Review of Oh My Goddess! Volume 2

Introduction

With the first Ah My Goddess TV series coming to a close, I`m sort of tripping on all things Belldandy right now, and a timely sale convinced to fill in all my Goddess gaps. Of the original OVA animations, I had previously only reviewed the first volume. So as well as volume 6 of the TV series, I have also acquired the movie, and the concluding volume of OVAs to watch. This month I shall be sojourning in heaven.

The Ah My Goddess property, originating from the pen of Kosuke Fujishima is an extensive one. The long running manga has spawned many spin-offs, I forgot to mention the Mini-Goddess series, but the animation had a relatively innocuous beginning with a five-episode OVA. Those five episodes were released in the UK by MVM on two discs as Oh My Goddess! The concluding volume I am reviewing here has the final two episodes as well as more than the usual amount of extras.

Oh My Goddess takes its cue from the sitcoms of the sixties, shows like Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie, where an average Joe would meet the girl of his dreams, only there would be more to her than meets the eye, causing his life to change in unexpected ways. Here Keiichi Morisato is the average Joe, but Belldandy trumps the witch and genie by actually being a goddess, a celestial being who comes to Earth to grant one wish.

There are some pretty hefty episode synopses up above, so I shall restrain myself here.

Video

This is one of the earlier of MVM`s discs released in the UK, and as such is pretty much an identical release to the Region 1 version, down to the NTSC coding. As such it isn`t a pretty transfer, subject to rainbowing and a little soft at times. Colour bleed is apparent, and sometimes the image can be a little intense. The Oh My Goddess title card is a case in point, with the red text looking almost blurred against the white background.

It`s a shame that the transfer is lacking, as the OVA nature of Oh My Goddess means that there has been extra care taken over the animation, and the character designs are excellent.

Audio

You get a choice between DD 2.0 Japanese and English, with translated subtitles or just the signs. The dialogue is clear throughout, and either language track is more than acceptable. Oh My Goddess has some great music, and the tunes for the credit sequences rank among my favourites for an anime series.

Features

This release of Oh My Goddess is the Region 1 version in all but Region coding, with the NTSC transfer not the only thing to make the transition. You`ll find that the Easter Egg is also identical. It can be found with some nifty navigation from the episode select screen, and it leads to a brief slideshow of more Oh My Goddess product. If you select the correct angle, and turn off the subtitles, you will also be able to see the clean credit sequences.

Oh My Goddess gets some nice animated menus, as well as multi angle credit sequences. The original Japanese credits are shown as part of the animation, while the English credits are overlaid on the screen as part of the subtitle stream.

On the disc, you will also find a 2-minute slideshow that shows stills and artwork from the show and from the manga. The rest of the extras are a curious mixed bag. There are four audio tracks for each of the episodes, the Japanese and English audio, a commentary track and a music and effects only track.

The music and effects track is presented in two ways, Silent Movie Mode that plays this track with the subtitles, or Dub Your Own OMG, which turns the subtitles off, presumably so you can add your own voice to the characters.

Finally there is the commentary that is present for all episodes. The English language voice artists talk about the show, the story and the characters as well as the translation and the dub. It is fairly light-hearted and there are a couple of informational snippets worth listening out for. But this time around I did find that the commentary track blended in with the dub track, making it hard to make out what was being said in either.

Conclusion

Oh My Goddess is sweet! Fortunately it isn`t the cloying saccharine sweetness that can easily overwhelm a story, but the gentle and heartfelt sweetness that insists that you care about the characters. I suppose that it could easily be placed in the harem genre, of hapless teen surrounded by plenty of pretty girls, but Oh My Goddess differs from the others of the genre that I have seen. It lacks the slapstick silliness of Love Hina, and eschews the sci-fi overtones of Tenchi Muyo. It also avoids the cliché of having more than one pretty girl falling for our wimpy hero. Instead Oh My Goddess focuses directly on the relationship between Keiichi and Belldandy, and in something of a change, we actually get to see it develop. This is in contrast to the Ah My Goddess TV series, which has to stretch the central relationship out over 52 episodes. The OVA gets straight to the point.

That`s certainly true of these final two episodes. Whereas in the first volume, the characters were introduced, and Keiichi and Belldandy stumbled towards a relationship, usually to considerable comic effect, this final two-part story eschews the laughs for something a little more heartfelt. 9 months have passed since Belldandy and Keiichi first met, and they are pretty much accepted by all as a couple now. It`s almost a domestic idyll in which they live, and with Urd and Skuld also living at the temple, it`s a family dynamic. That dynamic is sorely tested when a moment from Keiichi`s past comes back to haunt them. Celestial system bugs are being unleashed on Earth, and the cause happens to be Belldandy and Keiichi`s proximity. The first episode makes it difficult as the two have to remain apart lest havoc erupt. The stress begins to show when people at college get the wrong idea about them, but worse is to come.

The Lord, and Belldandy`s boss decrees that the two cannot stay together, a contract is about to come undone, and Belldandy has to return to heaven, erasing all signs of her presence on Earth. Belldandy is understandably distraught, but Keiichi`s first reaction is selfish, bringing up the contract that he made with Belldandy, and which will be broken if she leaves. But then he realises that he doesn`t want to lose her, or for her to forget him, and he remembers his promise to get her a ring. He`s broke, she leaves in two days, and he`s looking for every part-time job available. But the ring is a sign of a deeper memory that he has lost. If Keiichi can find that memory, he`ll understand why Belldandy must leave, but by doing so, he`ll also guarantee that she does.

These final two episodes of the Oh My Goddess OVA are more heartfelt than comedic, and while they do remain on the light side, they certainly invoke sympathy for the couple and the ordeal that they go through. It`s a sign of how much empathy the characters engender, that I found this volume to be even stronger than the first. Most anime these days get a fair sized run, lasting up to 26-episodes and more. But there is something to be said for shows that keep things short and sweet, efficiently developing characters and telling stories in the space of just a few episodes. The Oh My Goddess OVA may only stretch to five, but in that space of time it approaches perfection. It`s a show that needs to be on every anime fan`s shelf.