Nabiki question

[Drawde]

I've been wondering, in real life, how bad are the things Nabiki does, both socially and legally, in Japan? I know the Ranma world is fictional, and doesn't always follow real life, but I've seen many different things happen with her in fanfics, and have been wondering what would really happen. Both the anime and manga versions.

[lwf58]

Well, first off it needs to be said that most of what people "know" about Nabiki is fanon. In canon, she doesn't do anything like what fan fiction portrays. If anything, Nabiki is rather lazy and unorganized. When she does stuff to make money or scam free food, it's almost always on the spur of the moment, and the stakes are usually pretty low. For the most part, she plays for pocket money and simply takes whatever advantage of things that are happening that she can.
If we look at fan fiction, which has her organizing schoolkids into an information-gathering service and taking book on betting pools, at the very least I'd expect her to be severely reprimanded. And the local Yakuza would want a cut, since she would be doing things that are traditionally their prerogatives.
She probably wouldn't be expelled, though. The much-vaunted reputation of academic excellence Japanese schools have is mostly a myth these days. The school administrators are under a great deal of pressure to move children through the system until they graduate middle school, and the kids can practically get away with murder. High school isn't all that much better; as long as she kept her activities low-key enough that the administration could pretend it wasn't happening, they probably wouldn't want to go through the hassle of taking official action. She might get lectured if a teacher cared enough, and perhaps assigned some form of penance duty, but that's about it.
As for socially and legally? That's a kind of gray area in Japanese life. The sort of things she does are, as mentioned before, the bailiwick of the yakuza clans. Yakuza are technically illegal, and operate outside the law... but societally, they are perceived as providing services that people want, so there is a tendency for the law to look the other way as long as they don't make themselves obvious about it. In fact, the yakuza tend to police themselves, making sure that their members don't get greedy and venture into activities that law enforcement can't ignore. Murder of non-gangsters and importing heavy-duty narcotics are two such activities. That's not to say other gangs don't, but the yakuza tend not to touch them.

[Daniel Jess Gibson]

She probably wouldn't be expelled, though. The much-vaunted reputation of academic excellence Japanese schools have is mostly a myth these days. The school administrators are under a great deal of pressure to move children through the system until they graduate middle school, and the kids can practically get away with murder. High school isn't all that much better; as long as she kept her activities low-key enough that the administration could pretend it wasn't happening, they probably wouldn't want to go through the hassle of taking official action. She might get lectured if a teacher cared enough, and perhaps assigned some form of penance duty, but that's about it.

Considering the administration of that particular High School, nothing she does would get any punishment. Not with Ranma, Tatewaki and Akane as more entertaining victims.
Outside Nerima you're probably correct.

[DCG]

eh? Seems you two are forgetting that little "selling ranma off into slavery" deal she did. Along with other things.

[lwf58]

No, I'm not. It was another example of her using an existing situation to make a quick buck. She didn't engineer the fight that made Akane call off the engagement, and her prime motivation in taking the engagement onto herself and sending Ranma out with other girls was to make Akane jealous, to get her to take Ranma back. Nabiki just figured that as long as she had Ranma in that situation, she might as well milk it.

[Zwzn]

No, I'm not. It was another example of her using an existing situation to make a quick buck. She didn't engineer the fight that made Akane call off the engagement, and her prime motivation in taking the engagement onto herself and sending Ranma out with other girls was to make Akane jealous, to get her to take Ranma back. Nabiki just figured that as long as she had Ranma in that situation, she might as well milk it.

Nabiki didn't seem to me to want to give Ranma back to Akane until Shampoo and Kodochi tried to kill her. What Nabiki did during this time was rent Ranma.
Nabiki does sell Ranma into slavery. It was to a Casino and or a restaurant. It was during that challenge/date in whitch she had to spend less then the other guy.

[lwf58]

The renting came later, after Ukyou challenged her. What she really wanted was to get Akane to pay her to get Ranma back. This is something she continues to do, lowering or raising the asking amount each time, depending on how she thinks Akane is reacting. When that ultimately fails, she tries to get Ranma to pay her to break up with him, so he can make up with Akane.
That she was doing it to make Akane jealous....
http://ranmahentai.ranma.ws/RanmaManga/ ... 7-122.html
As I pointed out before, it was a case of opportunism at work. She thought she could make a quick buck off the situation, without having really planned it out. While she did make money by renting Ranma to the various sports teams and girls, she never achieved her original goal of getting money out of Akane.

[Zwzn]

The renting came later, after Ukyou challenged her. What she really wanted was to get Akane to pay her to get Ranma back. This is something she continues to do, lowering or raising the asking amount each time, depending on how she thinks Akane is reacting. When that ultimately fails, she tries to get Ranma to pay her to break up with him, so he can make up with Akane.
That she was doing it to make Akane jealous....
http://ranmahentai.ranma.ws/RanmaManga/ ... 7-122.html
As I pointed out before, it was a case of opportunism at work. She thought she could make a quick buck off the situation, without having really planned it out. While she did make money by renting Ranma to the various sports teams and girls, she never achieved her original goal of getting money out of Akane.

