Epsilon: Amazingly enough, one of my favorite characters to write is Tatewaki Kunou. There's just something about his pretentious, stupid, utterly-unrelated-to-reality dialogue that is so damn fun to work with. I can see why Takahashi had him show up all the time.
Blade: Which doesn't go a long way to explaining why after this chapter he vanishes until chapter 20, but eh. On the note of Ranma characters - sue me, there's a diverse array of topics to try and segue into here - I think this was the chapter where we abruptly noticed that Akane still had long hair and wasn't likely to lose it accidentally ala the manga, which later become a minor character point.
Epsilon: And of course, Hayato. We were basically forced to include Hayato because of Jadeite announcing Ukyou's location to the world. Short of having him kidnapped by Chronos and killed quietly off-screen, nothing was going to prevent him from logically showing up.
Blade: Which is fine. In frankness, nobody much seemed to like Hayato, partially I think because he was the first really obscure character to obviously take spotlight (has anyone else ever even used him?). Despite that, I'm still happy with what we did with him, both personally and in his role in this chapter.
Epsilon: And as a bonus, what we did later allowed us to never use his last name again. I have no idea why it was so hard to spell it. Oh, and Patoratsyu.
Blade: I think we can all agree Patoratsyu is awesome. But seriously? I don't want to say the people who reacted negatively to Hayato showing up because he was an obscure and kind of boring character are "missing the point". It's our fault for having not presented it compellingly enough to them. But that being said, his primary role in this chapter is to force Ukyou to acknowledge what she's doing (and then mentally break as she denies the implications of it), a role he succeeds in precisely because he is an obscure and kind of boring character in the manga. "Nothing to him but his joke and his fighting style", indeed. That idea, that question of how much a character is limited by their source material, is one of the main themes in all of Hybrid Theory. And Hayato is where it is most front and centre.
Epsilon: It plays to the reason we decided to break the books at chapter 10. The first ten chapters are really a breakdown of self-insert cliches. The next ten are multi-crossover cliches. Of course, part of the negative reaction to this chapter can be blamed on how... vile Ukyou comes across in this chapter. Or how basically vile everyone is in this chapter. While later things were more evil, this chapter included some of the most cruel parts of the fanfic. It also contains the only hints to original character development Ryouga gets in the fanfic, specifically the fact that much of the reason he unquestioningly swallows Nabiki's story is that he's so ashamed that he let himself get turned into a pig to escape from losing to Ranma. Too bad it never goes anywhere.
Blade: Now, to be fair, I don't think what we did with Ryouga in Hybrid Theory was bad by any means. But... well, there's a reason he won't be getting a character spotlight; he doesn't change much. Gets more serious through circumstances, but otherwise, he's the same lovable angsty heart-on-his-sleeve lunkhead that he always was. And yes, he's very, very popular for that reason. But for that reason, it's also too damn easy. It was almost the end of the series before we realised Ryouga had done a lot, but changed very little. Moreover, I can't think of any other well-written fic that actually did something with Ryouga's character, had it actually develop over time. Somebody do it already!
Epsilon: Thankfully, we had some other interesting characters. The interaction between Ranma and Ran in this chapter was what made us decide to make them a couple, leading directly into one of the most profound moments in the fanfic. And the fact that she fit in so well into the usual Takahashi madness was just a nice bonus.
Blade: Another thing we got some complaints about was Nodoka's characterisation, specifically her making insinuations that Ranma ought to shag his three 'girlfriends'. It's true that Nodoka in the manga wouldn't do this, but it's worth noting she did this immediately after finding out about Ranma's curse out of the blue, and Nodoka in the manga is prone to overreaction (up to and including trying to summarily kill people, not just Ranma). I can see why some people wouldn't like it, but I believe there is room for interpretation on her character in this case.
Epsilon: Not to mention she was still reacting badly to the whole revelation in the first place. This gets played up later as well. Nodoka at this point is aggressively asserting her son's manliness out of a combination of desperation and delusion. We also see how badly she reacts to hints that Ranma isn't manly later. We never get into her character deeply in the fic itself, but we tried to justify the (admittedly mainly humourous) scenes she appeared in - to ourselves, at least.
Blade: Uh, so that's enough defending ourselves. Subtle reference theatre time! Ran's remark about the "other biggest loser in martial arts being named Hibiki" is of course a reference to joke character Dan Hibiki of Street Fighter fame, who kind of amazingly didn't actually appear.
Epsilon: The events she refers to are hints as to the other series' involved, including Darkstalkers and Phantom Quest Corp., which we believed we still had larger roles to come in the story than they ended up having. It's also our first direct references to Guyver, which would be very important, and Tenchi Muyo, which would be sort-of-kind-of important.
