I'd say that Ranma 1/2 isn't just open-ended, it's open-middled and open-sided. '.' The way the story is set up it's easy to put additional
things in the middle, adding new characters if you need them is easy (all those insane martial artists out there, no one will notice another one), not to
mention the ideas themselves leave a whole lot of territory available to explore.
(I don't really like seeing Ranma 1/2 called half-assed, since it's still one of very few manga that has what I would call comprehensible fight
scenes...)
OMG is a lot harder to work with, because there's a lot less you can mess around with without busting the canonicity, and for some reason I don't get
at all, a lot of people seem to care about that. (To be clear, I care about *characterization*, but I consider canon much less important than telling an
interesting story.) The cast is small, the relationships relatively unambiguous (my strange ideas about Belldandy and Hild notwithstanding)... It's just
not as easy to work with.
From what I've read of Naruto, it seems to have some of the same openness as Ranma. There's a lot of characters who are shown but not heavily
developed, and there's a lot of ideas there for people to play around with. It also seems to be easier in this sort of setting to make relatively minor
changes and see what happens differently. (See "Team 8" for Naruto, which in some ways is quite comparable to the various "different parent for
Ranma" fics.)
Mind you, I'm not really sure why Naruto is so popular compared to Hunter x Hunter, which IMO does all the same sorts of things as Naruto, except a hundred
times better, but there's some good fanfic for it out there, which for me is enough to justify it's existance at least.
-Morgan.
"Evidence without context can be placed into context later."
things in the middle, adding new characters if you need them is easy (all those insane martial artists out there, no one will notice another one), not to
mention the ideas themselves leave a whole lot of territory available to explore.
(I don't really like seeing Ranma 1/2 called half-assed, since it's still one of very few manga that has what I would call comprehensible fight
scenes...)
OMG is a lot harder to work with, because there's a lot less you can mess around with without busting the canonicity, and for some reason I don't get
at all, a lot of people seem to care about that. (To be clear, I care about *characterization*, but I consider canon much less important than telling an
interesting story.) The cast is small, the relationships relatively unambiguous (my strange ideas about Belldandy and Hild notwithstanding)... It's just
not as easy to work with.
From what I've read of Naruto, it seems to have some of the same openness as Ranma. There's a lot of characters who are shown but not heavily
developed, and there's a lot of ideas there for people to play around with. It also seems to be easier in this sort of setting to make relatively minor
changes and see what happens differently. (See "Team 8" for Naruto, which in some ways is quite comparable to the various "different parent for
Ranma" fics.)
Mind you, I'm not really sure why Naruto is so popular compared to Hunter x Hunter, which IMO does all the same sorts of things as Naruto, except a hundred
times better, but there's some good fanfic for it out there, which for me is enough to justify it's existance at least.
-Morgan.
"Evidence without context can be placed into context later."