The Legend of King Arthur (Rodney Bennett, 1979)

"Bright Caliope, come from Helicon[...]  Tell, Caliope, so that I might tell again as you relate; (whence the Britons came, what the origin of their name was, whence noble Britain had its kings); who Arthur was, what his deeds were, what his end - and how an unlucky nation lost its kingdom."
 - William of Rennes, Gesta Regum Britanniae (The Deeds of the Kings of Britain), c. 1236

I think, looking backward into the deep dark abysm of time, that my fascination with Arthuriana began when I was ten years old.  1989's 26th season of the BBC's Doctor Who opened with the story 'Battlefield', which was a tale of knights from a parallel dimension led by the witch queen Morgaine (a delightfully evil turn from the great Jean Marsh) and my youthful self was entranced with words and phrases like "the Forest of Celyddon" redolent of some kind of ancient mysticism - much as I would be later that same season with 'The Curse of Fenric' and its lexicon that included "the Well of Hvergelmir" that sparked my equal preoccupation with Norse mythology.  Seriously, that year's run of Who led to lots of trips to the library and much poring over of tomes.  Educational as well as entertaining, indeed.  Positively Reithian, dear boy.

I soon found myself pretty much wearing out an off-air VHS recording of John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur through repeated viewings, under the spell of Nicol Williamson's enigmatic Merlin and Helen Mirren's seductively evil Morgan, and over the years have accrued an Arthurian library encompassing everything from Thomas Malory to T.H. White to Chretien de Troyes and large (and expensive!) volumes of the mediaeval Vulgate Cycle.  Oh how my bookshelves yawn and creak like the ancient oak tree of some grove-dwelling Druid.  Obviously, i've also seen a great many filmic and televisual versions of the tales, from the high fantasy of Excalibur and Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953 - notable mainly for Ava Gardner's Guinevere and Gabriel Woolf - "Neil before the might of Sutekh" himself! - as Percival) to the mud-soaked post-Roman grit of the 1972 HTV series Arthur of the Britons (recommended to any fans of archive telly) and Antoine Fuqua's 2004 Clive Owen vehicle King Arthur (disappointing).  I haven't watched Guy Ritchie's 2017 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, because it looks and sounds rubbish.  You've burned me too many times, Ritchie.  Beep, beep.

Anyway, one TV adaptation that until now i'd never seen (but long wanted to, ever since I read about it in Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, which is well worth the purchase price) is the 1979 BBC eight-part series The Legend of King Arthur.  Like the coming of the rex quondam, rexque futurus himself - the time is finally at hand!

Adapted in serial fashion (rather than the episodic 'adventure of the week' format of Arthur of the Britons) in eight parts by none other than Mr Adaptation himself Andrew Davies - long before he was spinning Machiavellian webs with Francis Urquhart or bestowing us with the vision of a wet Darcy (though, personally, i'll most remember [and never forgive] him for Badger Girl) - the story follows all of the main story beats of Le Morte d'Arthur.  Filmed in the '70s BBC standard format of videotape for interiors and film for exterior shooting, the production nevertheless does not look cheap, being a co-production betwixt Auntie Beeb, Time-Life Television and the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Commission, as opposed to either the American Broadcasting Company or the old Associated British Corporation).

Eschewing the mediaeval knights in anachronistic shining plate armour aesthetic of so many other Arthurian productions,  this is rooted firmly in a post-Roman Dark Ages waste land of broadsword-wielding Brythonic barbarians in bearskins and breeches; a realm where chieftains rule from timbered longhouses rather than faerie kings and queens reigning from dreaming-spired castellations.  Opening with the brutish warlord Uther Pendragon (Brian Coburn) demanding ownership of the lady Igrayne (Anne Kidd) from her husband Gorlois of Cornwall (the late genre veteran - and father of the next generation's genre veteran Mark - W. Morgan Sheppard) and triggering civil war, the stage is set for the tale to come.  After Gorlois is slain by Uther in battle, the ire of the young Morgan (a spirited performance from an eleven year old Patsy Kensit) is raised against both her new stepfather and Uther's spawn: her baby half-brother Arthur.  Pledging herself to the ways of magic under the wary tutelage of Merlin (a well cast Robert Eddison, who would ten years later play the aged Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Morgan le Fay grows into a red-maned witch clad in the robes of a nun (Doctor Who veteran Maureen O'Brien) with her sights still obsessively fixed upon her semi-sibling's ruination.  

