Oh! My Goddess

So during this Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve resorted to watching a lot of Oh! My Goddess episodes in between catching up on Westworld and spring season anime… I remember watching the movie a long time ago, and maybe a few episodes, but I couldn’t tell if it which season… I also remember reading the manga series when Dark Horse released it in the US… But I can’t actually pinpoint when I fell in love with the series… Maybe after college?

As someone put it on reddit, Belldandy was the original waifu, before goddesses became insane in anime…

I’ve avoided rewatching if for awhile, thinking in the back of my head that I don’t have all the seasons… or I’m missing a special. And there’s a certain nostalgia about the series when you compare it to modern anime… the pacing is a little slower. And it’s 50 episodes with specials and a movie — it’s a lot to sit through.

I watched season 1 in English, which made it go faster… As I write this, I discovered on my self I have a S.A.V.E. copy of season 2, in both English and Japanese… So I’ve been ripping those and watching through them in English. I remember having a VCD copy of season 1 somewhere, that I got off eBay.

As I’m watching through the series, I’m releasing the season 1 & 2 were released in 2005/6… Hard to believe it’s only been 15 years. But I’m also realizing that the very first OVAs were released 1993/4… I’m thinking this is when I fell in love with the series & became aware of it. The OVAs covered a few things that were drawn out into a few episodes in season 1… I can’t which did a better job… The nuance about causing trouble for others is there… Belldandy meeting Keiichi during childhood (which was talked about in season 2) was very different from the OVA… since the Batman story has been told and retold many different times, with different ways, I’m not so much hung up on cannon…

For an anime that’s saccharin sweet, there is a pervy vibe that runs through it… Even from the beginning, in the original OVAs, there’s a drag race competition between the Nekomi Institute of Technology Auto Club and a rival club. In between races, girls in skimpy swimsuit-like outfits hold up signs, either as cheer-leaders, crowd motivators, or announcing the next race… there’s a few cut screens where all viewers see are butts, crotch-shots, or boob-shots… there should almost be a eechi-index (and there might be), of how many sexualized visualizations there are within a title…