Ok, I'm up to and through part 3 of this rather large fic and I figured
I'd throw in my comments now while they're still fresh in my mind.

	The setup story for the story within the story, that is, the group of
friends sitting around talking is fine, funny even, and I like it, but
that's not really the meat of this fic anyway. One thing I might suggest
right off and get out of the way is that the formatting of the fic seems a
touch off. For the most part everything is fine, but I get the occasional
choppy line that breaks up the appearance of the fic. Admittedly, it could
just be my emailer, but...

	On with the heart of the story... The start of the story telling how the
lives of the Ranma characters have changed in the year after the manga ends
is neat, though it seems a bit rushed. Konatsu especially seems to make the
change from female to male rather quickly, and personally, I think that
little transition deserves a fic in and of itself. Also, killing off
Shampoo's father and stripping Ukyou of her family seemed unneccesarily
cruel. Neither one of these actions seem to advance the plot and seem
darken the story. I suppose if you're trying to write a serious Ranma fic,
these sorts of things can happen, but they don't really seem to fit the
mood of the series. Even ToS 1 wasn't all that dark. Still, all in all, I
liked it.

	While I really liked the Nerima bits, once the pagoda attacked, well,
let's say I was dissappointed. Where should I start... First off, the idea
of a powerful magical device like the pagoda appearing and attacking a
major city in the modern world just seems *wrong*! Unless the fic is about
either the end of the world or the resurgence of magick or a similiar
scenario, having magick defeat technology on such a large scale is going to
*always* lead to the defeat of the magick! According to the fic the Chinese
already knew about Nguyen even before he attacked, or at least that was
what was implied by the description of his little empire between China and
Vietnam. Little places like the Chinese Amazons or the Musk Dynasty survive
because they're small, and don't rock the boat. Nguyen just blew his cover
and made himself the most wanted man in the world! I question how anyone
that stupid could have controlled anything for 300 years. I will be very
disappointed if Nguyen isn't destroyed by conventional military forces by
the end of this fic, assuming the Ranma characters leave anything of him
behind.

	Speaking of the Ranma characters, as much as I liked what they were up to
before the pagoda attacks, I felt they were acting simply wrong afterwards.
All of them were acting way OOC in my opinion. I'll skip over the actual
fight scene and any problems I had with it since I figure this is a ' Ranma
and company (minus Ranma this time) get beat only to come back and win the
day' sorta fic. Though I do think having Ryouga getting knocked out by
*one* of his own chi blasts being a little bit ludicrous. No, the main
problem I have with the characters is how they react to Ranma's kidnapping.

	Always before, whenever someone, usually Akane, gets kidnapped, the whole
gang is gungho to go after the kidnappers and kick some butt. This time
though, everyone seems to sink into depression without a reason. Ranma's
not dead yet, fer crying out loud! Granted, Ranma isn't there to lead them,
but aren't there any other leaders amongst them? Akane even goes through
the process of thinking of all the times Ranma has save her, but then she
goes on and thinks he's gone forever! Why does she think this instead of
'I'm gonna go and save *him* this time!' ? Nevermind the fact that Kuno at
least should be going around knocking down walls and trying to pound head
looking for answers as to who took his 'pig-tailed goddess.' Heck, even
Ryouga has helped Ranma before of his own free will, I don't see what's
different about this time that he shouldn't at least be *trying* to help him.

	Also, there's the matter of Shampoo. While I understand Akane's anger at
Shampoo for interrupting her special moment with Ranma, what I don't
understand is what's got Shampoo so depressed. What did she do that was so
terrible? In what way is she to blame for Ranma being kidnapped? Up until
the pagoda attack, everything she did was normal Nerima hijinks and
silliness, nothing she's ever gotten so upset about before. Sure, the
necklace she had *might* have done something horrible to Ranma and/or Akane
if she had used it, but she never got the chance to, so why is she blaming
herself?

	In conclusion, I'm gonna have to give this fic 2 1/2 out of 5 stars at
this point in time. (This is for content alone, btw. Spelling and grammer
seems pretty much flawless, and I'm not gonna nitpick on a fic this size.)
I spent about as much time going 'no way!' and 'this is wrong!' as I did
reading it. I genuinely want to like this fic however, and will be starting
on part 4 as soon as I finish here. I enjoyed ToS 1 and am very much
looking forward to the rest of this fic. I hope you take these comments in
the same spirit as they were offered, as helpful suggestions and/or
opinionated grumbling.

Thanks for listening,
Scott Pollert

P.S. A little clip here from the tail end of part 1:

-----
    The pair kissed, Ukyo easily melting into Konatsu's arms.  With no
further ado, the pair released all their pent-up desire and love for each
other, previously held back only by her hesitation and his cross-dressing.
Without thinking for even a moment
, love and alcohol guiding her every motion, absolute Zen-like rapture
leading his, the pair walked hand in hand for Ukyo's bedroom. 
-----

Was the pun on the author's name intentional? I found it quite amusing.
While I've never met Zen, given Zen's professed preference amongst anime
females, it seemed appropriate!


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Scott Pollert [pollerts@hsonline.net]