On Mon, 5 Apr 1999, Ranma Al'Thor wrote:

I'll disagree, somewhat.  Some characters ARE evil incarnate or good
incarnate in the source material. Now, no one in Ranma 1/2 is that way,
but if you can find Beryl's good side, or Belldandy's dark side, I'll be
impressed.

	You might not be able to find Beryl's "good side" but it's quite
possible to portray things so that the reader sees her point of view.  And
people generally do see themselves as justified in their actions.  (Tooting
my own horn here, I tend to see Beryl, by the end of the first series, as
completely consumed by despair and cynicism rather than "evil".  During the
final battle, she and Usagi basically start yelling at each other, and what
comes out is that Beryl thinks that there is, to quote the subtitles on my
copy of the final three, "nothing left to believe in".  I *can't* view that
as evil.  I've been in Despair's country too often to think that people who
wind up there are necessarily evil.  So I start to wonder, what brought her 
to this point?  )

	Likewise, Belldandy *does* have a temper, she *is* ever-so-slightly
possessive of Keiichi, and she *can* be frighteningly naive.  If someone
were to produce a situation in which all three of those quote-unquote flaws
came into play at once, I can honestly see her doing something vile ... and
immediately realizing her mistake, and being *very* apologetic afterwards,
but you know, what's done is done.

Chris Davies.