Subject: Re: discrepancies...
From: Kevin Barth <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 03:33:30 -0500

>in the OAV, Belldandy's supposed to be Keiichi's age... when they 
>were kids and when adults... (well, it seems to me that way cos Bell-
>chan is a kid when K1 is a kid too) when she fulfilled k1's wish, 
>she's the same age as he is...

I don't believe it is ever stated that succinctly.  Only that she APPEARS
the same age.  And My guess would be that megami can change their
appearance pretty readily, including their apparent age.

>i don't think for a moment that she would disguise herself into Bell-
>chan to meet k1 when they're young cos their meeting's is 
>unexpected... 

And where is THAT stated?  It was unexpected for K1, but how do we KNOW it
was unexpected for Belldandy?  If she WANTED to avoid being seen, she
probably could have, so my read on the situation has always been that she
PLANNED the meeting, having watched K1 from afar for some time and wanted
to get to know him better.  That being the case, it is not at all out of
the realm that she would change her appearance to give herself the best
possible chance of achieving her goal.

>or she'd disguise herself old (if she's still young) 

assuming you mean by "old" her normal, OVA/manga appearance (personally the
words "old" and "Belldandy" don't seem to go together...), the same logic
applies.  If Urd were assigned to grant a wish to Happosai, do you think
for a minute she would go in what we assume to be her standard form?  

>However, if 
>Asgard's time is the same as Earth's time, everything would gel... 
>but popular opinion is that the time zones are different...

I dunno....Age, we must remember, is a relative thing.  If we assume Bell
can travel through time, and if we also assume that she had some time
answering wishes prior to dealing with K1 the second time (or do you want
to say that she is so incompetant a megami that she booted her first
assignment?) It is not at all difficult to reconcile any passage of
apparent time that we like.  Maybe Asgard time is to Earth time at a 100:1
ratio.  Then we simply have to rationalize that for her apparent 10 years
of aging, she must have apent 1000 years serving Asgard.  Not at all
difficult for me to imagine.

But IF Asgard Time = Earth Time, there is still no guarantee that Bell is
exactly as old as she seems.  If she is 120, she can still appear to be 8
or 18 at will...

>and let's say for a moment that Belldandy turned back the time to be 
>with k1, i'd shoot it down cos the past is Urd's domain, not 
>Belldandy's... Belldandy's is always living in the present...

The three megami are constantly encroaching on each other's domains - else
why would all three of them be operating in the present?  But I think that
my explanation above addresses this objection anyway.

>one last thing to confuse matters further, issn't the Norns to to 
>forever??

depends on whether you're going back to the original mythology or not.  The
Norns, like everyone else in the parthenon, would be destroyed at the final
battle.  If you're talking strictly about Fujishima-sensei's "norns" (and
lets call them "megami" so as not to confuse things) I don't believe they
are ever stated to be immortal. If they were, why would there need to be
new ones born, or a need for them to grow up?

Kevin