Bruce Von Stiers

I had heard about this anime series featuring a goddess named Belldandy, but hadn’t gotten a chance to watch it. That is, until recently. I was able to view the first volume in a collection from AnimEigo called Oh My Goddess!

There are a whole bunch of episodes in this series but only three of them are included in Volume 1 of the collection. The titles of the episodes are Moonlight and Cherry Blossoms, Midsummer’s Night Dream and Burning Hearts on the Road.

Basically, you can call Oh My Goddess! a romantic comedy. It is a variation of boy meets girl and doesn’t know what to do after that. The show involves a goddess sent from the heavens to be with a young man. Only once she gets there, he can’t get his courage up to do any thing about it. This makes for a whole bunch or comedic situations where the couple might or might not have some romantic moments.

In the first episode, Moonlight and Cherry Blossoms, we meet Morisato Keiichi, an engineering student at the university. Through a misplaced phone call (he thought he was getting some take-out for dinner), Keiichi gives a request to the Relief Goddess Office. They send him a goddess named Belldandy. It is her job to grant him one wish, whatever his heart desires. He doesn’t really know what to think of this, wasn’t this really a joke being played on him by his college buddies? Believing this to be one big joke, Keiichi wished Belldandy to be with him forever. She grants his wish. Then things get really interesting.

After somewhat accepting Belldandy’s word about what she is, they try to find a new place for Keiichi to live. They travel through a rainstorm towards a temple that Belldandy knows about that is vacant. A near miss with a car leaves Belldandy ill. They get to the temple and then Keiichi ends up being the one who’s sick. The two of them show some tenderness towards the other without anything really happening.

The second episode is Midsummer’s Night Dream. The title is a nod of the head to of the Shakespeare play.
Here we find Keiichi and Belldandy have set up house at the temple. There still hasn’t been anything going on between the two of them. Keiichi just can’t seem to get it together enough to put the moves on Belldandy. Then his little sister, Megumi, shows up. She is looking for a place to crash before starting her classes at the university.

After little bit, Megumi talks Keiichi into taking Belldandy to the beach. But before that happens, he gets to meet Belldandy’s sister, Urd. She has something cooking, but we don’t know what it is. She tries to get Keiichi to start romancing her sister. At the beach things go awry. Urd ends up being banished from heaven. So guess who she gets to stay with?

In the third episode, Burning Hearts on the Road, Keiichi is chosen by his peers to participate in a motorcycle race. Not only does he have to race, he has to put together the racing bike. Now, that might not seem to be a tough job, but it is. I helped a friend of mine put together a flat track racer one time. When he bought it, the parts were in crates. We had to build it from scratch, so that plot element brought back a lot of memories. Whereas, we used tools and a lot of beer to get the job done, one of the goddesses tries to help Keiichi out by using her powers. Only it backfires.

It seems that the Belldandy’s youngest sister, Skuld, has decided to come down to Earth. She wants to know why Belldandy hasn’t come back to heaven yet. Skuld does the system maintenance on the computer system in heaven. That is why she is trying to help Keiichi build the motorcycle.

Skuld is also trying to figure out a way to get Keiichi disinterested in Belldandy. If he doesn’t want Belldandy, she can go back home.

The characters in Oh My Goddess! have been borrowed from a combination of Norse and Greek mythology. The bizarre, but funny, element I liked was the computer system in heaven to take care of things down here. This is the system that Skuld was supposed to maintain. There have been several variations of the computer run by God to control the Cosmo theme over the years.

The show is really pretty cute in the fact that Keiichi really wants to get next to Belldandy but is too nerdy to do anything about it. All of the advice of sexy Urd and bratty Skuld do nothing to get him any closer. One of these days you just know that the two of them will get together. But just how long that will be?

One thing that I saw during the course of the three episodes was text being translated on the screen A package that Keiichi receives is described on the screen in English. The same thing happens when his sister gives him money from home. We learn the amount of the currency because it is flashed on the screen in English. This is a nice gesture from the producers to keep the viewers in the loop.

The animation was pretty smooth and well drawn. The costumes of the goddesses were pretty interesting, especially the revealing one that Urd wears. There is a lot of typical anime pieces in the film; big saucer eyes and rivers of tears running down faces.

This being a DVD, there are a few extras that are included. The language options are English with limited subtitles, English with English subtitles, Japanese Audio with no subtitles and Japanese with English subtitles.

There are also several viewing options. There is Dub Your Own OMG, which allows you to watch the program with music and sound, but no subtitles. Then there is Silent Movie where you have music and sounds with English subtitles. In The Studio 1 is a running commentary of the show by several of the English Language voice actors. This one has no subtitles. In The Studio 2 is the same as the first but has subtitles. In each of these options you choose the episode to watch. And finally, Slide Show gives you production cels and slides from the film.

The English Language voice cast has Juliet Cesario as Belldandy, Scott Simpson as Keiichi, Lanelle Markgraf as Urd and Pamela Weidner as Skuld. There is also Amanda Spivey as Megumi. Other actors include Marc Matney, Sean P. O’Connell, Belinda Bizic and several others.

Oh My Goddess! was produced by Shindou Masao, Takimoto Hiroo, Asaga Takao and Miura Tooru. It was directed by Gooda Hiroaki. The English Language version was produced by Shin Surokawa, Janice Hindle and Peter Haswell. The Subtitling Director was Michael House and the English Dubbing was done by Coastal Carolina Sound Studios.

To put it in a nutshell, Oh My Goddess! is a light romantic comedy. It has some classic mythology overtones and a few modern day twists to it. The dubbing was good and the animation was well done. The characters were kind of one dimensional, but this isn’t Shakespeare, in spite of episode 2 having the same name as one of Will’s plays. It was fun to watch and I hope to get a chance to catch the other episodes of this series.

You can order Oh My Goddess! directly from AnimEigo or pick it up from your local retailer. The AnimEigo web site can be found at www.animeigo.com.