When Arthur (Andrew Burt, memorable as Valgard in Doctor Who's 'Terminus' and lamentable as Jarvik in Blake's 7's cringe fest 'The Harvest of Kairos') reaches maturity as king, riding into battle against the rebellious chieftains fighting  under the banner of Jon Croft's Lot of Orkney whilst wearing a battle helmet strikingly similar in design to the famous Sutton Hoo helm, Morgan sets to work along with her dwarf minion Branic (Peter Burroughs) and the embittered knight Accolon of Gaul (Anthony Dutton) to destroy the incipient Order of the Round Table.  As the story follows the outline of the Malory tale, Arthur and Bors (Godfrey James) are slanted and enchanted by the witch in the woods and Excalibur stolen away and given to the treacherous Accolon who then challenges the king to a duel - with the recreant traitor wielding the blessed blade.  Though the trap is overcame and Accolon defeated, the Queen of Air and Darkness remains steadfast in her desire for Arthur's death and continues to weave her web of traps - including exploiting the love of the steadfast Lancelot (David Robb) for the fair Queen Guinevere (Felicity Dean) and turning the minds of Agravain (Niall Padden) and Mordred (Steve Hodson), brash and reckless younger sons of Lot, against the champion and his perceived infidelity.  When the fellowship of Camelot is sundered by warfare and Lancelot's dalliance with Eleanor of Escalot (Amanda Wissler) the lovesick and half sick of shadows Lady of Shalott which leads to her grief-stricken suicide, Morgan's plots comes to their fruition as Mordred frames the queen for murder and turns all the court against one another in a strife that leads inexorably to the carnage of the Battle of Camlann and the twilight of the Arthurian world.

A triumph of 1970s BBC television ingenuity and a valiant attempt to compress Malory's sprawling collation of tales into eight half hour episodes, The Legend of King Arthur surpasses - for my money, anyway - Boorman's Excalibur as the finest example of the Matter of Britain on film (and videotape, natch).

Now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to climb into my coracle and sail across the sundering sea to the misty vales of Avalon.

King of the Rocket Men, Chapters One to Three (Fred C. Brannon, 1949)

Time for another olde-time serial chapter play again kids.  Let's party like it's 1949 matinee mornings, after the Pathe newsreel and cartoon but before the main feature.  Having already tackled this serial's semi-sequel (try spraying that with a lisp) Radar Men from the Moon it seems high time to go back, back to the beginning to check out the onlie begetter of the Rocket man's jetpacked adventures, King of the Rocket Men.  Yes, to my fannish brain it seems crazy not to have done things in chronological order, but here we find ourselves.  I had at least partially seen this story a long, low time ago (when people talked to me) when it ran on weekday mornings on UK TV - either Channel 4 or BBC2, memory fails - and so lucked out on being ill for a week or so.  If i'd been at school i'd have remained oblivious of the joy of serials for years.

Directed, like the three sequel chapterplays, by veteran Republic serial helmer Fred Brannon it stars Tristram Coffin (replacing Kirk Alyn, who had incarnated the first live action Superman the previous year [and yes, i'll get round to covering that one too]) as the titular Jeff King - the first man to strap on the jetpack and helmet of the iconic Rocket Man.  And so here we go with the Secret Origin of the Rocketeer...

Chapter One: Dr. Vulcan - Traitor!

When a series of mysterious "accidents" - including a plane crash claiming the life of noted chemist Paul Kenyon and an explosion which wrecks an experimental nuclear fission laboratory - occur in rapid succession, the brains trust Science Associates (a clique of the top minds in various fields such as metallurgist Prof Bryant, atomic boffin Martin Conway, aerodynamics wizard Dr Graftner and Teutonic physicist Gunther Von Strum) begin to worry.  The grip of fear on the egg-headed backroom boys tightens when Associate member and cyclotron expert Dr Drake finds himself locked inside his own car and spoken to by a sinister voice over the car vehicle - a disembodied presence identifying itself as Dr Vulcan - and his car driven by remote control over a cliff edge in another manufactured tragedy.  When Professor Millard (James Craven) is also contacted by the mocking voice of the invisible menace whilst working in his lab just before a blast wrecks the building neither any trace of he nor any of his secret experimental work can be found in the wreckage.