Blade: Also in important-but-subtle references was Momiji noting how the Sailor V phenomenon "came out of nowhere"... which it did, for her, because she was living in the Blue Seed backstory and not the Sailor Moon backstory. Again, just another hint at how the series' weren't mixing before the story started.
Epsilon: Which leaves us not much to talk about besides the climax. Personally, we consider the climax to be much more the exchange of words between Ukyou and Hayato then the fight itself. This is the first time Ukyou really had to confront her identity and hypocrisy. When Chris and Ukyou had their shouting match in chapter 4 she was injured and near-death and had lots of extenuating circumstances. But this time she is confronted with the full reality of Hayato, how much he didn't fit into her plans and ideas about the world. The feedback from that and Ukyou's unwillingness to face it is what fuels the events that follow. The Third Circle only emphasized this latent rage, it didn't actually corrupt Ukyou.
Blade: Ultimately, people do make their own choices. That's another of the main themes of Hybrid Theory. Ukyou moves on only when she can finally come to terms with what she's done and accept it, and become a better person. But hey, that beats Chris!
Epsilon: And finally, this chapter introduces Ukyou's first pretentiously-Latin-named supermove!
Blade: Which she, uh, never uses again. Surprising for people who've read all our work, no doubt.
Epsilon: Well, she tries to once and fails, but yeah, that's it. Reason? Um... I basically forgot about it.
Blade: It's the "Kasumi yelling at Genma" of Hybrid Theory!
Blade: So for all we complained before, this does actually have some legitimate reasons to be the end of Book 1 of Hybrid Theory.
Epsilon: As mentioned in the commentary for the last chapter, Book 1 is all about the self-insert, and how it works. This chapter is basically the final result of that. It's when the story stops being about a self-insert, because we deal with the primary issues of the self-insertion. Or at least acknowledge them and then have them go horribly awry. I am referring to the self-insert's foreknowledge (and thus ability to change "fate" as it were) and the fact that the self-insertee is REAL to everyone else's unreality, a factor I have never actually seen used by any other self-insert fanfiction as a real plot point. (Well, at least as a plot point that isn't just an excuse to give the author superpowers of some nature.)
Blade: Unfortunately, the writing's not totally up to snuff in the first half. While there are some very funny moments on the boat and while seeing Chris's clever plans collapse on top of him is eminently satisfying, I feel it's a bit too "cute" and meta to hold up to much of the rest of the fic. Thankfully, it's shortly after this that we start dropping all the 'fanficcy' parts of the writing (like underscores and cute references), so it gets better from here on in.
Epsilon: I like to think that our writing gets more professional-looking as we go forward. I think fanfiction.net's annoying formatting problems and our lack of access to italics and other stuff like that was actually good for us in the long term. It slowly weaned us away from relying on cute formatting tricks to try and carry a scene and more into actual writing. This chapter still contains a lot of the former, even up to the last few scenes, but it grows less common as the story progresses and we realise what works and what doesn't.
Blade: That being said, there is some very good stuff here too. The climactic scene where Aaron finally snaps and tells Ukyou off is one of my favourite scenes in the series, bar none. Reader reaction to it was also very good, which I suppose isn't much of a surprise considering Ukyou wasn't exactly our most popular character by this point.
Epsilon: Not to mention Chris' crass emotional manipulation of Akane. It's quite the deliberate contrast here. Chris being all "heroic" at the beginning, then basically using every dirty underhanded trick he is accusing Ukyou of to poison Akane's thoughts against her best friend, was a choice on our part. The irony being that this is one of the few times Chris deceives Akane, accusing Ukyou of things she didn't do. Not that he knows that, but he is saying he knows things are happening that are not. The fact he is building on a foundation of truth just makes all the other lies more sinister. This will play into Ukyou and Akane's next meeting. Akane's accusations that come from this will strike Ukyou true and Ukyou won't be able to deny them, but she isn't aware of the whole of Chris's story and thus doesn't realise exactly what she is admitting to. It's part of that whole "Chris is subtle evil" thing he has going for the first two thirds of the story.
Blade: Even more so, Chris is basically insecure. He really thinks he's doing the right thing by telling the 'truth' to Akane, but in reality all he wants is for Akane to realise he's really a better person than Ukyou and then like him (which is why he doesn't care to check his facts). By so doing, he proves it to himself and can further shove under the carpet what lingering guilt he has; all because he can't bear to realise he's actually become a monster and face up to his own actions. Of course, it works: Chris has already all but forgotten that he murdered Sentarou just a chapter before. What throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing is Pink, who intuitively grasps the real motivations behind Chris's 'noble' actions and twists them to her own advantage. All of this nicely dovetails into the Chris/Akane/Shampoo/Pink interplay that will carry their respective plotlines through Book 2.
