"Do you get fur balls, too?" Yukiko asked.

    Everyone in the room held back laughs, while the panda held up a
sign that read, 'Unfortunately, yes'.

I don't think pandas groom themselves like cats do.  I've never seen
Genma licking himself, so there's no reason why he'd get furballs.

Then again, perhaps Takahashi just spared us that imagery...

I don't pull no punches. :) I've seen footage of pandas cleaning
themselves that way (maybe not as much as cats do, but to keep their fir
clean and in place), but mostly it for the joke value :)

    Genma nodded. "Yes, that would be a good idea, Shampoo."

    Yukiko looked confused. "I don't need to wash my hair."

    "No, that's your name," Genma explained.

    "Yukiko's my name."

    "No, Yukiko is your name you're using now. Before it was Shampoo."

    "Why you so hung up on me needing to wash my hair?" Yukiko asked,
fingering her hair to see if it was dirty.

    "No, your name is Shampoo!"

    "No, Yukiko means snow-baby."

    "No, before you lost your memory your name was SHAMPOO!"

    "Shampoo is soap, not name."

    Smoke started to pour from Genma's ears and he collapsed from the
strain.

    "Let me try," Ukyo said, sliding over to Yukiko. "Yukiko, your
Amazon name is 'Shampoo'. It's what you called yourself before you lost
your memory."

    "Shampoo is my real name?" Yukiko asked, frowning. Everyone nodded.
"Stupid name."

    Ukyo smirked at Genma and gloated at how easily she had explained
it. "The Amazons have odd names."

This is dragged out too much.  Presumbly the point of this dialogue was to
explain the translation of Shampoo's new name to the readers.  You can
accomplish that in just a few lines:  The initial confusion, restating her
name, and then Ukyo's clarification.

As well as to explain the name, it's mostly for the joke of Yukiko not
being able to understand that 'Shampoo' is her old name. It's not a
common name (in fact no real person would probably have it), so there's
no reason she would understand it's a name when Genma first uses it.

And the added insult to Genma when Ukyo manages to explain it in one try
is part of the joke as well that wouldn't work if Genma didn't have a lot
of trouble with his attempt.

    Blushing, Shinuma said, "Well that's nice. I guess I have to clean
you up. I just wish my assistant hadn't quit on me."

This sort of thing is covered in normal doctor's ethics classes, but they
might have skipped over it in veteranary school.  :)

Yes, I doubt they covered shape changing cats. :)

    "No! I love you!"

    Shinuma blinked at her sudden use of 'I'. <Could her feelings be
that strong?> He considered.

I don't know if it was your intent, but it sounds like the good doctor
thinks that her use of "I" is an indication of the strength of her
feelings.  I don't see the logic there.  (I love you so much, I'll stop
referring to myself in the third person!)

I'll try to clear this up some.

    As Yukiko looked at each picture in the book she didn't even pause
on the page that had the picture of the young woman with the elaborately
styled, long, purple hair and fancy make up.

I don't recall ever seeing Shampoo put on makeup other than the reversal
jewel OAV.

Well, to me, she has always looked very made up with her fancy hair style
and general look. The problem is Yukiko doesn't use any make up, not even
a foundation or powder or anything... so the picture (which supposedly
would be Shampoo looking her more gorgeous) wouldn't look like the face
Yukiko sees in the mirror, so she skipped over it too fast before she
could recognize herself.

    "Not exactly, most cats stupid. They just meow gibberish, but
Yukiko can somehow sense their feelings and help calm them down," Yukiko
informed Ami.

Apparently, cats have quite a vocal range.  While they don't say anything
intelligent, I would hardly call it "gibberish."

Yes, but Yukiko isn't a real cat. She understands Chinese and Japanese
(hence why she grew so attached to Shinuma during her stay at the
hospital-he spoke her language). I never saw any indication that any of
the cursed animals in Ranma 1/2 could understand the real animals.

This was an okay episode.  It was mostly fill-in-the-blanks, so not a lot
happened to keep my interest level high.

Well, it is to fill in a mighty big blank. It's would be hard to go on
with the story further without explaining how she survived and what she
had been up to for the past 8 months. Some of the events in upcoming
chapters rely on the reader knowing this history.

 Also, Shampoo seems to have lost
some brain cells.  I wouldn't say she's out of character (you did point out
that she picked up cat-like habits), but she does seem a little too...
simple.  Especially compared to all the other characters.

Well, basically she started with a clean slate. My 'image' of Yukiko is
Shampoo without the Amazon warrior components. She's the girl Shampoo
would be if she didn't have the overhead of Amazon traditions to live up
to and Cologne prodding her to marry Ranma and beat up Mousse (not that
Shampoo didn't do some of these things herself, but a lot of it was at
Cologne's prodding)

Basically, she an innocent and not wise to the ways of Nerima... that
will change as she become reacquainted with her past. She's in for some
shocks.



-=-
Jim Lazar

E-Mail - mailto:jimlazar@earthlink.net
FanFiction - http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlazar/anime