Investigative reporter Glenda Thomas (Mae Clarke - Elizabeth from James Whale's classic 1931 Frankenstein of course, but she's perhaps less well known as Myra in the same director's pre-Code version of Waterloo Bridge earlier that same year; a role portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the better known [though less good, in my own opinion] 1940 remake) of Science Data Magazine is hot on the case, having her inquiries as to whether an outside party could have engineered these incidents fended off by Science Associates' PR man Burt Winslow (House Peters, Jr.) when she meets rocket propulsion expert Jeff King (the moustachioed and splendidly-monikered Tristram Coffin) who has been nominated by his peers to supervise the safe and secret transportation of a rocket for the group's next guided missile test.

When the unseen Dr Vulcan contacts his chief henchman Durken (Don Haggerty), he commands him to break into the files of Dr King (not that one - though this one does have a dream, too) and search for any notes that may have been passed on by Professor Millard - who is still though to have passed on.  However, they find nothing more than King himself who is happy disprove the scoffing assertions that "these scientist guys are all brain and no brawn" by engaging them in a two-fisted punch-up before they flee the scene with tails betwixt legs.  Next morning, King makes his way to the secret cavern where the not-so-late Millard has set up his new laboratory to report on his unwelcome uninvited guests.  Millard is eager to get out there, confident that he can unmask the true identity of the villain, but Jeff persuades him that for his own safety he must remain securely "dead" for the time being.  

Millard announces that he has finally completed work on the experimental rocket suit on which the pair had been working ("to change men into human rockets"), consisting of an atomic-powered jet pack attached to a leather coat and an aerodynamically-designed helmet.  Jeff takes the suit, vowing to test it himself out in the open, and stows it in the trunk of his car as he sets off for the top secret warehouse where the secret missile is being stored.  Or, rather, not that top secret, as he arrives just as Vulcan's goons hijack the truck carrying the rocket.  Swiftly donning the untested suit, Jeff takes to the skies in hot pursuit (he truly is King, of the Rocket Men, see?).  Manipulating the "nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak" chest-mounted controls, he shoots into the back of the van and brawls with a pair of thugs; yet a shove into the back of the missile's tripod mounting results in an unexpected launch.

"If that torpedo" says King, bizarrely not understanding what a torpedo is, "lands in a populated area, you'll be guilty of mass murder!"  He then blasts off in hot pursuit of the buzz-bomb as it hurtles towards the city, taking it out with a blast from the laser gun tucked into his belt - but the resulting explosion sends him falling to the ground far below...

Chapter Two: Plunging Death

...but just in the nick of time he tweaks the controls and fires up the rocket pack, righting his trajectory and flying off into the skies.  Returning to the safe haven of Dr Millard's cave lab, Jeff and the Prof listen to a radio bulletin about his saving the city from the so-called "aerial torpedo" wherein he is dubbed 'the Rocket Man' (and also described as a "strange human-like object" and speculated to be a visitor from another planet).  They discuss how only the members of Scientific Associates knew of the transportation of the missile, and arrive at the conclusion that the villainous Dr Vulcan must be one of the group.  Fearing that Jeff's life is in danger should Vulcan suspect him to be Rocket Man, Millard advises him to be circumspect at any board meetings.

King goes about this be arriving at the next meeting and immediately asking if anyone suspects him of being the Rocket Man.  Way to not draw attention to yourself, dude.  However any inklings are interrupted by Winslow arriving with news that lady reporter Ms Thomas managed to get a snap of the junior birdman in flight.  King advises that he will personally inspect her negative (I bet he will, the mucky sod) before granting permission for publication.

While Jeff and Burt head off to meet Ms Thomas, the shadowy Vulcan contacts Durken and grasses the address of Glenda's gaff so that he can get to her Piedmont pied-a-terre before them and grab the negative.  As the goons rifle through her stuff, they have to duck into an adjoining room as Glenda arrives with Winslow and they wait for the tardy Jeff.  Coming up with a bright idea, Durken grabs a telephone and gives the operator the address, asking to test whether the phone's ringer is broken.  When the unwitting operator complies and the phone in the living room rings, Durken is connected and atests to being King, unavoidably detained, and asks that Glenda bring the negative to the S.A. lab.  As she retrieves it from her hollowed-out book hiding place, the goons burst out and assail them.  When Burt goes down with a chair smashed over his head, Durken grabs the film and dashes for it with the dogged Glenda in hot pursuit.  

