Aa! Megami-sama!
Oh! My Goddess

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Before I start to describe my thoughts, I want to point out that this manga is 25 years of one author work. So regardless of what I write, give this comic a try if you have some interest in genre.
This is one of those Harem-Comedy style comic books. There is one boring protagonist and lot of beauties that want to get his attention. Someone may say that, there are thousand mangas with same plot and some of them might have better story or more interesting art style. This all true, this manga have nothing unique or special but i still think this one ... is the best one in genre. Author have really big attention to small details in everything including art, story, character design. Characters are the most strongest part of this manga, they all have very vibrant visual style, and also deep personalities. Later on, from comedy-romance story with a little bit fantasy, manga will evolve into fantasy-adventure story with a little bit of romance. Art style also will be improved. But Belldandy still be the most gorgeous and kindest goddess.(Also i think her name sounds very stupid)

tl;dr: A manga that has an interesting world, interesting stories, and a likable cast, but that doesn’t have enough narrative oomph.

This manga has many aspects, but none really felt like they were enough to hold up the manga, especially considering how long it is at 48 volumes. There’s the aspect with the goddesses and demons, which has a decent amount of good world building, but the stories related to it mostly just amount to small episodes. Similarly, a good amount of the manga also has to do with motorcycles and the motor club, but that too just comes and goes as small episodes without any major ... arcs. While these episodes are decent enough, there generally isn’t any sort of larger narrative to them. More so this is just the story of the cast of characters living their lives and due to their circumstances getting involved with various things. Things that happen do have a long-lasting impact on the manga, but its more in that they effect the flow of how they’ll continue living their normal everyday lives rather than pushing any sort of plot thread forward.

Manga that are simply about people living their lives can be great, but they have to rely on things other than the plot, such as character and relationship development. However, I didn’t think the character and relationship development was that strong either. Keiichi and Belldandy are shown as starting their relationship just because of a wish, but quickly they’re suddenly treated as an incredibly tight knit couple. Now them as a couple isn’t a problem, as how strong of a couple they are is actually pretty amazing, but it didn’t really show how they got there. The plot also doesn’t really throw much in the way of trials to their love either. Hence, while the relationship is great, it didn’t really feel like there was relationship development. In terms of character development, both of them felt minimal. Urd and Skuld were also shown to have a pretty strong bond as sisters, but that too focused more so on showing the bond itself and not it’s development. Both of them did however have decent character arcs. However, due to the length of the manga and how spread out they were, while reading they felt pretty sparse. The rest of the side characters had things here and there, but nothing too substantial.

In addition to the plot or characters, a manga may also rely on comedy. There was some decent comedy here and there in this manga, but it isn’t a gag manga, so that wasn’t the focus and overall the comedy was just decent, and not really enough to hold up the manga. All in all for the most part, it felt like there were a lot of good aspects but with none of them working well enough to serve as a solid core for the manga, and hence for the vast majority of the manga it simply felt like it was going too slowly or not going anywhere at all. This changes during the last fifth or so that has a singular long story arc that ultimately focuses heavily on relationship and character development and does a pretty solid job of it, ultimately bringing things to a pretty satisfying ending. However, it feels like it took far too long to get there. The art started out not that great but ultimately became pretty solid.

Publishing on a monthly basis from the late 1980s up until last year with a little over 300 chapters to its name, you'd think that this is a manga that goes well beyond the scope of countless other romances, right? Well... you'd be sorely mistaken. In reality, Ah! My Goddess is the ultimate game of will they/won't they. Its concept leads to a foregone conclusion that takes much too long to get to and by the time that the foregone conclusion rears its head, one question still remains unanswered: why did it take so long to get from point A to point B? With that ... said, it's not like I hate Ah! My Goddess. No, quite the opposite in fact. I love the entire series and Belldandy will always be best girl. However, I'm not so quick to recommend the manga over something like say... the 2005 TV series done by AIC.

