Draxon's Review Corner
           Presents
     An Evil Review

    My apologies for taking forever to get around to my reviewing, I went to the
doctor on Thursday and he gave me some pills that actually managed to put me to
sleep. This batch of reviews will be rather short, as I'm a bit pressed for time
tonight.

First Review: Tales of Shampoo (Volumes One and Two)
Author: Rob Barba [Email: n5yn@c7f.navy.mil]

    Okay, first of all, Tales of Shampoo can not truthfully be called a Fan-Fic.
No title less than Fan-Novel will suffice. TOS2 is 600+ pages if memory serves,
while TOS1 is about half that size. TOS1 focuses on the lives of Shampoo, Ranko,
and Mousse years after their Nerima days. Shampoo has moved to California (of
course, Mousse followed) and re-started her life there after failing to gain
Ranma's hand. Ranko, the cursed form of Ranma separated from his male side,
moves in with Shampoo after some bad times at home, and thus the real story
begins.

    I'm not going to reveal any major storyline events in my review, but I will
say that the TOS series is well worth the (incredibly long) reading time. TOS1
showed some of the best emotional manipulation I have ever seen in a fanfic. One
scene in particular carried a childlike feeling that is hard to describe, but
was great to read. There is a good deal of fighting, comedy, and conflict to
keep you interested until the primary storyline kicks into play, then it's war.
Total and all out.

Ratings:
    Story 9+ : Interesting to the end
    Characterization 9+ : The characters are a lot more mature than they were
when they were in their teens, but they are very consistent. TOS2 explains how
they got to be that mature.
    Descriptions 9 : This fic contains some interesting narrative techniques
that enhance the overall feel of the fic. Every scene/emotion/person is
described artfully and smoothly.
    Emotional Impact 9 : I rated this one second place behind Zen's Bitter End
in terms of Emotional power. A major rift exists between the two in that while
Bitter End is a slow but sure path to destruction, TOS1 rages back and forth
between defeat and victory in the struggles that the characters face; which
creates some great whiplash like effects at some points with anger colliding
with sadness and other combinations. (Note: Second place behind Bitter End
includes only fics that I have read, of course.)
    Overall 9 : A well rounded fic.

TOS2 - Brief Description and Ratings

    TOS2 pretty much describes its purpose in the foreword: To show how a group
of crazy and immature (and in some cases, insane) martial artists managed to
grow up in time for TOS1. This quick jump in maturity is accomplished by putting
the characters through utter hell, trying to kill them, having them see loved
ones/friends dying or dead, along with a lot of purely emotional conflict. I
cannot in my dreams describe every aspect of this Fan Novel without reading it
again (NOT an option, it took 16 hours the first time), so I'll give you a brief
rundown.

    Ranma (in female form) is kidnapped by a very powerful warlord and his (once
again) very powerful henchmen. A good deal of Nerima is reduced to ashes in the
battle, and Akane raises nothing less than an army to save Ranma, and the
ensuing hell changes everyone for the rest of their lives. A *lot* of thought
was put into each character in this fic, and every conflict is described to the
fullest - for example, you *won't* see a 10 page fight between Ranma and someone
in this fic, then see a 2 page (due to lack of choreography or descriptions)
battle that Ukyou is having with someone. As with TOS1, there are far too many
subplots for me to describe them here, but do know that there is a lot of space
between the kidnapping and the war to retrieve Ranma, and that space is taken up
by about 50 subplots.

    Storyline 9 : HUGE.
    Characterizations 9 : The characters start off pretty much exactly like they
are in the Anime/Manga, and are changed a *lot* by the events in the story. Said
changes in the characters are brought about by powerful events and work nicely.
    Descriptions 9 : Same as with TOS1 - a lot of care was taken with the
descriptions without overdoing them.
    Emotional Impact 8: Not quite on the same level as TOS1 (sadness-wise), but
still well done.
    Grammar 10: What can I say? Every error I found was either corrected, or Rob
took the time to make me out as a fool when I was wrong :P Great work.
    Overall 9 : Well worth the huge read :P
    (Note: TOS1 is missing a grammar rating because it's been too long since I
read it and the file with my notes on it got corrupted. I'd rather give no
rating than a rating that might be off)

 Childhood's Love By Mark Eymer [Saotome@micron.net]

    Childhood's Love is a short piece with Cloud... well, wanting Tifa.. Even in
FF7 I never caught the idea that he had fallen for her this badly :P Well,
anyway, this story is beautifully written and is guaranteed to give you that
warm fuzzy feeling inside.

<And Draxon thinks: Uhh, how do I rate a story like this... It's not long
enough!>
<Then someone smacks him: It's not MEANT to be long!>
<Okay... So how do I rate it?>
<Just rate it on stuff that applies to the fic, you dolt>
<Ahh shaddup...>

Anywayz...

    Descriptions 9 :Very good, you make Tifa sound sooo much more appealing than
her polygon graphics do justice to :P
    Emotional Impact & Overall 9 :This one's a definate heartwarmer.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. My mind is turning to mush as we speak, so
I will be delaying my review of Pools of Horror until tomorrow. I've decided to
hold off on Children of Jenova until there is more finished, although what has
been released is certainly done well. Also - I've yet to read Final Chaos 1/2,
but I will get around to it sometime soon.

Fic Submissions : The Review Corner has enjoyed all of the submissions it has
recieved so far, as they have been of great quality. That does in itself defeat
much of the purpose of Draxon's reviews, however. Draxon would like to see more
'raw' or beta fics, so that he can do something other than give 9 ratings :P

Seriously, I've not been able to do much in the area of direct-to-author C&C,
which I do better than any review or fanfic project I've worked on. I rarely
read fanfics directly off of the mailing list because I've always got a large
backlog of fics submitted for reviewing. Also, I've always had an unsaid policy
of not unnessacarily embarressing someone on the list in a review, so don't
worry about sending me something *really* raw. If you just want C&C on a fic,
public or private I'd be more than glad to help.

Final Note: I think I tackled way too much at once this time around. I read too
many fan-fics before doing my reviews and I think the quality and timeliness of
said reviews has suffered as a result. I'm probably going to skim through Pools
of Horror again before reviewing it - I've read over 2 megs of text since I read
PoH, which was a big mistake on my part.

Draxon-X@Bellsouth.Net

              Writer, Reviewer, and worshipper of the Red-Haired goddess.
                                 Long live Nene Romanova!
  "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I think I can probably make it a lot
worse."
                             --Ryouga Hibiki, A Demon's Delight