When the dallying real King arrives, Burt informs him of the situation and that Glenda is after Durken and the film in her car.  Grabbing the jet suit from his own auto, he dashes into a nearby alley for a quick change and soars skywards.  As Glenda burns rubber to catch up with the thief, the all-seeing Dr Vulcan (who is watching on his monitor that he can tune to focus on anything, anywhere, because SCIENCE) manipulates his magic remote control machine and causes her car to crash out of control.  As Rocket Man land son the roof of the vehicle and climbs inside to valiantly wrestle with the steering wheel the car careens over a precipice to crash and burn in the valley below...

Chapter Three: Dangerous Evidence

...only to survive via the method of pulling that hoary old trick that enraged me as a child - the footage that we didn't see last time of him yelling "Jump!" and the two of them bundling out of the car just before it soars Thelma and Louise-style over the edge.

Still feels like a cheat all these years on.  The flame of ire still burns brightly.

When Glenda follows thanking her saviour with an interview request she is swiftly spurned - Rocket Man informing her that in his quest to rid the world of the menace that endangers the nation he needs zero publicity.  He then informs her than the inter city bus runs along the road on which they stand and that one should be along shortly, before shooting off.  Back at the Rocket Cave, King and Millard muse that the villains cannot be allowed to enlarge and inspect the photograph - for even though the masked Jeff can't be recognised the rocket suit will be identifiable by all as the same prototype that they had been working on.  Since this will either finger Jeff or reveal that Millard is not as dead is everyone currently thinks, Jeff resolves to come up with a scheme to prevent Team Vulcan from blowing up that pic.

When Durken reports back to Vulcan that he is finding it impossible to find a supplier willing to sell the specialist type of film needed to develop the negative, the unseen menace replies that Science Associates has a small amount in stock and that he can arrange an inside job; Durken should get to the premises at 9.00 PM where he will find the gate unlocked.  The stooge and another man of hench slip in through the shadows easily, getting their grubby mitts on the coveted Micro-Film 247.  Confronted by an armed King who demands to know who allowed their entrance, the pair manage to catch him unawares and get away with their prize.

Blasting off after them, King follows their tracks to a remote cabin where Durken has a lab-coated science guy to process the photo.  Landing in the woods and for some reason deciding to strip off the Rocket Man outfit and stash it in the shrubbery, he approaches the hideout as his usual civilian self (and hold on a minute - it's weird enough that he he wears the whole tight leather coat over his business suit, but where the hell was he keeping his hat?).  Confronting Durken and taking on both him and the lab goon in a fist fight that quickly reduces the place to rubble, Jeff is knocked unconscious and left in the burning shack as a shattered jar of acid ignites a crate marked CHLOROMITE: DANGER - EXPLOSIVE...

Oh My Goddess! ([orig: 'Aa! Megami-sama!'], Hiroaki Goda, 1993-1994)

Kosuke Fujishima's manga series Oh My Goddess! (or the minutely different Ah! My Goddess! in some transliterations) began in 1988 as a serialised story in the anthology collection Monthly Afternoon, making the leap from the printed page to the screen at first in the form of a short series of OVAs (original video animations for the uninitiated: animated shorts created solely for home video - and later DVD - distribution rather than being aimed primarily at the television or cinematic market) beginning in February of 1993 and concluding with the fifth chapter in  May 1994.  The franchise would continue with a 48 episode anime TV series from 1998 to 1999, a cinematic movie (with the perhaps obvious title of Ah! My Goddess: the Movie in 2000, two further TV series (Ah! My Goddess! in 2005 and Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy in 2006) as well as two more OVA runs (the two-part Ah! My Goddess: Fighting Wings in 2007 and the three-part Ah! My Goddess: Together Forever from 2011 to 2013), throughout all of which the original seinen manga continued to run before concluding in 2014 after almost a quarter of a century of publication.

