or her other stuff, and Ataru is a supremely annoying character. Lum too, in her own way. But there's an interesting cast of characters. I'd say the cast of Ursei Yatsura are even more broadly drawn and shallow or two-dimensional than the cast of Ranma 1/2, and that's saying something, but on the whole a fun series.

For me the pinnacle of the series is the movie Beautiful Dreamer. If you see nothing else from the series, you should see that.

You've also reminded me (possibly a bad thing) of that one fic where Ataru turns into a noble man and an expert at martial arts, and girl-Ranma marries him, and Ataru is also big brother to the twelve girls from Sister Princess... that was a quote-very-much-unquote "special" story. Not bad, per se, since I did read the whole thing, but I don't think you could find another story with Ataru written as badly out of character as that....

[Daniel Jess Gibson]

She's also a bit like Akane in that she gets jealous and frys her boyfriend quite a bit. The caveat is that Ataru so clearly deserves it. He incurs Lum's wrath in ways that possibly even Ranma would find appalling (although Ranma would just be more appalled at what a useless, brainless, uncoordinated fool the boy is, I suspect).

The other problem with Lum is that she also fries him when Ataru makes her very happy. 'MAXIMAL EXPRESSION OF LOVE' Which makes a very limited emotional range for her partner to be safe in.

Her cooking is as toxic/explosive/magically dangerous as fanon-Akane's is, and interacting with Ranma's curse could step that up a whole other level.

The real problem is that Ataru was selected because he was supposed to lose. They thought he was the unluckiest boy on earth (I know they said it was random, but later they admit they lied). So if Ranma were chosen, Lum would know all about his powers and abilities, and frankly, for all his jumping skills, Ranma's still a ground pounder, and Lum can fly. Ataru won because Lum, their Planetary Champion, didn't respect him, Ranma would be treated as a credible opponent.

[Knight of L-sama]

Her cooking is as toxic/explosive/magically dangerous as fanon-Akane's is, and interacting with Ranma's curse could step that up a whole other level.

I've never actually seen the series but I was under the impression that her cooking wasn't so much bad as insanely spicy.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

'Insanely Spicy' food can put you in the emergency room with internal hemoraging. I kid you not. You do NOT want to destroy the lining of your stomach.

[LadyRelena]

Wow, I love this thread. I've actually had this idea of a Ranma/Lum fanfiction for about two years now but have to many other fanfictions going at the moment to ever get it started. In my fanfiction I was going to have it start during the Neko Ken arc in volume 5 of Ranma. It seemed right for cat-Ranma to be attracted to a tiger oni girl like Lum. I also thought the dynamic of Lum trying to run from a playful neko Ranma would have been hilarious, almost as if his cat instincts were trying to catch a mate. Once he caught her he could do his famous kiss scene (that was originally with Akane) to Lum, witch could bring about the whole engagement to her.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Which is a... surprisingly logical way to get the story started.

[APPROVED]