Oh My Goddess 42

Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2012 – 48 volumes

Though I read relatively few volumes of manga this year, the end of Oh My Goddess did not escape me.  I really, really like this series, and even during other periods where I read little manga over the years, I still read Oh My Goddess (this one included, I’m behind on reviews, but not reading it).  There’s nothing spectacular, really, I’ve just grown to genuinely love the characters over the years, and Fujishima has been good at continually coming up with interesting situations.  Dark Horse hasn’t scheduled the last volume yet, but it’s sad to think that the next time I take a break, Oh My Goddess won’t be there for me.

I was surprised to see yet another foe in this volume.  Again, I wasn’t expecting the storyline to last this long, since Oh My Goddess stories generally do not.  But it goes on for a little longer still.  Another foe is mainly featured in this volume, Mokkurkalfi.  Mokkurkalfi is a machinist, which of course means that this fight belongs to Skuld.

Again, I know it’s not exciting to people who haven’t been reading this series for, like, 15 years, but seeing Skuld fight in a situation that defeats both Belldandy and Urd, and getting an explanation about what makes Skuld great, is awesome.  She is often played for laughs, and acts childishly, but here she fights like no other.  Even Banpei gets to be super-cool.  But then again, Banpei always is.

There’s also a great moment towards the end of the book where Mokkurkalfi proves that, while they all look like smoking hot older women, the demons and goddesses are just magical beings, and can look like whatever they want.  Then she proves it by going super-dark-powerful-creepy on Keiichi.  And yes, he realizes, he forgets what he’s lived with all these years.  Again, a great moment because Oh My Goddess doesn’t often get dark like that, nor call attention to the fact that the Goddesses are… well, just that.  This storyline in particular is great, because Keiichi can do almost literally nothing against these demons (except for last time <3).

And we get more of the good stuff in the next volume!