Such a vast franchise is kind of beyond the purview of a blog that i'm already quite behind in updating, however, and we concern ourselves here with the original five-part series of OVAs from the '90s - which i'm pretty sure, after Devil Man, was one of the first OVA I ever saw thanks to the remarkably extensive set of anime in South Shields library.  Clearly a member of staff was a fan, and my young self shall forever be grateful since my other main source of VHS perusal (my local video shop: remember those?) had a pretty limited selection.

So, anyway, let's dive in!

Part One: Moonlight and Cherry Blossoms

It all begins so unassumingly on an ordinary day with student Keiichi Morisato stuck in his dormitory digs fielding phone calls and taking messages for his older and more senior dorm-mates (I don't think "Notice me, senpai!" necessarily means "Get me to be your answering service").  Growing hungry but unable to leave and frustrated at the restaurants he phones either not delivering during the day or not answering, Keiichi mis-dials and through the tangled lines of the Fates somehow gets a trunk call patched through the world-tree Yggdrasil to the Goddess Help Line.

When the goddess Belldandy (an understandable Japanese transliteration of Verthandi - the Norn of the occurring present) appears through his mirror, all wide shimmering purple eyes and bright expression, offering to grant whatever wish he desires, our boy Keiichi is understandably gobsmacked.  Believing himself to be being pranked (or Punk'd, if that's even still a thing?) by his roommates and embarrassed by his singleton status, he wishes that the radiant remain with him as his girlfriend forever - a blithely-spoken heart's desire that is quickly and irrevocably granted.  This, however, sets powerful and immutable forces into motion - such as his roommates quickly returning and throwing him out for violating the rule of never having a girl within the dormitory.  

Suddenly down and out and on the streets, the despondent lad is cheered by the effervescently upbeat magic dream girl that's landed in his lap.  Belldandy advises that fate will provide them with accommodation to the west, and so they mount Morisato's motorbike and continue stabbing westward through the nighttime rain until they reach an old abandoned temple; the crumbling edifice is soon restored to its former beauty by Belldandy reaching out to the building and asking it to remember what it used to be.  In the morning, as the new couple settle into their appropriate abode for an angelic occupant, Keiichi's younger sister Megumi arrives on their doorstep and announces that she'll be staying with them for a while until her college course kicks off.  Thus the stage is set for what I assume will be a Manga-style magicom along the lines of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched - a magical girl, an ordinary boy and the hilarious consequences that thus arise.

Breezy and charming with some surprisingly touching moments (Belldandy's communion with the temple took me quite by surprise with how nonchalantly affecting it was), this first episode is a highly enjoyable scene setter.

Part Two: Midsummer Night's Dream

Having settled well in and enjoyed five months of domestic bliss - somewhat ameliorated by the friendly needling in ways only a sibling can of Megumi - in 'Morisato Mansion' (as the sign hung on the temple wall now calls it), Keiichi and Belldandy's still somewhat platonic relationship receives what could either be a shot in the arm or a bullet in the throat when Megumi convinces them that a holiday by the seaside would be a good idea.  Masking his fear due to his inability to swim because of Belldandy's enthusiasm at actually getting to see the ocean, Keiichi agrees to go and his day only begins to get entangled further in a web of weirdness and neuroses (I can so relate) when he receives a mysterious VHS tape in the post.  Waiting until Bel and Megumi have gone out shopping, he opens the parcel to find a VHS tape titled Goddess Films: Sexy Dynamite!! Part II.  Obviously, he immediately breaks out the box of tissues and puts it on.

Don't judge.  I'd do the same, and I suspect you would too.

Things begin to turn and face the strange when the sexy white-haired lady (no, it's not GILF stuff, she just has hair that's white) breaks the fourth wall be emerging from the TV, bare anklet-clad foot first.  Yes, this caters to my fetishes.  No, it's not a Tarantino movie.  This is Urd, the Fate of things past and Belldandy's older sister, who has grown tired of watching Keiichi's fumbling overtures and wants him to become a pouncer (though not of the Sylvia Daisy kind).  Urging him on to take Bel to the beach and make his move, she instigates a series of unfortunate events with hilarious consequences (which sounds rather like a bad pitch for a Lemony Snicket sitcom, now that I read it back) through her matchmaking efforts - including giving Keiichi a love potion that will make him fall hopelesslty in love with the first person that he sees upon awakening.  Alas, this turns out to be his rich spoiled bitch classmate Sayoko rather than Bel, who walks in on the scene of the hopelessly devoted to her Keiichi declaring his undying burns-hotter-than-a-thousand-suns amour for Sayoko.

