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.
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