By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

Awww. Yes, once again, that is the goal of Oh My Goddess. To get you to read one of the adorable, cute, relaxing chapters and go “Awww.’ And for the most part, this volume succeeds in that.

The first chapter wraps up the Sentaro storyline that was in Volume 34. After injuring himself in front of his girl, Sentaro is back on the bike and vowing to make sure he does the trick right this time. And he does. But an even harder trick might have been a mistake, as Skuld is forced to bust out her goddess powers to save him. Luckily for her, Sentaro is (like most of the human cast) vaguely clueless, and thinks he was merely hallucinating those wings. And of course, lame ending, he’s just moving across the river – like 10 extra minutes. Waaa waaa waaa waaaaaaaah.

The majority of the volume is concerned with the story of a broken antique camera that may not be as broken as it seems. As always, mechanical things are Fujishima’s bread and butter, so the camera is lovingly depicted and described. The camera, it turns out, works fine – provided it’s taking a picture of a pretty girl. After Belldandy sweet talks it (you have to get used to everyday objects having souls and speaking around these goddesses), they’re able to open it and get the 40-year-old film developed. Then it’s just a matter of finding the girl in the photo. This being OMG, they find her in about 2 hours. The best part of this arc was seeing the old couple – Fujishima loves to show us couples in love, provided they aren’t K1 and Belldandy, and you always get the sense that they could carry a manga of their own whenever you meet another one.

The final chapter is slight but amusing, focusing on Keiichi’s sister Megumi. Who shows up at the temple utterly roaring drunk. Turns out she’s been dumped – again. This is news to her brother, who was unaware she was dating. The problem, apparently, is that she’s simply TOO AWESOME for her boyfriends. They can’t deal with her being the queen of the campus, #1 motorbike champion, perfect in every way woman. So she lets them break up with her (which in itself should tell her how much she actually cared, but hey) and then gets hammered. The best part of the chapter is at the end, where she rips into her brother for being a pathetic loser and yet still having Belldandy for a girlfriend. Oh, kid, you speak for us all.

As you may imagine, this manga is preaching to the converted. No one will be buying Volume 35 to give the series a try, and if you were frustrated at the lack of romantic progress, no doubt you gave up after Vol. 12 or so. Still, this is for the Oh My Goddess fan. And for them? It’s good stuff. Not a lot of Urd this volume, but I’m sure that will change. Isn’t everyone in it so sweet? Awww.

By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

It dawned on me as I was reading this volume of Oh My Goddess that I have been reading this manga series for almost a third of my entire life. This was the first manga title I started buying regularly at my comic book store, along with Ranma 1/2. I got them both in the 32-page floppy format, flipped. That’s how long this has been running. Dark Horse notes it’s American’s longest-running manga series, and it’s the truth. And it’s still running in Japan, so we’re in no danger of it stopping anytime soon.

The first half of this volume deals with what has almost become the main plot of OMG: motorbikes. Yes, theoretically there’s something about a boy living with a bunch of goddesses, and the manga does have arcs where it deals with Heaven and Hell and the like, but the driving force of this manga, more than the somewhat simplistic characters, and more than the pretty art (love that hair!), has been the bikes. Much like Fujishima’s first manga, You’re Under Arrest!, the manga is a starting point where he can overindulge his fetish for old-time engines and namedrop Honda as much as possible.

The second half of the volume focuses on Skuld, the bratty future goddess who has been slowly (very slowly) (very very very slowly) growing up over the course of this series. She runs into her crush Sentaro, but he’s distracted by something, and she can’t figure out what it is. Naturally, her sisters and Keiichi try to help her, but aside from moral support (and hideous teasing on Urd’s part) there’s not much for them here. Eventually it becomes clear that Sentaro is moving, and he was trying to find the best way of telling her.

And that’s pretty much it. The volumes have grown much skinnier recently (Dark Horse is using a slimmer paper, but they also match up with the skinny Japanese volumes), so we don’t really get much focusing on Keiichi and Belldandy beyond one small gag where Urd feeds Keiichi medicine to get him to say what he’s honestly thinking. But since Bell and K1 are the #1 chaste couple in all of manga, nothing happens.

Let’s be honest, no one reads Oh My Goddess and eagerly awaits the two of them declaring their love and going off to have hot hot goddess sex. It’s been 34 volumes and over 20 years (in Japan), and while K1 and Bell are clearly a couple in love, they can’t even bring themselves to kiss anymore. They were actually more affectionate at the start than they are now! That’s the one big drawback of the series: if you can’t stand people who cannot resolve a relationship, drop this title now and read something else.

But I read Oh My Goddess… because I’ve always read Oh My Goddess. Or at least it feels like it. I like reading about Keiichi and Belldandy being sweet, and Urd being annoying, and Skuld being annoying, and the rest of the cast being annoying. I like Fujishima’s art, and I think he draws very cute women. Plus now that the cast has graduated, this is another rare manga dealing almost entirely with adults, with Skuld being the only exception.

Dark Horse’s presentation is top notch. This is a title edited by the legendary Carl Gustav Horn (TM), and so we get attention to detail galore, not to mention 4-page spreads telling you about The Monkey Z50J/II, which has a Takegawa R-stage head to enhance prn! Or something. As an added treat, Carl has found the original copies of the monthly magazine Afternoon that OMG runs in, and has found that Fujishima had little comments with each chapter. This volume translates the first 15, with liner notes.

Yes, it’s another comfort manga, and won’t blow anyone’s mind. Probably as we’ve seen so many Magical Girlfriend titles influenced by it that we’ve forgotten how good it was. But Oh My Goddess keeps on trucking, and for anyone who’s been enjoying the ride, well, now you can enjoy the ride while knowing how many cc’s the engine is.