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Overanalysis
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INDEX |
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I.
Obscure Old Manga or TV References |
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II.
OAV FAQ |
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OAV
Frequently Asked Questions
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OAV
Episode 4: Evergreen Holy Night |
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Q.
Does Keiichi's room have 2 or 3 doors?
A.
The back corridor of this house seems to have
a problem deciding where the sliding doors should
be (for details of the floorplan, see my floorplan
page). For example, in the beginning of this episode
when K1 is having a nightmare, there appears to
be 3 sliding doors when looked from inside, yet
when looked from outside, there only appears 2.
I wonder if the space is warped around K1's room
so that it is bigger inside? Could this be related
to the bug? One of the goddesses? In the manga
series, this corridor is a nightmare of shifting
doors from episode to episode.
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Q.
How come there is no snow in the outer corridor of the
house?
A.
Japanese architecture 101. Typically, a house like that
has wooden sliding shutters that are deployed at night
to enclose the outer corridor. During daytime, they
are retracted into a special storage area (one is next
to the entrance, marked yellow in my house plan). Presumably,
someone deployed the shutters (maybe Bellday?) and someone
else (maybe Skuld) opened them in the morning. Or posibly
they are magically automatic.
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Q.
God looks pretty young, doesn't he?
A.
Not only that, he looks pretty cool doesn't he?
Definitely not the same image I got from the manga.
His uniform looks almost out of Space Cruiser
Yamoto or some such show, definitely looks like
a hero type with long hair that magically coagulates
in cool looking strands. I'd be interested in
seeing more of him. His command chamber also looks
pretty nifty. Is it just me, or does that remind
you of Laputa?
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| Well,
I was going to talk about the menu of the dinner
Belldandy didn't get to make, but I thought that
was going too far...^-^ What was I thinking? That
happens in OAV 5! Bakabaka! However, at the end
of this episode, the meaning of the spell she cast
in the beginning of volume 1 is starting to become
clear. The wish she is talking about, that was HER
wish to stay by Keiichi's side! |
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OAV
Episode 5: For Love of Goddess |
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Q.
What exactly was Urd's plan again?
A.
Yes, this whole magic circle plan is an excellent example
of Urd's happy go lucky style. First she proposes to
cancel the seal with the power of the ultimate circle.
The Japanese word used here is "soosai" which
is "mutual annihilation". I wonder what they
were going to do with the unsealed attractor after they
cancelled the seal. But by the time they are actually
making the circle, their plan is to reinforce the seal.
Could you make your mind up please, Urd-sama?
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Q.
Was Urd really being selfish like Skuld thought?
A.
From the look on Urd's face when Skuld is accusing her
that Urd is only helping for her selfish reasons, one
might think that Skuld is right on the money. However,
I think this is part of the complex characterization
of Urd. She is obviously concerned for K1 and Bell,
but it's as if she's working hard to uphold the reputation
of a delinquent (especially in front of Skuld). The
selfish excuse she makes is only a very small part of
how she feels and basically unimportant to her, but
is serving as a good camouflage for Skuld's benefit.
This tough front backed up by a caring soul underneath
crops up often in the manga series too. She seems to
be characterized as a sexy babe on the web a lot, but
I don't think that does her justice. She is every bit
as caring as Belldandy, it's just that she hates to
admit it.
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After
that there were too many tear-jerking moments
to pay much attention. Besides, I really
didn't want to get distracted by details
in vols 4 and 5 too much. Am I the only
one who cries watching these things? Must
have inherited it from my mother....
The
big question though is what the nature of
the attractor was. Judging by its location,
one assumes that it was related to
the promise that little Bell-chan
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made,
and not the subsequent memory removal and
little Keiichi's promise to remember (that
was by a different tree).
The
following was crossed out...............
A puzzling thing
is that Belldandy says she promised to
stay by Keiichi's side twice. The first
time though, Keiichi only remembers to
meet her by the tree the next day. I suppose
it's possible that Keiichi remembers it
wrong, but I think it's more resonable
to assume that a promise with a goddess
brings out the true nature of one's desire.
A young goddess may not be able to control
this to conform to a limited contract.
Maybe that's the nature of the goddess
licenses, the qualifications may be that
of control, not power.
If
this line of thinking is correct, then it
was the promise itself that had to be sealed,
otherwise the Kyousei-ryyoku (ultimate
power) will wreak havoc. No wonder the seal
had to be strong.
Ok,
I've recieved a comment from Michael the
Liu which made rethink this problem. When
I was thinking Belldandy made the same promise
twice, I may have been overinterpreting.
From the flow of the dialog, it sounded
like she was talking about the promises
being the same. So I might well be completely
wrong. That would simplify the situation
:-) Here is his take which sounds a lot
better (excerpted from his mail with permission):
"My
explanation for why the contract would
disappear was that Belldandy essentially
did what she as Bell-chan failed to do:
meet him at that tree and fulfill the
contract. She was with him there in his
mind during the flashback when he was
waiting for her to show up (this was when
Bell-chan was talking with god) and thus
in a sense she did meet him there, and
thus fulfilled the contract."
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As
to the seal, my slant on that was that it was
created by the sealing of the contract (through
yubikiri), putting the power of a contract
to be fulfilled by a goddess into the subject
of the contract (meeting at the tree). When the
contract was broken, it was still the storage
location for the power of the contract, but now
it was storing the negative energies of the broken
contract. The only thing
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holding
the energies in the tree was the binding energy
of the contract, which is a strong energy indeed
apparently.
I
am currently tied up between this theory and your
idea that God sealed the broken contract there
to prevent the Ultimate Force from going berserk.
The problem I have with this is that I would think
god would merely dissolve the contract, which
he obviously has the power to do since he was
going to do it to present day Keiichi and Belldandy.
However, this is also a problem with my explaination,
hell, with any explanation, since the whole reason
he was recalling her seemed to be because of the
old broken contract. I would suggest perhaps this
is all part of some larger ineffable plan of his,
but that would be really stretching it and seems
vaguely out-of-sync with their haphazard universe."
We
disagree a little on the freedom god has to dissolve
contracts. I think god has to work within certain
rules to prevent chaos from creeping in, and thus
had to seal the broken contract away. I'm assuming
that when Belldandy breaks the contract this time
around, that would also have to be sealed away
too. I also like to think that Keiichi keeping
his promise was instrumental in vanishing the
attractor. Maybe young Bell-chan's wish that she
would like to stay by his side in the future became
active as Keiichi fullfilled his promise of remembering
her. Or maybe god forgave her sin. Maybe we better
leave this attractor question left unanswered,
it's clear that love is a powerful force without
going into detail, and it's perhaps a better story
without analysis. (Besides, I'll have to open
a new page if this gets much longer!)
Anyway,
can't wait for the videos. If the cartoon (Skuld-chan
today) at the back of the Anime KC afternoon picture
books is any indication, it is at least planned.
Let's all send them fan mails! See my credits
page for details.
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Gateway
to the Goddesses v2.0 © 2004
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