Oh My Goddess 32
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Oh My Goddess! 2 Comments »Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2009 – 39+ volumes
Wow, what a weird volume. The most notable thing about it was probably how out-of-character Belldandy seemed. Now, normally Belldandy hides her jealousy and protectiveness of Keiichi pretty well behind a solid wall of naivete, but here… well, within the first few pages, she flat-out tells the Gate “no” when she asks Keiichi to teach her about romance, and then admits to being very narrow-hearted when it comes to Keiichi. This was… this was just beyond weird. It sounded very wrong coming from her. Usually she would find some polite way to turn the Gate down, or find some way of avoiding the subject. Here… she just says no, and then admits to being selfish. What happened, Belldandy? Did character development happen while I wasn’t looking?
The next story was a confrontation between the Goddesses and a species of water-dwelling creatures called Lorelai (a type of German river mermaid apparently unique to a bend in the Rhine river). They wage war, and I thought this would turn into one of those nice, long, epic storylines that used to come up but hasn’t in a while. It, uh… doesn’t quite pan out that way. There is a misunderstanding. There’s lots more of Belldandy acting strangely out-of-character about Keiichi, but to be fair, the Queen Lorelai is trying to steal him, and is being rather rude about it. Belldandy is pretty obvious about a kiss at the end of the story, which is incredible given the fact this is Oh My Goddess, and the two of them have kissed maybe three times total. Even more incredibly, it was given out of jealousy. I’ll say it again: what?!
Keiichi continues to be a wimp. It’s good that some things never change. He’s got a kind of reverse mullet going on lately, which I haven’t mentioned and probably should. It’s the same hairstyle he’s always had, just with more detail, and quite frankly, it’s business in the back and party in the front.
The other weird thing about this volume is that Peorth is gone. I didn’t think that would actually happen. Maybe she’ll be back. For as little as Urd and Skuld contributed to this volume, you wouldn’t think another Goddess would have made a difference, but I miss Peorth. I like her a lot.
Yeah… this volume just made me feel uncomfortable.
-Here… she just says no, and then admits to being selfish. What happened, Belldandy? Did character development happen while I wasn’t looking?-
She did walk in on the ‘I love you’ practice right before the Gate showed up, which’ll cause some thinking.
Bell’s had jealousy before, but it was always of the ‘random stuff blows up’ variety. Now she’s moved on to saying ‘no’ to people.
True, but it seemed like there should have been an “awkward refusal with explanation” stage between not admitting she was jealous and outright guarding Keiichi from everyone else.
But I had forgotten about the part where she walked in on the Gate and Keiichi. It does make sense that she would guard him closely from the Gate after that, and the next story where she’s acting the same way makes sense after that, too. All this time and I totally miss the critical turning point for the main characters.