In Love With a Goddess
As we all know, everything used to be better - the music, the weather, the food, the love. And, of course, television. Today? Garbage. But were anime better too? That’s the nostalgia talking. Sure, Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, and Neon Genesis Evangelion are epic masterpieces. But then there’s Oh My Goddess!. Released in 2005 and based on a manga, Oh My Goddess! is celebrated as a classic. Lovable characters? Sure. A great story? Almost. Sheer epicness? Let’s not get carried away. Keiichi Morisato accidentally contacts the Technical Goddess Emergency Service. Enter Belldandy, who grants him a wish. Thinking it’s a joke, he wishes for her to stay with him forever - and she actually does.
Unable to live in his all-male dorm from now on, Keiichi moves with Belldandy to a Buddhist temple. Things get crazier when her sisters, Urd and Skuld, join the fun. Hilarity and chaos ensue - or so they’d have me believe. So, why don’t they make anime like this anymore? Simple: They ran out of ideas. Keiichi is a painfully generic, shy anime protagonist who gets flustered over absolutely nothing. Belldandy is perfect to a fault. The rest of the cast? They’re... there. The show starts strong, exploring Keiichi’s predicament, but quickly devolves into total absurdities: Goddesses and demons squabble, races happen, robots fight, and some random explosions occur every now and then.
The story loses focus along the way, veering into nonsense by the halfway point. Some episodes feel like irrelevant filler, set entirely inside a house to save budget. Others seem to forget to have a plot at all. By the end, I was left wondering what even happened at all. Spoiler: Not much. Oh My Goddess! is the perfect background anime - charming in its way, but far from essential. I could have skipped most episodes, and miss absolutely nothing. The show would’ve been stronger if it stuck to Keiichi and Belldandy’s relationship instead of suddenly cramming in her entire family. Nostalgia aside, everything used to be better in the good old days - except for Oh My Goddess!.