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.
