What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

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What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby SpaceKnight of Chaos » Thu Dec 02, 2010 9:37 am

The title on this one's not very clear, so allow me to elaborate on what I am proposing. As we all know, in canon, Ranma had no idea that Ukyo was really a girl until after Genma got him engaged to her behind his back, abandoned her on the road and she tracked him down in Nerima a decade later. However, it's quite a chain of coincidences in canon that Ranma just happened to leave her without knowing she's really a girl. So, what if one of those coincidences broke down? Something happened to cause Ranma to learn that Ukyo was his best friend and a girl, even though he still didn't know about their fathers engaging them and left her behind carelessly until she confronted him in Nerima as a teen?

What do you think would happen, in this timeline? Considering that, this time, Ranma would probably actually say something like "wow, Ucchan, you always were a tomboy but what's with the guy's getup?" when he meets her?

I do have some vague thoughts on the subject myself... but, seeing as how the original "slant" I followed after coming up with this idea was distinctly aimed at a Ranma/Ukyo pairing, they might be too biased to include here. Let's just say that, coupled with something Ukyo said before they parted (can't actually remember what, now; think it was vaguely "boys and girls grow up to get married"), Ranma was never really happy about being engaged to Akane, and he would actually sometimes wonder what it might have been like if he had been engaged to marry Ukyo and/or fantasize what Ukyo must look like now she's grown up before Ukyo actually showed up in Nerima for real.
Water, water, everywhere, and all was cursed and black!
Drowned ones cast bad spell and out come pig, girl, duck, panda!
Swirl, swirl, slithery pond, and join with magic spring!
Swirl, swirl, dirty pond, and rid the cursed sting!
Here my prayer, I beg you please!
Now turn these curses BACK!

http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-boys-names.shtml
http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-girls-names.shtml
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby Wyrd » Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:08 am

Given that the last time he met someone from his past who had hunted him down they had been to Jusenkyo, and that in canon his reaction to finding out that Ukyo was a girl was to assume she had fallen afoul of the nyannichuan like him, I expect his first response to seeing her dressed like a guy would be to assume she tracked him to Jusenkyo and fell in the nannichuan. Knowing that she was a girl who could fight pretty good(even if not as good as he could) and remembering making friends with a girl could color a lot of his interactions with the other fiancees, especially his initial reactions, to cause things to go down a different path.
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby SpaceKnight of Chaos » Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:25 am

And wouldn't that be an embarrassing/confusing conversation, I'll bet.

I kind of thought that being aware he had met a good female fighter (though, canonically, Ranma doesn't really disrespect women much more than you'd expect any Japanese boy - remember, Japan is pretty macho-poisoned in its own way - and if anything he's more polite than usual), and knowing he had established a good friendship with a girl, would affect how he interacted with the other fiancees, especially initially. I just that was bias from how the idea originally came to me, though.

So, how could knowing about Ukyo's gender alter his initial reactions with Shampoo, Nabiki, Kasumi and Akane? I will point out that Ranma's still going to freak out upon falling into Jusenkyo - it doesn't matter if he thinks girls are weak or not, his whole body just completely changed into something else with a dip in water, that's a shock to the system by nature - and probably going to be kind of shy/withdrawn when s/he gets to the Tendo Dojo - at least part of his reactions there in canon are because he's nervous that they are going to think he's a freak once they discover he changes from boy to girl and back with water, not to mention the whole "time for you to meet the fiancee I never told you that you had until just this minute" overwhelming thing.
Water, water, everywhere, and all was cursed and black!
Drowned ones cast bad spell and out come pig, girl, duck, panda!
Swirl, swirl, slithery pond, and join with magic spring!
Swirl, swirl, dirty pond, and rid the cursed sting!
Here my prayer, I beg you please!
Now turn these curses BACK!

http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-boys-names.shtml
http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-girls-names.shtml
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Posts: 2561
 

Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby Wyrd » Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:53 am

I agree that, no matter how well adjusted he is, any change on the order of a Jusenkyo change is likely to freak him out, unless it was one that didn't have obvious effects, like one fic where he fell in something like 'spring of drowned playboy.' It didn't change him, it changed the reactions of any girl who saw him while in his cold water state.

One that could be really interesting for someone else to write would be if Ranma fell in 'spring of drowned homosexual.' His body doesn't change with hot and cold water, just his sexual orientation. I wonder how long it would take him to figure out what was going on...
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby SpaceKnight of Chaos » Thu Dec 02, 2010 11:13 am

...I don't want to touch that with the business end of a pissed-off Fire Giant Lavamaster.

