[Ranma 1/2]Ranma 2096

[DB]

Let's do something new with something old. We'll review: Ranma 2096, a fanfic by Chris Wilmore written wayyyy back in the day. One of the early Ranma fanfics out there. At the time of its writing, considered quite the fic. Heck, a lot of authors wrote side stories to it, a nearly unheard of thing. Some of the authors quite notable (you'll note my choice of adjectives as 'notable' not 'good'.) Well heck, anything that had this much attention to it, and making other authors drop what they're doing, must be good, right?

Wrong. Really wrong.

R 2096 is, well, I'm not sure what it is. I think it tried to be a comedy, but it wasn't funny. At all. Not a smile anywhere. If it was trying to be anything other than pointless and lacking flavor, then it failed at it. I still don't think I've had anyone explain to me what it was and succeed. It's just sort of a collection of words that are there.

I think it tried to have a plot. But it doesn't, other than 'Just because Ranma and Akane met grizzly ends doesn't mean they can't be happy, but it does mean no one else will ever be happy." That seems to be the only thing Wilmore accomplished in the large amount of stuff that was written about this series. Hot ghostly sex. Except the author tried to write more after the hot ghostly sex. It didn't have anything like direction, but there were words there. I saw them.

I think it tried to have interesting new characters, but it didn't. They're all flat and, well, just there. Cardboard cut outs would have served much the same purpose, and taken less time to write. Probably would have had more personality too. I think one of them appeared in a fanfic that was a crossover of various fanfic characters. The 2096 ones pretty much wasted the most space out of all of them.

I think it tried to world build in the future, except the future seems exactly like the past, except more boring.

What is almost as baffling are the numerous side stories written by just about everyone, most of which seem to try to one up one another in how everyone not named 'Akane and Ranma' can only have miserable and pointless existances, and they try to one up one another in how miserable and pointless they are. Actually, the original story wasn't anywhere that dark and dreary. It was like it became a round robin contest or something that went horribly wrong. Okay, that actually describes 99.99% of the round robins out there. Except it wasn't supposed to be a RR.

In the end, this thing just blew chunks on pretty much every level. If you find a printed copy of it, my advice would be to douse it in lighter fluid and set it on fire.

[Brian]

A terribly apt review.  The project of Ranma 2096, as I understood it, was to be a next-gen fic with a twist, and apparently, the 'side-stories' were where the story really was.  As I recall, there's three ... maybe four? ... chapters of the actual story.

I lost count of the sidestories at fifteen.

Seriously, folks, nothing screams 'lack of direction' like this.  It was a neat and (I'm guessing) innovative idea at the time, but it lacked follow-through on any level.

[Dracos]

Sounds  right to my, admittingly, falty memory of this fic.  I just remember it wasn't very good.  I think I read it early in fanfiction.

Dracos