Shakespeare could easily have written Three's a Crowd, you know.  There's always some kind of misunderstanding.

Thankfully, Keiichi's hunk o' hunk o' burning love for Bel gets him over the spell, but just as things appear to be getting on track as they finally admit out loud their feelings for each other, Urd is thrown to Earth with a thundercrack (I mean an actual crack of thunder, not that film) and a message from the All-Father declaring that "It is evident that the Ultimate Force system has crashed due to your tampering.  Until further notice, the goddess Urd shall be banished to the mortal plane."

And so Keiichi finds himself with another extra lodger.  Sharing a house with two sexy goddesses.  I wish I had that guy's problems.

Part Three: Burning Hearts on the Road

 Opening with a pre-title sequence introducing us to the younger sister of our trinity of Norns - Skuld, Fate of things yet to come - as she races around the heavenly realm frantically playing whack-a-mole with spider-legged leporine abominations with her trusty croquet mallet , the third instalment sees Keiichi in a bit of a bind as his fellow students have entered him as the Nekomi Tech contender in the intercollegiate drag racing festival.  Sitting amid the yet-to-be-assembled parts of the twin engined bike that he's meant to race on trying to put them together like Dave Lister with his space bike and being more hindered than helped by Urd (her attempted spell to bring the parts together on their own quite literally blowing up in both their faces), Keiichi resolves to take a bath.

This endeavour at simply relaxing goes as astray as all else, however, when the reflective surface of the bathwater acts - like the mirror and the television screen - as a divine conduit for Skuld to emerge much to the surprise of both parties.  Perhaps more so for Keiichi as the impetuous young Skuld's immediate reaction to a naked bathing male is to scream "Pervert!" and serve him up a concussive crack on the cranium.  Skuld is unhappy at having to manage goddess business on her own without her big sisters, and Bel's devotion to "K" makes him the unfortunate recipient of the tyro's ire.  After the temple abode (would it be wrong to want to call it the Goddess Cave?  Maybe.  I think i'll reserve that as a pet name for a paramour's genitalia) is paid an uninvited visit by Toshiyuki Aoshima, the equally vain and spoiled cousin of Sayoko who has set up his own rival college motor club and makes sickening overtures towards the lovely Bel replete with flowers and poetry that put even my own clunkiest fumbles at romance to shame, Skuld concocts a plan to make Keiichi lose the race in the hope that Bel's ardour will be doused - paving the way for her to return home.

As the gang assemble the motorcycle via the medium of a montage and get ready for the race, it seems that events will not transpire in Keiichi's favour until Bel openly rejects Aoshima's advances and makes a rousing speech to the race team about the goddess of victory (Nike: just do it) smiling not on the prideful, but on those with burning hearts.  Of course true love sways and Keiichi wins the race, garlanded not only with the winner's medal (by Urd, very fetching as a grid girl) but with Bel's love.  For a moment it seems like Skuld has been swayed over to team Keidandy, but she swinftly abandons that 'ship, declaring "You know, I really hate you!"

Part Four: Evergreen Holy Night

In which we begin with Keiichi finally pledging his love to Belldandy by giving her his ring (no, not like that - get your mind out of the gutter!), only for her to react by sprouting feathered wings and floating away on the winder wind telling him that the force of Destiny cannot be defied forever ad that she must return to her Heavenly home.  Which probably wasn't the reaction the guy was expecting.  Of course, 'tis all but an anxiety dream and he wakes screaming just like Jesse Walsh from Freddy's Revenge.  Bel is still by his side of course, but the thought that their "we shall never be apart" promise may not last begins to gnaw at him.

It is four days 'til Christmas at the Morisato Mansion, and going outside the star-crossed couple find the temple grounds completely bedecked with festive snow - and Urd and Skuld magically outdoing themselves in the sibling rivalry department when a snowball fight magically escalates into the creation of a gigantic living Ymir of a snowman.  Figuring he'll have to put snow chains on the wheels of his bike, Keiichi goes to see how blocked the road is only to find that the snow has fallen solely on the temple and its environs.  General bafflement at this mysterious and mystical weather phenomenon is disrupted when Skul espies a "bug" - of of the spider-legged rabbit creatures she had spent her time swatting in the nether-realm - and sets off in hot pursuit after it across the pristine snows before pummelling it with her trusty mallet: a pest extermination which results in the frozen tundra vanishing as instantly as it arrived.

