"Miller, Bert" wrote:

Three girls looked at one... and .... fell to the ground and
began to cry.

This struck me as extremely OOC at first.  Further down, the joke
when they league together _almost_ justifies the OOC-ness here, but
not quite.  I think it would have worked better if, instead 

of crying,

the three were just very polite to each other.  This is reasonably
IC, but Ranma, being unobservant, is not necessarily aware of that.

I strongly disagree.  An immediate extreme emotional swing is 
very much
in character for Ukyo and Shampoo--less so for Akane (at least, not in
this direction) but still possible.  And this is one of the 
few times in
ANY fanfic when I felt that Takahashi could have actually written the
scene I just read.

Being very polite to each other wouldn't work at all.
 

Well, I read the scene again, a couple of times.  Now I think you're
partly right; I find I can swallow the scene for all three girls,
easily, _IF_ I pretend to myself that each is alone with Ranma.

My problem with the scene as written, however, is that I can't suspend
my disbelief in it _when all three girls are present_ .  Inter-girl
competitiveness in Ranma's presence would seem to preclude this.  In
particular, Akane almost never does anything which Shampoo and Ukyou do
together.  [As for "Takahashi could have written it", this scene is one
of the few in "Girl Days" so far where I _don't_ feel that.  The scene
doesn't differentiate Akane from U & S the way Takahashi always does.]

However, my revised reading of the scene suggests a couple of possible
tweaks which I think would fix it.  (Feel free to completely ignore
these, of course; I'm just spouting off here.)

1)  Have the girls deduce Ranma's problem _outside_ his presence,
decide on the fix, and announce it to them as a committee.  I don't
recommend this one, though; it's not funny.

2)  Have the girls separate slightly as they pursue Ranma, so that
each approaches Ranma from a different direction, tracking him down
as it were, and unaware of each other's presence.  Each believes
Ranma's speech is directly solely to herself.  Each believes that
dedicating herself to Ranma's weekend happiness will prove her
superiority over the other girls, so they shout out their resolution,
synchronicitly in unison.  To enhance Takahashi-ness, keep Akane
silent until after U & S have signed up, then have her slink off and
have a private moment with Ranma later.