Final Analysis: I've always liked Soun, in part because I've always thought of him as a really decent guy. He's just a guy who doesn't like conflict, is all. "Decent" doesn't necessarily mean "stand-up" or anything. But he's encouraging, and usually has an uplifting, "Look-on-the-bright-side" attitude for anyone who will listen. Of course that's not usually much of anyone. The thing that probably separates Soun the most from Genma is the fact that he has developed morals, something Genma seems to be lacking these days. In fact, Soun seems to be - for the most part - a pretty normal guy, despite his emotional issues. He likes being fatherly, likes working for a living, and likes doing things for the community so that he can get special regard as a result. However, one thing he shares with Genma is an immediate need to put any conflict as far away from him as possible. In the name of training, Soun will foist any difficult situation off onto Ranma (very rarely onto Akane, unless it may possibly foster a romance between the two), and find some way to relate it to Anything Goes fighting style. It's hard to tell just how much of Soun's personality comes from his wife's death, how much comes from training under Happosai, and how much comes from just Soun. My guess is that, given a lot of his "normal under normal circumstances" personality, the first two are the source of a lot of Soun's problems. STILL IN MOURNING I don't think Soun - or really, any of the Tendos, but Soun in particular - has really gotten past his wife's death. After all, he never did remarry; in a later manga story, Ranma and Akane's teacher Miss Hinako falls in love with Soun but he doesn't seem to show an interest - due in most part to still having feelings for his late wife. Soun's behaviour as a father, especially his permissiveness and occasional forays into tears, are the most linked to his loss; each day the girls must, in some way, remind him of the woman he lost, both in their mannerisms and in the reminder that she will not see how they are growing. He also clearly feels isolated from them at times - and what father wouldn't, with three teenage girls and no one else to talk to? In that regard, it's hardly a surprise he would be happy to have Genma staying at the house, if only for companionship. There's an interesting element to the Tendo family that doesn't get examined that often, but I really like it; on occasion, Soun and his daughters will reminisce about the girls' mother, just briefly in passing. Even though Ranma has never really known his mother, it's still something to which he cannot relate; these girls had their mother for only a short time, and will never have her again. At these times, despite the pleasant nostalgia the Tendos put forth, Ranma and the audience are on the outside and don't really know quite how to react. Any of the idiosyncracies of the Tendo family - as much as they are played for comedy - may be, at heart, related to the absence of the mother figure. A BAD MASTER On the other hand we have the Happosai argument, and that has some merit to it, as well. A lot of people theorize that Soun is the way he is because his nerves are just shot from training under Happosai. After running around gathering underwear in the middle of the night, getting clobbered by women after getting caught - not to mention living in fear of displeasing Happosai in any way - well, geez, I'd be an emotional wreck too. I personally link these two up - Soun is a bit on edge anyway, and the death of his wife (and the subsequent stress of trying to raise three girls pretty close together in age, by himself) just sort of lit the fuse even more. But to get back to the question, "How much of this is just Soun?" Well - look at Akane, and look at Soun. Just as Ranma can be considered a somewhat-less-screwed-up version of Genma, we can definitely see elements of Soun in Akane, when examining closely. The temper is the big tell, but there's also the family pride, the semblance of normalcy when everything else is normal, and the mood swings, not to mention a tendency to overreact when things don't go quite right. As much as Genma is a distorted "prior image" of Ranma, Soun is the same for Akane.
	-4- prev