Odd Thought: Cat Fist

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Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby AdmiralTigerclaw » Sat May 21, 2011 11:38 pm

Gonna' toss this into the blender here for some conversational fun.

But I had an interesting thought about the Neko Ken.

We all know that the Neko Ken was supposedly just a stupid joke thrown in the middle of some dumb martial arts manuscript/book that Genma was messing with. Yet somehow, despite it being a joke, it worked. It didn't work as one would expect it, but you have to admit, it worked.

It strikes me as interesting that we have a lame-O martial arts technique, that actually kind of works if the stars are right.

What interests me here, is the fact that this technique is lame, or supposedly lame. But not simply that, but that we have another instance of a lame joke involving cats. And I don't mean Shampoo.

I mean Mao Mo Lin. Our X thousand year old, whiny cat spirit looking for a bride.

What if the premise behind Neko-Ken was actually Mao Mo Lin trying to develope a martial arts style to impress some girl at some point? After all. He's an X-thousand year old cat spirit. He's had a LOT of time on his hands...

Of course, it totally fell flat, so he's too embarassed to speak of it, and probably even forgot completely that he'd tried to do such a thing. It would fit with his character to do such a thing, and have such horrible results that it got tossed in a book as one of those: 'yeah don't try this.' And it carried on as a joke, until the day that fool Genma took it seriously, and through some Genma nature fluke, or some mistaken tweak, it ended up working.

Working like a nightmare of course, but working.

MML: "Well, I DID try to make that style. I don't really like to talk about it. I figured... If you just did to a person what I had to go through when I was alive, and a kitten, they'd pick up the same instincts. Never seemed to work though. Just left people traumatized. When I saw Ranma do it, I didn't think it was my little style at first. Because it never worked. And ranma was obviously doing it right. So how could it be mine? But now I know it works. Maybe I should look into it and find out what went wrong the first time, how Genma made it work, and see if I can't fix it."


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Re: Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby three headed dog » Sun May 22, 2011 12:12 am

We all know that the Neko Ken was supposedly just a stupid joke thrown in the middle of some dumb martial arts manuscript/book that Genma was messing with.


I do not believe it was a joke martial arts technique in the book Genma had. I see it more as a technique that was banned. It likely was an example of a dangerous training method used at one time in the past with the first page describing how the technique was taught and the second page describing how it was stupid and why not to use those methods.
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Re: Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby LawOhki » Sun May 22, 2011 2:28 pm

three headed dog wrote:I do not believe it was a joke martial arts technique in the book Genma had. I see it more as a technique that was banned. It likely was an example of a dangerous training method used at one time in the past with the first page describing how the technique was taught and the second page describing how it was stupid and why not to use those methods.

I think it's more of a joke technique myself. The manual was just describing what some idiot tried to do and why they did it. IIRC on the last page is basically says "this is dumb and you're dumb for even thinking about it."

As for cat spirit doing it, no, that's just silly.
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Re: Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby Crescent Pulsar R » Sun May 22, 2011 8:56 pm

I'd go with it being both a joke (for the reader's benefit) and a real fighting technique (for the plot).

To begin with, the page that Genma failed to notice ahead of time reads something like this: "Just another technique that was meant to be used by a total idiot. Anyone who would teach this needs their head examined." First there's a joke that's poking fun at extreme fighting techniques, and then there's the joke where Genma failed to notice what was essentially supposed to discourage sensible people.

Then there's the technique itself, which, based on Cologne's recognition and reaction, is a legitimate, serious technique. She did not treat it as a joke, or else she wouldn't have conceded the fight, said anything about how troublesome encountering the neko-ken was, and gave up the phoenix pill. Considering what it takes to learn the technique, it shouldn't be surprising that Cologne would reward Ranma for having a fighting spirit.

To get more on topic... I honestly don't see the ghost cat coming up with this fighting technique. No matter how much he wants a bride, I don't think that he would subject himself to what would essentially be torture. He'd probably need someone/something else to force him to go through with it, or else he'd simply lose his nerve and change his mind. Besides which, despite however long he's been alive it hasn't done much for his intelligence, because he clearly knows little of subtlety and prefers to use force, which is elementary thinking. That he also tried to give bells away outright (at the school entrance), in addition to everything else that he's shown to do, shows that he's more likely to impose upon his bride despite her wishes than to do something with himself in order to make someone want to be his bride willingly.

However, I'll assume that it's possible and that it was done, and the ghost cat is able to learn the technique himself. I suppose that would help keep others from rescuing whoever he abducts as his bride, but someone like Cologne could probably still foil his plans. Otherwise, I may not know exactly what's being suggested by this idea.
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Re: Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby SpaceKnight of Chaos » Sun May 22, 2011 10:50 pm

As my own comment, I think whether it was a fake technique all along or whether it was a technique that was banned for its failures depends on which continuity you approach from.

I've never actually read the issue with the first appearance of the Nekoken, but from everything I've heard, the official translation is that the afterword is something like "if you think this technique would actually work, get your head examined". This implies it was never supposed to be taught at all, it's just an example of a particularly crazy form of training.

In the anime, on the other hand, the official dub of the afterword is "this technique has been banned for causing severe psychological distress". This implies that in the anime continuity, people seriously were taught the move, and eventually it was banned by all right-thinking senseis due to both the difficulty of training a student in it and having them survive and the obvious weaknesses of the technique (namely, it's unreliable to activate and the user is a mindless beast while in it).
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!

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Re: Odd Thought: Cat Fist

Postby Zwzn » Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:22 am

Well as stated the technique is real in universe, but I doubt the ghost cat we see created it since he's a lover and not a fighter.

Why I think it was banned

First off the training will likely maim, cripple, or kill the trainee

Secondly the trainee is likely to be left with horrible physiological trauma, and likely to try to kill the trainer as we see Ranma do to Genma more or less

Thirdly the neko-ken seems almost like the trainee is possessed by a cat spirit often creating an odd cat shaped aura. This could mean the trainee's soul is at risk if they are not strong enough kind of like the tailed beasts in Naruto.

That said I would not be surprised if there was more to the training that was lost to time, and that Ranma was slowly mastering the Neko-ken during the series since he gets progressively less scared of cats it seems as the series goes on, and begins to manifest abilities similar to his cat like state while in his human persona.
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