Oh My Goddess 40

Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2012 – 43+ volumes

My favorite sitcom manga! I read both this and the re-release of volume 20 together. The latter marks the end of the Oh My Goddess re-releases, so if you wanted to buy a whole set of the series in the same format, now’s the time to do it. I can’t believe it’s been almost seven years since those started. That makes me feel old and cranky. Usually Oh My Goddess is a good cure for such things, but this time around, we’re in the middle of an epic plot. Which, I have to say, is pleasing me to no end in the context of such a chill and episodic series.

Keiichi, Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld head to Hell to face off against Hagal. It tries to win me over very hard in the first chapter. Hild kisses Keiichi, and Skuld asks what a crotch is. And this is just the gateway to Hell!

There are challenges on the way to Hagal’s place, which I was not expecting in a series like this. The first demoness the gang faces off against is a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure-like opponent. In theory, they are fighting the demoness, but the fight is really more of a puzzle than it is an exchange of blows. The demoness controls darkness perfectly, and no light that the goddesses can summon penetrates, which makes the group completely blind to her actions. Sound comes up as a possible counter-measure, but the opponent is a master of that, as well. Several elaborate workarounds are tried and tried again.

And… that’s about all I can say. This is an extremely short volume (115 pages of comic! boo!), and the fight is still going on at the end of the volume. But as I said, such a fight, and a tournament-style battle in Hell, is completely out of character for this series. While I would be bored with it elsewhere, the prospect of more of this is intriguing to me, and I tend to love these longer and more serious storylines in Oh My Goddess. It seems like this Hell storyline could go on quite a bit longer, too, which is extremely unusual even for the long plots. I can’t say I mind, though, as the demonesses are proving to be a diverse and fairly interesting lot. I do hope we get to see more of Mara, though.

One thing, since I read this and volume 20 back-to-back. In 20, Urd gives Keiichi a rather spectacular kiss, and here, it’s Hild doing the deed. It occurs to me… Has Keiichi kissed other women more than he’s kissed Belldandy over the last 40 volumes? I think I’m going to have to dust off Oh My Goddess colors and confirm the total count for both. I suspect that this may be the case. Granted, it’s a plot element that sets Belldandy off, but still. It’s Belldandy and Keiichi. They shouldn’t be shy anymore. They’ve been together for 23 years and 40 volumes at this point. Or, at the very least, 2-3 years in the story’s timeline.