Epsilon: Speaking of Shampoo, this chapter was once again very fun to write partly because of her. We did receive a lot of flak in response to Shampoo's characterisation in this chapter. A few people said she should know more Japanese and be less violent and otherwise bitchy; these people, however, have forgotten her first appearance in the manga. Shampoo had the exact same extremely poor Japanese (often speaking in monosyllables) and tendency to random acts of senseless violence when she was angry. Later she improved her Japanese quite a bit (and anyone who thinks she's really stupid should compare how much Japanese they've learned in all the years they've been an anime fan to how much Shampoo learned in a couple of months while she was off-screen) and became more mellow (or at least subtle). In Hybrid Theory we decided that she started out as a spoiled brat and (in Ranma 1/2) later got more devious but never really matured. In Hybrid Theory she matures quickly because circumstances force her to realise all at once that she is not nearly as in charge of her destiny as she liked to think; of course, this has its own consequences.
Blade: Enough defending ourselves, though, it's time for our obligatory mea culpa. On the boat, Chris uses a "superpowered" strike to get Pink and Link's concoction into the aragami. Originally this was because we envisioned Chris as channeling the Third Circle (like we pictured Ukyou doing at the time), and therefore he called upon a sudden burst of power because he needed it. Unfortunately, with our later, more nuanced and complex explanation for their abilities, Chris's action here doesn't quite fit anymore. If we'd built it up more as something Chris needed to do rather than just wanting to, it still would've worked, but them's the breaks.
Epsilon: We also redid Urawa's prophecy quite a few times before release. It was an attempt to force us to work on certain conditions. Like the original prophecy, we ended up getting a few bits wrong or confused along the way. It did foreshadow a few things and I believe we have something that can be shoehorned in for every one of the things he mentions, but a couple of them are so vague as to be essentially meaingless. I might as well have had him say "Your lucky numbers are 3, 12 and 45" for all the actual guidance these predictions had. Also, I completely forgot to reference them at all past chapter 15.
Blade: Then again, that fits in perfectly with most prophecies I see in books and tv shows, so I guess that's about right?
Epsilon: Yes, but I wasn't aiming for standard, I was aiming for exceptional. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Blade: And a mea culpa for the entire Ranma fanfiction community that we've since learned: Shampoo does not use a pair of mace-like weapons called "bonbori". Bonbori are lamps that look sort of like them. Obviously a bad pun somehow got propagated as gospel back in the godless 90s. The actual name of the weapons she uses is apparently "sui". Look it up if you don't believe us.
Epsilon: But enough apologising! On a more positive note, you can see where we were going with Cologne's character arc starting in this chapter. Her casual acceptance of her own infallibility is her greatest weakness, and one which Chris exploits to great effect as the series progress. Also, look at Cologne for one of the most retrospectically ironic comments of the story:
"You should have known better than to assume I was either a fool or mistaken." She grinned that insufferable grin again. "I haven't lived this long by being either very often."
Blade: I should clarify that we don't dislike Cologne. In a very real sense, her character arc was our take on the actual infallibility so many obnoxious meddling person-in-the-know characters seem to have. Cologne isn't evil or stupid; in fact she is very smart and is working for good ends, but she's also very arrogant and has a tendancy to assume she knows what's best for people. Letting this play out as it does in the series is a way of pointing out that the wise old master is also all-too-human. Ultimately, we liked Cologne and her character arc quite a bit, which is why she ended up getting a lot of spotlight time in book 3.
Epsilon: It also indirectly leads to Chris's destruction, since her actions prompted Shampoo's actions, which turned Akane into the kind of person who could deny Chris in the end. It was part of the roundabout circle of character interactions that constantly showed up to bite the Nameless in the behind as the fanfic went on. In fact, all of book 3 occurs as it does because the Nameless' plan had been practically destroyed by the actions of a small number of people. This chapter is pretty much the last chapter where things go exactly as the Nameless desires. After this, things start getting out of hand. You can see it in a lot of subtle ways as the story progresses.
Blade: So, after all, there is some stuff that makes this a decent end to book 1, even if we would rewrite it heavily if we were doing it again. On a random additional note, it's worth mentioning that Tethys' ability to meld herself with Hayato and restore his ability to move is based straight out of Kunzite's youma, who mostly possessed humans and both gave and gained thematic superpowers from them.
