More or less. The main flaw in his upbringing being the large amounts of martial arts exposure, training and teaching. For in this lifetime, Ranma had had an enjoyable 10 year training trip. And to him, the most enjoyable thing had been the martial arts.
Ranma had been brought up since childhood, even before leaving the home, to be a martial artist. His daily life rotated around martial arts. His loving father, the martial artist, was especially attentive to him during his martial arts training. It was his main leisure activity. In some ways, it was his religion.
It hadn't been a year into the trip before Ranma had been the one waking Genma up for training and light sparring.
Not more than a few years before Genma began to find more effective ways for Ranma to do training on his own, aside from their training together.
Not long after that, Genma occasionally thought of telling Ranma not to train so much, but then slammed the pernicious thought out of his skull. How could his son be TOO dedicated to martial arts?
Genma had found himself unable or unwilling to join his son's extreme regimen and had to find ways to supplement the training he himself could give. Which itself had long since exceeded what he thought he was capable of. He found himself spending a lot of his time searching for new techniques to train Ranma in, going so far as to request local masters of the art to hand down some of their teachings to Ranma. Tai-Chi, Capoeira, Silat, Okonomiyaki Martial Arts, Combat Gymnastics... whatever they came across, Ranma requested to learn. Even if the techniques weren't very useful, he learnt them anyway, to appease a... hunger inside himself.
In this reality, Genma had balked at the Neko-ken. When Ranma had found the scrolls though, he had respected his son's decision and... he didn't like to dwell on that incident. Or the growing suspicion that you could have too much of a good thing.
Jusenkyou had occured 3 years early, as Genma decided that another country might offer MANY new arts to learn. Japan had been drying up of late, and what he hadn't learnt, had been because the practitioners were unwilling to hand down their arts. Too bad; many of those arts, such as Hokotu Shin Ken, Geese's Kobujutsu, Sexcraft, Dark Shotoken... well, Ranma WAS trying to learn how to use what little he had picked up from the fight between Genma and Akuma. That fight had been cut short when Genma pleaded that he could not fight a death match, since he needed to train his heir in the art. Akuma, having some respect for Genma's abilities (raised to new heights from the contant training), and seeing Ranma's enormous potential to challenge him someday, had agreed to postphone the fight to the day that either of them felt ready to challenge him.
Events in Jusenkyou occured more or less similiar to canon. At the village of Amazons though, the Champion's feast had been overlooked as secondary to meeting a tribe of warriors with a totally unknown fighting style. As soon as Shampoo had defeated her previous opponent, Ranma-chan had made inquiring motions from the ground, pretty much miming a request to have the next bout. Amazons not being the sort to turn down a challenge, Shampoo had accepted and lost... though the defeat had not seemed as humiliating, at least not to the expert eye. Ranma had taken quite a while analyzing her opponent's style before finally taking an opening and winning. In reality, this was not because Ranma had needed to find an opening, and not out of politeness, but a desire to learn anything she could from each and every fight.
The kiss of death was still given though.
Unfortunately, when the guide explained, Ranma had come to the not altogether unreasonable conclusion that someone constantly trying to kill her could become a great way to train. She had then stayed in the village, constantly defending from Shampoo's attacks to try out this theory of hers. Finding it an interesting challenge, if a bit too easy, Ranma decided to increase the effectiveness by repeating the procedure on a few other Amazons!
Until the guide had eventually talked to Cologne and the whole curse had come to light. Since Ranma was male, the Kiss of Death didn't apply. Perhaps just as fortunate, since Ranma and Shampoo had been in the region of 12 years old at the time, the Kiss of Marraige didn't come into play either. Though the prospect of having Ranma's bloodline eventually being incorporated made Cologne almost drool. Thus, the fates decided that this was a reality where Ranma was sold into fianceship... and he was one of the negotiaters and beneficiaries of the sale.
After a year of absorbing almost all 3000 years of Amazon martial arts, and 2 more years travelling the globe, with Shampoo in tow (she wanted to come along, Cologne wanted her to come along, and Genma decided he could use someone to take up 50% of the sparring sessions with his increasingly powerful son), Ranma returned to Japan so he could:
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(Posted Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:17)
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