I have never seen the Ah! My Goddess OVA series, because it just looked like shoujo to me, so I wasn’t much interested. Having received the movie on UMD to review, I was cornered. I had no choice. I had to watch it. I took a deep breath, lit up a smoke, and prepared myself for more cuteness than should be allowed by law.

I still have not seen the OVA, so I don’t know how it was presented. But the movie, while I guess it would definitely fall into the mahou shoujo category, really goes beyond that. I go out of my way to avoid the magical girl stuff, but I found this movie to be pretty engaging.

Anyone who has seen the OVA (or manga) will be right at home watching the movie; those who have not might feel a bit lost at first. However, the writers did what I consider to be an exceptional job of setting the back story, through the use of dialog and flashbacks, neither of which ever feels forced nor out of place as is most often the case. And what will at first appear to be a story of romance and lost love will turn out to encompass much more than that. OK, so it is about romance and all that mushy stuff, but go with me here- Ah! My Goddess The Movie weaves a much more intricate tale in the end.

Belldandy the Goddess and Keiichi have been living happily together, along with Urd and Skuld (also Goddesses) for some time now. Everything is going swimmingly for the happy couple until Belldandy’s former mentor, Celestin, shows up. Celestin has been imprisoned, supposedly forever, but now he returns to continue his quest to remake the world as he thinks it should be. Belldandy’s memory had previously been erased, so she does not remember what happened or know where he has been. Celestin, seeking to use Belldandy’s power to aid him, takes her current memories as well. Now, she does not remember her life with Keiichi at all, as she is manipulated into helping Celestin bring his plan to life.

There are a few interesting things to be mentioned about this movie. One is the way in which magic and technology are seemingly fused into the same stuff. This will be familiar to some, but is presented in a bit different way here. Magical powers seem to actually be computer programs, the heaven from which the Goddesses came seems to be like a computer network. It is all very Matrix, to a certain extent, only reversed in a way. In the Matrix, seemingly magical abilities are a result of one learning how to hack the code of the artificial world. In Ah! My Goddess, the action takes place in the really real world, and spells cast as magic become computer viruses and such. While this concept is never really explained in the movie, and can therefore be a bit hard to grasp, in the end it really makes little difference; whatever questions you might have about how it actually works won’t detract from your enjoyment of the movie. The other thing I think worth mentioning is the above average dialog. This anime does not talk down to the viewer, nor over them (I loved Ghost in the Shell, but some of its dialog was fantastically philosophical and long winded- read, boring). This movie, by contrast, features well written dialog that moves the story along and engages the viewer. Bravo to the writing team, and to the translators for the sub. A little extra effort goes a very long way.

The movie scores another nod in the area of animation. It is beautiful to look at. Clean, well drawn, smoothly animated, and even though there is so CG work in there, it is used in subtle ways that enhance the viewing experience, rather than detract from it.

Another thing I noticed was that the writers seemed to draw (however thinly) from the mythologies of the Christian religion, as well as that of the Northern Europeans (known today as Asatru). Celestin seems to be a combination of the Loki/Lucifer archetype (assuming, of course, that you believe the Satanist view of the guy- he’s not evil, just misunderstood), who defies the gods and attempts to remake the world as he thinks it should be, while the heaven of this movie is called Yggdrasil, which in the Northern religions was actually the name of the great World Tree that connects the worlds. Late in the movie, Celestin actually unleashes a program to remake the Earth, starting by revealing the great tree itself, which he must then destroy. I myself follow the Northern Path, so it was interesting to see some of those elements used in a Japanese feature. While most people will probably not notice (or perhaps care) about some of these underlying elements, I myself took notice. Perhaps there were other deeper elements I missed. It is worth a look, at any rate.

Based on the strength of its story, animation, dialog, and overall presentation, I can recommend Ah! My Goddess to the masses. Don’t let the pretty flying magical girls scare you off- Sailor Moon, this ain’t.

-Ed-
 

Genre: Drama/Adventure/Romance   Directed By: Hiroaki Gohda & Makoto Bessho   Written By: Michiko Yokote & Yoshihiko Tomizawa   Voice Cast: Aya Hisakawa (Skuld) Ayako Kawasumi (Morgan le Fay) Hiroshi Yanaka (Celestin) Kikuko Inoue (Belldandy) Masami Kikuchi (Keiichi Morisato) Yumi Touma (Urd)

DVD Features: Anamorphic Widescreen Dual Language Japanese / English English Subtitles Mini-Goddess Episode 1 Previews