Epsilon: We also see Ukyou's first use of the REAL Third Circle here. When Pluto confronts her, she uses the Dark Dome Enclose to stop time, Ukyou ignores it like it hasn't happened. This is because to Ukyou it didn't. She was too busy getting a mental shock to notice Pluto casting the spell. Thus to her it doesn't exist, so she blissfully ignores it. This is the first serious hint to the readers that the Third Circle isn't just some Super Saiyan-style power-up. Ukyou literally breaks the laws of time and space here... without even realising she's doing it. That's scary, when you stop to think about it.
Blade: On a final note then, in a somewhat subtle bit Ukyou notices then is quickly distracted from an ordinary-looking brown-haired girl who is most-definitely-not-spying-on-her-nosiree before meeting Ryo Urawa; for those who didn't figure out who that was or (quite likely) forgot just like Ukyou, that was the doll Satsuki, heralding yet more trouble for our hero.
Epsilon: Which leads us into Book 2. Perhaps my favorite of the three books. See you next time.
The most important thing to mention about Shampoo is how much our opinion of her changed as we wrote her. It would be no surprise to anybody who read any of our early works to note that we used to despise Shampoo. When we started Hybrid Theory, my opinion on her had mollified to 'disinterest', but not in my wildest dreams would I have expected Shampoo to be the most enjoyable character to write in the entire series, nor that by the end she'd have become one of our favourite characters.
Shampoo was another of the characters who "had" to show up that we didn't have plans for. Most of those turned out to be surprisingly successful, because our not planning their appearence led us to thinking outside the box to give them plot relevence. In Shampoo's case, other than Chris planning to avenge Pink and Link, I initially had no idea what would become of her. All of that changed the moment I wrote her. Since Aaron didn't have any particular ideas and she was largely to interact with Chris, Pink, and Link at first, her character got delegatedto me. I decided it would be interesting if the change in circumstances caused by Chris's visit to Cologne ended up causing her to resent her engagement to Ranma instead of welcoming it. Looking over all her early manga stories, I got a sense of her character, especially when she was angry, and rolled with that for her (original) introductory scene in chapter 10.
I was shocked at how fun she was, how refreshing her direct, blunt viewpoint was in comparison to everyone else. As noted already, it was so fun that I promptly added an earlier scene in chapter 8 to better set up her arrival. All her subsequent perspective scenes remained an absolute joy to write, and her role in the story developed quite naturally after we realised Akane's sacrifice in Chapter 13 would significantly modify Shampoo's thinking and make her become Akane's friend (previous to that, we'd actually had a vague notion she'd end up friends with Chris... ha!). In all this, we learned a lesson we should have learned years ago - if you dislike any character you write, you are being a bad writer. Finding something to love about Shampoo made her a vastly more compelling and interesting character than she ever had been in any of our previous works, where our attention paid to her was grudging, obligatory, and often embarassingly denigrating.
Moreover, we realised how important her character was in the Ranma series by reexamining it. Once we stopped looking at characters on the criteria of whether we'd like to hang with them for a few days, and started looking at them instead as motivators for the story, examining how their personal strengths and weaknesses drove conflict, we gained a whole new perspective on them. What we learned in writing Shampoo rapidly spread out to change how we viewed and wrote most characters in the story - it is no coincidence that the writing quality starts rapidly improving after she is introduced. It was a pretty seismic shift from "reader mode" to "writer mode" for us, and probably one of the most important lessons we learned from writing Hybrid Theory.
In the story, Shampoo serves as an object lesson; to Cologne, to Chris, to Akane, and to the readers. She's too proud to ever accept servitude to Pink and Link, and while everyone thinks she knuckles under to it, she never for a single moment plans to accept it, any more that she intends to accept a marriage to Ranma. Almost everyone ignores and underestimates her because she has no amazing power and acts like she doesn't care about anything; Akane, conversely, comes to trust her and doesn't suspect what her friend might be hiding. Everyone ignores Shampoo or considers her harmless; she knows this, she uses it, and she listens in, improves her Japanese skills, and finally learns enough in order to take her revenge on Pink and Link. That her revenge will be fatal to her doesn't seem of any consequence as she plans it - her age and personality make her take as a given that humiliation is worse than death anyway.
Becoming friends with Akane isn't part of her plan. But it ends up being crucial to it, because when confronted by the reality of her certain death at the hands of Chris, Shampoo finds she isn't nearly so sanguine about the matter after all - and it is only her desire to show Akane what Chris truly is that pushes her on to finish her plan and face the consequences. In the end, her death is tragic and immature, a very typical teenage "I'll show you all, you'll be sorry" kind of suicide... but it also does accomplish what she set out to do, and profoundly changes Akane, Chris and Cologne in ways that will echo to the very end of the series. Shampoo leaves a mark on three pivotal characters that far exceeds anything anyone could have expected of her when she first appears... ironically, beating out out her enemy Pink by doing that almost as much as by killing her.