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Like I said, kumahachi and Drawde, the law has been in effect since _18_96, so when the series began or ended has no relevance. This was all up to the author.

Not that the series was big on sense, but I think it would have made more if Takahashi had made Ranma 18. It would make the marriage laws non-issue and still work with most, if not all, the other situations.

I invite you to debate with me on this point. It should be fun.

Hey, Solomon, it'd be interesting to see those exceptions. See if you can find them as soon as possible.

Responding to your reply to that quote, you're right about the shear amount of bull that the characters get away with scott free in this series (although one could argue that no one knows what happens between chapters, which I won't because it's one nasty can of worms.) Criminal legality certainly isn't an issue in this story. Civil legality, I'm not as sure about. The Gambling King incident is a prime example. I don't know if honor or civil law had a hand in actually permitting the Gambling King to take possession of the Tendou Dojo, because if the Tendou clan had accepted Ranma's explanation about the King cheating to win, would they still be honor-bound to turn over the dojo? It's a tricky situation in my opinion, and the answer is not so cut-and-dry.

Anyway, the debate I was actually looking for was if making Ranma 18 could or would cause discrepances in Takahashi's original story. Debating the topics you're bringing up sounds fun, too, but I still want to discuss this point, too. Hopefully we won't get too far off the subject.

You make some good points with your response, MikoChan. However, they fail to take some facts into account.

Supposing for a moment that civil law does play a part in this story (and I _will_ concede to Solomon that it may be just as irrelevant as criminal law)...

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Well, if Ranma and Akane were both 18 they would either be in their last year of High School, or already graduated. Kasumi would be 21, Nabiki would be 19 and no longer a student (unless she decides to go to college, but that wouldn't matter). The Kuno's would not be much of an issue, because Ranma and Kuno might never have met (seeing as how Kuno is also no longer a student). The whole high school social structure and interpersonal dynamics would have changed.

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I never said Akane would be 18, just Ranma. I've noticed that in manga and anime the main male character being older than his intended love interest is not at all uncommon. So having Ranma being 18 and Akane being 16 isn't something that hasn't been done before, and it really wouldn't affect the "high school social structure and interpersonal dynamics" as you put it. Plus, it fits very well into marriage laws (remember, women only have to be 16 or older to marry).

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what High School did Ranma attend prior to enrolling in Furinken High? If he missed the first two years of school, I doubt that he would be able to attend the last year of school.

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This really isn't much of an issue, since only Ranma's age is changing here (and again his - and Ryouga's by default - will be the only ones). Akane will still be in her first year of high school, and if he missed the first two years as you say, so would Ranma. There's really no big necessity for Ranma to have attended high school during that time anyway, since high school is not mandatory in Japan (but still greatly favored, which is why most Japanese students still attend). So when Ranma started high school again, though being 18, he would still be in his first year. Plus, this would give him and Genma two more years for uninterrupted training, and more time for Ryouga to look for them.

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The chance is fairly good that an 18 year old (in many though not all of the industrilized nations), when confronted by their parents mandate, especially if it is one that they strongerly disagree with, might just say "I am an adult now, you can't tell me what to do".

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The chance would be pretty good, yes. Unfortunately, not in Japan. What you are talking about is called the age of majority (when a person is considered an adult), and though 18 in many industrialized nations, in Japan it happens to be 20. I mentioned earlier that this is the age when a person, male or female, can marry without parental consent, and this is why: because the person is now considered an adult by law. Ranma, being 18, would still be considered a minor under the Japanese Civil Code and therefore still under his parents' authority. He still has two years (and Akane four) before being permittd to make his own decisions about who or when to marry, so their fathers still have a relatively good amount of time to work on them.

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Another point, by age 18, Ranma should be nearly mature enough to be able to handle a relationship with a woman. At 16, he still has a lot to learn. though people mature at different rates...

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Though, it is possible that Ranma could be nearly mature enough at 18, it doesn't guarantee that he will be. Like you said, people mature at different rates. And if Genma has Ranma as focused on martial arts as the story makes it seem, he probably tried to steer Ranma clear of that kind of a relationship with women (being a distraction). As a result, at least in my opinion, an 18-year-old Ranma most likely wouldn't have any more clue how to handle a relationship than a 16-year-old Ranma would.

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if Ranma and Akane were both 18 at the beginning of the series, then everything would change and the story might not have been as interesting.

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I agree with this, but like I said above, I'm only proposing Ranma be 18, not Akane. And so far, from my viewpoint anyways, the only thing that it changes is making the story somewhat more credible.

A good try, though, MikoChan. If Akane and the Japanese age of majority had been 18, too, your argument would definitely have been solid.