Oh My Goddess 7

I really, really would rather have a volume of new OMG to read.  Everything in this volume is fine.  Not only do we get the color pages and the 4-panel strips that I’m actually rebuying these volumes for, but we also get a little Mara, some random demons and spirits, a chapter about Sayoko, a chapter where the goddesses get to be goddesses, and no motor club, which is about all I can ask for in this series.  But I crave another long, new-to-me action story.  I’m not sure if that’s what’s coming up or not… I’m just saying, I sure would like to read one right about now.

On a side note, when I first started reading manga, I mail-ordered everything I read through the Viz catalog or the Right Stuf catalog.  This was the first manga graphic novel (in its “Mara Strikes Back” form) I ever, EVER saw in a bookstore, and I was so totally blown away that I bought it even though I didn’t have the other 5-6 volumes that came before.  In that bookstore, oddly, they didn’t have any other graphic novels, and there was just one lone copy of this propped up in the front of the store.  OMG is probably the only series I’ve started in the middle of like that.  Also, because I didn’t have that much to read at the time, I’ve also probably read all these stories about 500 times.

Anyway.  “The Man Who Invites Misfortune” is the winning story in this volume, and I can still enjoy it after having read it so many times before.  Mostly I like it because Mara’s tactic this time, the demon of bad luck Senbei, is such a weird character.  The “misfortunes” he brings to people are odd things like stepping in buckets and slipping on banana peels and stuff like that.  Things that will never stop being funny.  A minor character gets turned into Sonic the Hedgehog at one point, and by the time he’s able to get help, has a list of things that have happened to him (being hit by cars, being taken home by children, etc).

Also good is a story about Belldandy hand-knitting Keiichi a sweater and Sayoko trying to take it, and the last story, which is about Urd being called back to Heaven to work.  The sisters work together to devise a plan involving a gigantic ward that is “meant to keep Mara out,” among other things.

This volume is also the introduction of Banpei, which is notable.