Right, anyway, back on topic... I'm not really sure that anything shy of showing up at Nyuchiehzu before/after the tournament or in a form other than female (male would have got him engaged, child possibly adopted, animal chased off as a filthy beast - especially if Genma also had an animal curse) would have affected Ranma's initial reaction to Shampoo or how s/he interacted with her. The canon event was that Ranma ate the food Shampoo had won, challenged her to a duel for the rights to it, beat her, got the Kiss of Death, actually seemed to like it (probably the first kiss of any sort he'd had since he left home), and then the guide grabs "her" and drags him away explaining that little peck on the cheek was not a sign that Shampoo was attracted to him but a symbol for a vow to chase "her" to the ends of the earth and kill him.

No, I don't know why Ranma offered to fight Shampoo for the food, either. Maybe he figured that, since it was the prize of a martial arts tournament, proving that he would have beaten her if he had entered conventionally would have allowed her to maintain some face.

Anyway, all of that... not really anything Ranma could do to change it, save maybe having the impulse to try and change back and show Shampoo "she" is really a boy (the guide did just say that the KoD is only for outsider women, after all). So, no influence by Ukyo on that little mess.

So, the Tendo Dojo... now, that, I think, is where Ranma could have some attitude adjustments. Ranma recalls Ukyo as basically being a good friend in canon, and this hypothetical version is aware that she was a girl, so Ranma knows quite well that "girl" and "friend" are not incompatible. Ranma canonically appreciated Akane's offer to be a friend, but with his "new memories" of Ukyo, he might find the way she turns on him after finding out he's not really a girl to be offensive (more so than canon).

...I don't really have a clue what I'm saying.
Water, water, everywhere, and all was cursed and black!
Drowned ones cast bad spell and out come pig, girl, duck, panda!
Swirl, swirl, slithery pond, and join with magic spring!
Swirl, swirl, dirty pond, and rid the cursed sting!
Here my prayer, I beg you please!
Now turn these curses BACK!

http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-boys-names.shtml
http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/japanese-girls-names.shtml
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby TerraEpon » Thu Dec 02, 2010 4:30 pm

Wyrd wrote:
One that could be really interesting for someone else to write would be if Ranma fell in 'spring of drowned homosexual.' His body doesn't change with hot and cold water, just his sexual orientation. I wonder how long it would take him to figure out what was going on...


Pretty sure there was a spamfic with that once...
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby Wyrd » Thu Dec 02, 2010 5:41 pm

I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I come to is that most of the effects of this other than on how their meeting in Nerima goes would be too subtle to be noticeable. Ranma has experience with a girl being interested in fighting and being pretty good at it, so he might have put more effort into making female friends than in canon, possibly leading to a crossover character entering the story or just another friend who maybe thought more of their friendship than he did. Ranma would likely still consider Ukyo to be a friend first and foremost, leaving her still stuck in that blind spot of 'friend' that keeps him from paying real attention to the 'girl' aspect. Many fics put it that he is aware that she is a girl in the way that a guy is aware of his sister being a girl. A technicality, something to consider when trying to deal with her, but not someone to be romantically interested in at all.

Unless there were small changes in Ranma's behaviour from the beginning culminating in larger effects, I don't see the meetings with Shampoo or the Tendos going any differently. Ranma would still be insecure due in large part to his curse and raised to always think he will win in a fight and to accept practically any challenge thrown his way. Ranma might have seen challenging Shampoo for the food they ate as a chance to actually earn what they had taken; it is in no way his fault that the Amazons have such strange laws and that he was unaware of them. Eating the food was his and his father's fault, but the only person who could be blamed for that particular measure of ignorance is the guide.

If Ranma had succeeded in making more friends over the years because he considered girls valid possibilities, he might handle Akane's rejection of him better when she discovers that he is a boy, leading to him rejecting Akane more completely because he is less desperate for any affection.
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Re: What If: Ranma knew Ukyo was a girl by the time they remet?

Postby Wyrd » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:30 pm

He would obviously not acknowledge it, even internally. It's unlikely he would even if he had been born that way with how he was raised, the seppuku pledge, and the honor of his fiancees, to say nothing of his male rivals or ego.


Depends on how mind affecting springs actually affect the mind. Spring of drowned virtuous man would conceivably not only make you act virtuous, but think virtuously. This spring could cause Ranma to view homosexual attraction as being as natural as heterosexual attraction is when in his warm water state, which is to say he would be easily flustered and have trouble understanding either form of attraction. It's not a story I could write, but I see enough potential in it that I would be interested in reading a non-lemon take on it.
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