Hello one and all,

 I was re-reading an old copy <is a couple months old?> of Animerica I had
lying about when I found this letter to the magazine in the back.  It has
to do with a Ranma party thrown by a few Otaku. ^_^ I found it hilarious
and so typed it up and sent it to a few friends... I am now posting it to
y'all and hope you find it as amusing as I did.

And so without further adeau, the letter/story.

Warr

p.s.  I wonder if anyone from the ffml was there... <G>


Anime Summer of Love & Mallets
        What do you do when both you and all your friends are hopeless
RANMA 1/2 fans?  Well, first you throw a party, and then (just like the
animation) watch the situation escalate.
       By Lee `Lost Boy` Thompson.



In Memphis, in June of 1995, a friend of mine had a birthday, and since all
of our friends are such avid ( oh, lets be honest...obsessive!)  anime
fans,  we decided to make it a RANMA 1/2 party, complete with costumes.  We
held the party at the house of our friend Christine, whose parent should be
commended fot a remarkable tolerance of clearly deranged people. There were
six of is altogether, dressed as Ranma, Dr. Tofu, Ryoga, Shampoo, Kuno, and
Azusa.
Tha birthday party was an incredible success.  We all role-played our
parts, with Ryoga wandering off aimlessly about the house and yard, Ranma
issuing the occasional challange, Shampoo smashing our the rear window of
someone's car (granted, it was an accident), and Azusa making everyone
shudder with both the repeated use of absurd French names  and the
incessant squealing of the phrase, "Oh, that's soooo CUTE!!!"  When the day
was done, we decided that a one-day
party was simply not enough for fun of this magnitude.  Two months passes
before I finished planning and writing the grand and glorious RANMA 1/2
Weekend Mystery Party.  That August we converged once again on the home of
Christine and her
parents.  This time, we even invited friends we knew from the Internet.
Guests traveled to Tennessee from as far away as Los Angeles.  The Garage
and guest house upstairs became the Tendo Dojo, and twelve people
tranformed magically into anime characters: Ranma, Akane, Ukyo, Shampoo,
Kasumi, Ryoga, Genma, Soun, Tsubasa, Kuno, Dr. Tofu, and one non Ranma
character called Mujaki.  Well, actually, we haad a thirteenth guest, the
Black Rose of Rythmic Gymnastics twisted her ankle after only an hour and
had to go home.  Further proof that thirteen is an unlucky number?  Maybe.
But personally, I suspect Shampoo and Ukyo ambushed her. The "mystery" of
the weekend had been planned as a great web of intrigue.  I assigned
objectives to to every character:  Akane had to find her mother's missing
cookbook without letting Kasumi know she had lost it; Kuno had to aquire a
certain magical love-pendant and pin it on Akane or the pigtailed girl (but
how would he choose!?); Shampoo had to locate her stolen #110 memory
-erasing formula and use it to erase Akane from Ranma's memory;
Ranma, who had stolen Shampoo's formula. had to find the missing scrap from
the shredded notebook of Dr. Tofu, then reassemble the notebook to learn
the memory-erasing technique and use it to make Kuno forget the pigtailed
girl.  There were such tasks laid our for every character.  Little did I
know the people would get so wrapped up in the characters and involved in
the interaction with their fellow cast memebers, that whole new plots would
be invented by the players!  Having cast myself as Ryoga, I was surprised
when Tsubasa suddenlt appeared and put me to sleep with Kodachi's stolen
bouquet, then took my place in a Ryoga disguise so he could get close
enough to pin the reversal jewel on Ukyo and make her love him!  Now -THAT-
is a plot!  That sort of thing happened the whole weekend, turning my
well-planned mystery weekend into something so much better: mass hysteria,
anime style!  Woo-hoo!  I won't even  begin to discuss the mess that
occured when Ryoga accidentally knocked out Smampoo, which convinced her
that he was therefore her new fiancé by Amazon law.  Suffice
to say that the plots were as thick as Kuno's head, and bizarre as Akane's
cooking (which reminds me: never -never- -NEVER- eat a twinky stuffed with
a hot dog and squirt-cheese in it.  Akane fed one of those horrible things
to me.  I can still feel it in my stomach one year later...).  The entire
three-day hullabaloo was an incredible success.  The only major casualties:
Kodachi twister her ankle, Ryoga (yours truly) broke two toes on the final
day and smashed his bamboo umbrella to pieces when he threw it at Ranma,
and poor Ukyo broke her megaspatula into several ungainly chunks when she
clobered Kuno with it.  The latter followed a shrieking chase scene  when
Kuno tried to remove a pendant from Ukyo.  Unfortunately, the pendant was
tucked in her shirt
at the time.  Another highlight of the weekend was our trip to a
wonderfully tolerant and good-natured Japanese restaurant called Misaka.  I
say they were good-natured and tolerant because, well, how many fancy
restaurants let a giant panda come in for a meal?  "Tendo? Party of twelve?
This way, please.  Um, sir, please don't chew on the bamboo.  It's
ornamental."  We had reserved the tatami pit at the restaurant, which led
to several of us challanging one another to see who could sit on their legs
the longest.  It came down to a one-on-one contest between myself and Ukyo.
She won.  I think she used the Anything-Goes Martial Arts Tatami-Sitting
Technique.  My circulation resumed about ten minutes later.  After Shampoo
spoon-fed Ranma his green tea ice cream for dessert, and we had givin our
wonderful Shikoku-born waitress a hearty
thank-you-for-not-throwing-us-out-tip, it was time to head back to the
Tendo Dojo to wrap up the weekend's lunacy with a few more hours of mayhem.
Needless to say, it was the most incredible fun party and of us ever
attended.  On Monday
morning, the guests departed either by cars, by planes, or by being booted
into the sky by a cranku Ukyo who hadn't yet had her breakfast okonomiyaki
and coffee.  We were all a bit numb in the aftermath, for not only did we
get a scant five hours of sleep the whole weekend, suddenly we were real
people instead of those marvelous characters.  Nevertheless, to this very
day, I am still known as Ryoga (or P-Chan) by many of my friends, and
sometimes we'll slip back into character, regardless of where we are, and
the memories all come back like a pandimensional anime mallet over the
head.  It's something I definately hope to do again someday soon...If I can
just find my way back to Tokyo! Where am I!??!
        Lee `Lost Boy` Thompson