Quickly determining that the infestation are quite literally bugs in the divine system (bugs which "aren't supposed to show up here in the surface world; something must really be wrong up there"says Skuld) and that they have to do something about it, things become curiouser and curiouser when a series of unfortunate events occur to Keiichi in rapid succession culminating in his suddenly becoming magnetic and drawing all the breakfast cutlery to his body including a Bottomesque frying pan to the face.  Skuld locates the portal facilitating the bugs' arrival to have manifested between Keiichi and Bel - any contact between the two of them is making things worse.

K has a nervous bug in his system, which makes him edgy and afraid as it looks increasingly like his dream was less pathetic and more prophetic: something which seems to become certain when Bel is contacted by her heavenly father and told that a Recall Notice has been issued and that she has only three days before the gate will open and she must return home.  Having to remain physically apart lest more accidents be caused by the system glitch an increasingly despondent K attends school without Bel and finds himself on the receiving end of Sayoko's unwanted attentions as she makes it abundantly clear that if Bel is no longer dating him then she'll be predating upon him.

This stressful day comes to a peak when Urd and Skuld identify the energy source that is the main attractor of the bugs - a tall and forbidding gnarled cherry tree by the temple, the sight of which causes Belldandy to recoil in abject atavistic terror.

Part Five: For the Love of Goddess

Another new dawn breaks, and with only two days until Bel is recalled Urd and Skuld are hard at work trying to find a festive miracle to get all of them out of this predicament.  Alas, the malfunction sin the Heavenly paradigm caused by the bugs is even ruining communications with the other side, as Goddess Second Class, Limited Licence Urd finds when she tries to place a call to their father (though the bored secretary voice that answers with "Heaven, can I help you?" is pretty damn funny even as she puts Urd on hold and refuses to connect Urd to the main office).  Determining that they have to deal with the cherry tree and the energy sealed within it to deal with the system imbalance, Urd encourages Skuld to aid her in utilising an Ultimate Magic Circle to negate the power that feeds the tree.

As a mutually heartbroken Keiichi and Bel deal with their enforced social distancing - Keiichi by staying away from the temple all day working a series of zero hour contract jobs that he was set up with by his college senpais (including window cleaning, directing traffic and pizza delivery) originally with the aim of earning enough money to buy Bel the engagement of of their dreams - Skuld is hard at work on the calculations needed to deal with the system bugs.  When K collapses of exhaustion after working from dawn til dusk he finds himself riding the night mare as some serious REM dreamscapes come during the night seemingly taking the form of flashbacks from long ago as though Bel were always with him since his youth.  I guess they'll at least be together forever in eccentric dreams.  As this occurs, Bel self-isolating in her room feels some kind of powerful movement in the Force, reacting with "His memory is returning... There's still time."

As Christmas Eve begins, Bel is busy sadly erasing all traces of her mortal life including all mementos such as photographs of her time with Keiichi, as she can leave him no reminders of the nine months they've spent together after her ascension.  Keiichi frantically rushes home with the promised ring just as the clock strikes the 10.00 A.M. deadline, to be met with the sight of Bel raising her pretty fists like antennas to heaven and the sky cracking asunder to welcome her as she floats into the firmament.  Luckily, Urd and Skuld are just finishing the ultimate circle incantation and the energy unleashed disrupts the sky portal just as Keiichi's buried memories of his childhood encounter with Bel and their youthful promises to each other return.  As a message from the All-Father arrives cancelling Bel's recall and also grounding Urd and Skuld to Earth for unauthorised meddling arrives, Bel finally wears the ring and they are together forever in love.

Because if a trio of goddesses can't bring about a Christmas miracle, who can?

A simple story well told with solid animation, a good English dub voice cast and a suitably upbeat yet emotive soundtrack, Oh My Goddess! is a great example of accessible anime recommended for any fans of the genre or animation in general.  Or even just viewers in search of something breezy and romantic.