It looks to me like Nabiki was making Akane hurt for fun.

[lwf58]

Not really. Nabiki was being very callous about the feelings of both Ranma and Akane, but she wasn't being mean for kicks. She just wanted to be paid off, and her price was only around $60 at worst. At some points when trying to talk Akane into paying, she got down below $20.
When it became obvious that her ploys weren't working, she gave up and got out by maneuvering Ranma and Akane into going out on a date. Ranma had asked her out, in a very amateurish attempt at revenge for playing Akane and him, but she overheard his plan, such as it was, and used it to bring the incident to a close.

[Zwzn]

Not really. Nabiki was being very callous about the feelings of both Ranma and Akane, but she wasn't being mean for kicks. She just wanted to be paid off, and her price was only around $60 at worst. At some points when trying to talk Akane into paying, she got down below $20.
When it became obvious that her ploys weren't working, she gave up and got out by maneuvering Ranma and Akane into going out on a date. Ranma had asked her out, in a very amateurish attempt at revenge for playing Akane and him, but she overheard his plan, such as it was, and used it to bring the incident to a close.

You seem to read Nabiki as a much nicer person then I do.

[Alathon]

I don't think he's saying that she's nice at all.. just that she isn't terribly malicious. She treats people like shit and doesn't really care much about the consequences of her actions unless she suffers them, but she isn't out to hurt people. She just doesn't seem to care much if people get hurt.

[lwf58]

Nice? Not at all. What she did in that arc wasn't nice by any measure. But she wasn't malicious. She wasn't deliberately trying to hurt them. She just didn't care. To be sadistic, you have to give a hoot about whether what you're doing to other people causes them pain. All Nabiki was thinking about was taking advantage of the fight Ranma and Akane had, to get some pocket money out of it.
A factor of Nabiki's personality that most people don't really seem to see is that she's pretty lazy. She capitalizes on stuff mostly on a spur of the moment basis. She rarely causes any of the series hijinks to happen, and rarely ever makes plans. She just acts when she sees an opportunity, and doesn't spend much if any time thinking of the consequences.
A great example of that is the wedding fiasco at the end of the series. Nabiki didn't cause it to happen, but when she found out, she invited everyone she could think of, solely because she had a half-baked idea that she could collect the gifts of money that are traditional to Japanese weddings and snitch a rake-off from them. She didn't spend any time at all thinking about what would happen when she got all those nutcases together at a wedding between Ranma and Akane.
http://ranmahentai.ranma.ws/RanmaManga/ ... 8-172.html
http://ranmahentai.ranma.ws/RanmaManga/ ... 8-174.html

[Goldarmy]

After reading lwf58's an image of Nabiki covering Ranko with sausages and throwing into a pit of cats entered my mind. Is Nabiki really a female Genma?

[bissek]

Only if somebody paid her to do it.
Genma is willing to do malicious and stupid things for an abstract cause - the Art. Nabiki does malicious and stupid things for a concrete cause - personal profit.
In Genma's place, Nabiki would have read the entire manual, decided that there was nothing in training Ranma to be crazy that would benefit her, and ignore it. Now, a more controllable secret art that would lead to her making a bundle in pit fighting wagers... that she would go for.

[lwf58]

Only if somebody paid her to do it.
Genma is willing to do malicious and stupid things for an abstract cause - the Art. Nabiki does malicious and stupid things for a concrete cause - personal profit.
In Genma's place, Nabiki would have read the entire manual, decided that there was nothing in training Ranma to be crazy that would benefit her, and ignore it. Now, a more controllable secret art that would lead to her making a bundle in pit fighting wagers... that she would go for.

You're drifting off into fanon, or so it seems. Nabiki wouldn't "read the entire manual" and analyze it for profit-making potential. She'd be more likely to leaf through it just enough to see that there was nothing in it but martial arts stuff, and toss it aside as boring. In canon, she never tried to get involved in organizing Ranma's training, even though she often took advantage of his fights to make a few yen on penny-ante betting.
Nabiki doesn't work to make her scams pay off. She just reacts to whatever is happening... Her scams are reactive, not proactive. If something happens and she sees a way to squeeze some money out of it, she does it without thinking about it.
Nabiki wouldn't throw Ranma into a pit of cats for training. That would take an effort on her part, digging the pit, collecting the cats, getting Ranma ready, etcetera. If it involves her working up a sweat, there's no way she'd do it.
If she'd ran across Genma tossing Ranma in the pit of cats, she'd immediately threaten to tell the cops unless Genma paid her to keep silent. After she got the money, she'd go on her merry way and keep an eye open for the next chance to make a quick profit.