TOP TEN THINGS WE LEARNED AT THE RANMA 1/2 MYSTERY PARTY

10.  Do not seat Ranma between Shapmoo and Ukyo, especially in a classy
Japanese Restaurant.
9. It hurts when a panda sits on you.
8. Do not mix hot dogs, twinkies, and squirt cheese.  Not even for a joke.
7. Humans cannot jump forty feet into the air and hover there while
fighting, no matter how many times they try it.
6. Do not invite Dr. Tofu and Kasumi to the same party.
5. Bamboo umbrellas are more durable in anime then they are in real life.
4. Never, never never, NEVER, put your hand down Ukyo's shirt.
3. Don't leap onto a concrete curface wearing only a flimsy pair of Chinese
slipperss with no padding in them. Crunch!
2. On the morning you're supposed to leave for a RANMA 1/2 party, do not go
outside to get the morning paper, lock
yourself outside of the house, walk two  blocks to a pay phone in your
pajamas, and call Shampoo to help you break into
your house and get your Ukyo costume by throwing a hammer through the
window. (This will earn you the nickname "Thor".)
1. Kasumi is a card shark. Never play poker with her.



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Do you buy the contention that one out of every four murder victims is
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Philadelphia. What a fourth of the victims did one way or another, he says,
was tantamount to suicide. Oftentimes, a challenge: "Go on, shoot..."