As this was obviously disastrous, Ranma stunned the pig insensate to give himself a little time to figure out how to get out of this mess. Ryouga could not be counted on to keep his mouth shut; when he became enraged, he forgot the presence of everyone else, and shouted at Ranma things they wanted kept secret.
"There's a thought;" Ranma mused, "could I make Ryouga angry enough so that he shouted 'I turn into P-chan' on the school campus?"
Getting back to the matter at hand, if Kasumi wanted to keep her secret, then she had to know about Ryouga's secret. Ranma was left in the position of having to betray one trust to protect another; there had to be a better way.
Ranma thought of trying to convince Kasumi that she had to keep her secret from P-chan, but there would have to be a reason why. Everything else Ranma had done for Kasumi had been phrased in such a way that she could follow the logic, believing that she had done it for herself.
The other alternative was to force Ryouga to keep a secret. This seemed preferable; since it was Ryouga's dirty secret that could hurt Kasumi, Ryouga should be the one to suffer constraints put upon him. After all, if Ryouga wanted to spy on the Tendos, he should suffer at least some of the consequences.
So before Ryouga was fully conscious, Ranma put him under a trance and started to work to protect Kasumi. Unlike Kasumi, where he could have her keep a secret unless they were talking in private, Ryouga must never speak of what he sees. Since he can't differentiate between sparring alone in a forest or on a busy street, Ryouga must keep the secret from everyone. "Ryouga, you must never talk about Kasumi with anyone, unless she's hurt or in danger."
Ranma thought about letting him talk with Kasumi about Kasumi; since he wouldn't be fighting her, he could manage to make sure they weren't overheard. But then Kasumi would be in her homemaker persona, and Ryouga would spill things from her uninhibited persona. It was better he refrain altogether; it wasn't as if the two of them ever spoke except in passing.
"You don't find anything Kasumi does unusual, or worthy of comment." If Ryouga didn't care about what she did, he wasn't likely to blow the whistle over it. He didn't comment on her actions normally anyway, so this shouldn't have any far reaching affects. Perhaps he might fail to complement her on how delicious a meal was, but that should be the extent of it.
"You don't care what clothes women wear. It makes no difference if a woman is wearing a huge winter coat, or a sundress, or just her underwear, or nothing at all. These are just pointless fashion choices. You've seen it all before, anyway." At least he'd seen Ranma as a female nude. Ranma didn't want Ryouga ogling Kasumi if she wore whatever she wanted around the house.
Up until World War Two, Japanese definitions of modesty were quite different. Communal bath houses were much more common, and nudity wasn't as taboo. It was the infusion of western culture and the inflicting of laws by a prudish American general which made the sight of a bare bosom such an illicit thrill.
This was why the sight of an improperly dressed teen running through the streets of Nerima was a cause for amusement and embarrassment, while in America it would be a cause for outrage, indignation, lust, and legal action.
"Nothing a woman wears, or doesn't wear makes any difference to you, except in the case of protection from the weather and stuff."
Ranma was only trying to protect Kasumi from Ryouga; he had no other females in mind when he gave Ryouga these commands. What Ranma didn't consider was that these commands would be applied to other women, like Akane.
Akane had wondered why her pet pig sometimes suffered from nosebleeds, not noticing that they correlated with those times he saw her in various states of undress. Ranma's commands had cured P-chan of that. In fact, P-chan no longer saw any reason to look away if he were once again in Akane's room while she was changing.
And it would take the realization that everyone was furious before he would realize he had done something wrong if he ever found himself human in a girl's locker room. Well, he was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to the moods of others; He might not realize he'd done something wrong before they hit him.
It didn't occur to Ranma that he might have tried to program Ryouga not to do the dozens of things Ranma found annoying or dishonorable. He wasn't trying to fix the world, just protect Kasumi's secret. In Ranma's mind, he had only used the book's knowledge to help Kasumi and to protect himself from unwanted fatherhood. This modification of Ryouga was merely a loose end from helping Kasumi because the dishonorable Ryouga insisted on acting like a household pet.
Ranma never considered that in modifying Ryouga to fix a side effect of Kasumi's changes, that he might be creating new, unexpected side effects.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:43)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.