Ah! My Goddess 2: Flights Of Fancy Volume 1: Reunited, And It Feels So Good - Ain't It Cool News
- Ain't It Cool News
- Scott Green
- 05/18/07
- click here
"The production handles the complex diversity of character designs impressively well."
"The series looks good."
Going into its second season, following a manga entering its 19th year, an OVA, a movie and a series of cutesy shorts, new episodes of Ah! My Goddess are still consistently sweet and conservative and probably familiar. The qualities of well made Ah! My Goddess, which the franchise has been for the most part, offer Kosuke Fujishima's trademark elaborately elegant design and a comfortably positive atmosphere. The franchise's anime director Hiroaki Gohda knows how to emphasize these factors and continues to embrace them in this go-around. Returning fans will enjoy the new episodes' pleasing nods to continuity and time given to secondary characters. Given the reliance on simplicity and easy to grasp character humor, the season is also easy to pick up or watch piecemeal.
Ah! My Goddess is the prototype for anime/manga stories in which a nobody guy lands himself a relationship with a girl who is not only beautiful, but superhuman. Keiichi Morisato is the put upon runt of a polytech-university. Calling to take-out food he accidentally dials the number for the Goddess Helpline. The goddess Belldandy manifests through dorm's wall, and seeing Keiichi's pure heart, grants him his wish, being his girlfriend. Fate, funneled through screwball humor intervenes, and the couple find themselves living together in a shinto shrine along with Belldandy's troublesome older and younger sisters.
The simplicity of Ah! My Goddess' core conceit is the source of its gentle humor, but the consistent straightforwardness of the fairy-tale romance also becomes a limiting constraint as the series stretches. The unevolving nature of the work maintains its leads as young love birds. They stay in college. Compared to the artificial drama found in the love-polygons of other relationship anime/manga, it is pleasant to see two individuals ambiguously committed to each other. However, Ah! My Goddess keeps them in an early stage. In other words, it's not a courtship and not a dynamic relationship. They can't bicker, can't be petty, can't tire of each other. There's no physical intimacy: Belldandy remains a pristine, transcendently wise, motherly nurturer; Keiichi blows a fuse if the topic is broached. Many anime/manga relationship stories stack frustration until there is a final, satisfying release. Rumiko Takashi stacked woe on Maison Ikkoku's Godai for 15 volumes or 96 episodes. In the case of Ah! My Goddess, the satisfying release occurred as the premise was being introduced. The rest is just dwelling in and prolonging that idealized moment.
Given its rich Norse legend meets IT department internal mythology, Ah! My Goddess could always introduce some new magical encounter, but the idea for Ah! My Goddess is not meant to fall into a weird-oh of the week holding pattern. When the anime wants to do something significant, it pulls out the tenuous threat of separation from arbitrary mystical decree. This season opens with one case of this, and it doesn't work. The drama is neither fun, nor credible. In the earlier OVA, this was paired with the two working themselves bare trying to producing a gesture of their bond. Paired with an enforced physical separation, it was a tear-jerker. In this television version, it is separated into three episodes: the separation, Belldandy producing a gift for Keiichi, Keiichi producing a gift for Belldandy. Handled with that much space, it becomes obvious.
Sweetness and obviousness do get confused in the anime. At this point, a character lighting up, as if they received some revelation and pointing out how special Bellbandy is, or "wow, these two really care for each other" over-sells the case. The same thing is true in the instances where Keiichi says he finds new appreciation for Belldandy.
By the end of the volume, the anime has found a clever situation to put its characters into: Belldandy getting drunk. It plays off Belldandy's sweetness, Keiichi's haplessness, it isn't especially pandering, and it looks good. Emphasizing in the series' troubles, getting to that joke is a bit rocky. It veers dangerously close to the kind of series where every girl falls for the male lead, and by in large, that is not what Ah! My Goddess is about. Doing so, it demonstrates that it isn't terribly interesting in moving the development of characters, in this case, the fabulously wealthy "queen" of the campus. Worse yet, it gets there through a literally incredible, out of nowhere beauty pageant, complete with swim suit competition.
Maybe what matter most is that the series looks good. It isn't a heavy action series, but the production handles the complex diversity of character designs impressively well. Catching the face movements and soft expressiveness, it is easy to remember what is endearing about Ah! My Goddess. The bagpipe opening doesn't hurt the series' case either.
Posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 (Archive on Monday, June 18, 2007)