My biggest problem with Ah! My Goddess is the fact that it takes WAY too long for any substantial developments to occur when it comes down to Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship. From the very beginning, we already know that Keiichi and Belldandy will end up with one another. I mean, the guy wishes for an all-powerful goddess to stay by his side forever. What other possibilities could happen other than the two of them ending up as lovers? Living in a dysfunctional relationship? Yeah, if Belldandy was the abusive one and that'll never happen... unless she was secretly Shion from Higurashi in disguise.

From Chapter 1 up to Chapter ~280, Keiichi and Belldandy's entire relationship was a constant dance of will they/won't they. Now, Ah! My Goddess is primarily a comedy manga and this is where the bulk of the comedy is supposed to come from (key word: supposed to). Basically, Belldandy is a literal goddess, a friend to all creatures and things, and so on and so forth. Keiichi on the other hand is your standard nice guy that gets screwed over by everyone else and one day, he finds himself living with a literal goddess that he has the hots for and he can't bring himself to confess his feelings. Whenever he tries, Belldandy inevitably makes things worse because she doesn't know the first thing about love or romance. For example: he tries to confess, he stutters a lot, and Belldandy thinks he's sick so what does she do? She rushes him into bed and starts forcing cold remedies down his throat until he gets "better." Belldandy is a lot of things, and she's most definitely an unintentional sociopath. Pretty funny stuff, right? Not really...

As much as I love my sociopathic romantic comedies, there's a limit to how much I can find funny before it just gets tedious. The funny thing is that Ah! My Goddess was always a seinen manga, so one would think that it would be a logical course of action for the author to actually try and go beyond the realm of a will they/won't they relationship. Unfortunately, that's not the case whatsoever. If you really want a romance that goes beyond the conventional will they/won't they dynamic, you might as well read KareKano or *gulp* Itazura na Kiss (it may be shit, but it DOES go beyond the norm). Then again, who's to say that the constant will they/won't they is an inherently bad thing?

One of the main reasons why I love Ah! My Goddess so much in the first place is because of the fact that it's this really sweet and endearing read in the first place. In recent years where all sorts of grimdark stuff that try too hard at being edgy ends up getting popular, I feel like Ah! My Goddess serves an important niche as one of the few lighthearted mangas that you can turn to when you're sick of all the dark and edgy content being shoved in your face. Even if the romance isn't that great, I can count on Ah! My Goddess to at least make me smile whenever something sweet goes down between Keiichi and Belldandy.

On that note, the characters ain't half bad either. Aside from Belldandy and Keiichi, we have plenty of other characters that show up and make things more interesting like Urd, Mara, and Keiichi's sister (I'm too lazy to look up her name, please forgive me). I would include Skuld in the list too, but she's an irritating and possessive cockblocker and so I don't really care much about her. Over the course of 308 chapters, I can safely say that the characters were handled much better than the actual romance. Everyone has their own motivations, quirks, and so on and so forth. At the same time, the constant repetition that went on in the manga prevents any substantial character development to come forward when it actually matters. I mean, it DOES happen but at a much slower pace than I'd like for it to.

On another note though, the artwork is actually quite lovely. This manga was publishing for well over 20 years, and it's quite obvious that the artwork changes significantly over time, but another reason why I like reading Ah! My Goddess in the first place was just to see these changes make themselves more evident over time. I mean, mangas like Berserk that have also been publishing for well over 20 years also go through some form of art evolution but most of the time, the changes are actually pretty limited and just involves the mangaka finding their own style and then sticking with it for years. Ah! My Goddess is one of the few mangas where the author actually experimented with his style multiple times throughout the entire work.

Would I say that I enjoyed reading Ah! My Goddess? Well, yeah. Even when it was getting tedious, I really did like reading it but at the same time, it lost momentum way too quickly for my liking and whilst the ending DOES make up for it, to some degree, that doesn't really change the fact that the conclusion it DOES reach by the end of it all could've easily been achieved in around half the time it took to actually get there. Even though I really do like Ah! My Goddess, I don't think I'd be recommending it to anyone anytime soon. If you really want Ah! My Goddess, watch the 2005 TV series instead. It cuts out a lot of the crap that was in the manga so that Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship could develop much quicker and it was always meant to be a self-contained story, so it could go much further than the manga ever did. Plus, it has two seasons! Can't go wrong with that, now can you? Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)