This is 100% not something that would interest me, I dislike crack comedy and that's what Ranma is, but in the interest of contributing, you already have the perfect connection: if Shadow Stalker is a friend of girl!Brian, then she might want to have her meet her other best friend, Emma, which would lead to the two revealing each other civilian identity, which Brian can go along with since revealing girl!Brian identity doesn't reveal to Shadow Stalker Grue's secret identity, but does reveals to Grue's Shadow's Stalker civilian ID, allowing for even more complications to arise, and then civilian Sophia, Emma and girl!Brian can stumble on Taylor to harass her. Brian might not join in, but he won't help a nobody against Shadow Stalker, he's not the type.
This way, you have a reasonable reason why girl!Brian and Taylor know each other - she's "that friend of Sophia I met the one time" - and then Taylor can have an antagonistic relationship with girl!Brian while crushing on boy!Brian when they met; and when Regent suggests to Taylor to take revenge on her tormentors Brian has to speak against it or else he risks getting involved by proxy... lot of potential complications that way which, if I understand correctly from having seen exactly one Ranma episode, is exactly the style of comedy you'd be going for.
The problem being that Taylor and Sophia are not, in fact, friends. If Sophia hangs out with girl!Brian anywhere except school, Taylor is unlikely to be there. If, against all logic, Sophia invites girl!Brian to hang out at school, she's unlikely to bully Taylor in front of girl!Brian unless she knows "she" is gonna be okay with it.
Let's ignore the details of Sophia and Taylor's relationship. For Brian to meet Taylor through Sophia, Sophia would need to invite Brian to some location where Taylor also was. But the only location Sophia and Taylor generally inhabit at the same time is school, and who invites their friends to school?
I guess I could invert that time Taylor and Sophia met in the bookstore. I could probably find some reason to make Brian and Taylor chat and meet up later?
Saotome Genma is plenty comedic, and the size range of giant pandas (members of family Ursidae, the bears, but not of genus Ursus) significantly overlaps the size range of the American black bear.
I would argue that Genma is mostly funny because he acts like Genma, not because he looks like a panda.
Large animal capable of boxing? Possibly humorous? Seems pretty obvious: a kangaroo. Bonus point: wondering how the heck a 'roo ended up in China in the first place.
That's one of the possibilities I considered on
the aforelinked Tumblr post, which goes into a lot more detail about almost everything and also provides an example of how I might explain non-Chinese animals ending up there.
(splash)
"Oh no! He fell in the Spring of the Drowned Girl! There's a very tragic legend about a young woman who drowned herself in that very spring 1,500 years ago!"
(splash)
"Oh no! He fell in the Spring of the Drowned Kangaroo! There's a tragic legend about a kangaroo who escaped from the zoo and drowned in that very spring in 1987!"
Anyways, kangaroos are pretty small for megafauna. The largest red kangaroos are within a standard deviation of average male human height and would qualify as cruiserweight boxers. They're not even heavyweight boxer size; it's hard to imagine how turning into a kangaroo would improve one's boxing ability.
Contrast that with bears; even midsized bears would box in the superheavyweight category, assuming you could get them to wear regulation boxing shorts. But someone turning into a bear to fight crime isn't silly, it's
an obscure Marvel character.
I guess what I'm looking for is, paradoxically, something strong enough for Mr. Laborn's choice to make sense, but also weak enough that his choice is silly. Or a choice that makes sense and is silly for two separate reasons, which is both more possible and less definable.
I guess I should just pick between bear and kangaroo.
