About Heroes

Story & Art: Kosuke Fujishima
Translation: Christopher & Dana Lewis
Lettering & Touch-up: Susie Lee & Betty Dong
Publisher: Dark Horse

I figured since I reviewed the first five volumes of Oh My Goddess why not review the latest volumes as well? It's always a pleasure reading these little stories and breaking away from the sometimes depressing world of American comics. First a little info on why there is a huge gap in between volume 5 and 21. In 2005 Dark Horse changed the format of the manga starting from volume 21. They cancelled the monthly comics and made the manga un-flipped, which preserves the orientation of the original drawings. It is smaller in size, closer to the size of the Japanese manga, only real difference is we still don't get a dust jacket. With volume 21 the manga chapter content closely corresponds to the Japanese manga. Now we won't miss anything here, but re-releasing the older volumes is taking a while or you could just buy the edited ones that Dark Horse already put out if you are impatient.

The fourth Goddess Peorth returns, but she is still trapped in the body of a little girl and the only one who can release her from her spell is the person who put her there to begin with, Velsper. However, Velsper has been condemned to spend the rest of his eternity in the body of a kitten. To everyone's surprise Velsper has the ability to talk and tells the Goddesses of someone that can help. Hild, chief of the demon realm, the big honcho of all the demons, who also happens to be Urd's mom. She agrees under one condition, Urd has to return to the demon world with her. Of course this is a ridiculous condition, so after turning Peorth back to her normal status, Urd ends up owing a favor to her mom. It is nice to see Peorth become part of the temple family and now Keichi ends up living with four Goddesses, two robots, one demon-kitten, and tons of spirits. Man, what a life.

It is in volumes 23 and 24 that we finally get to meet Keichi's parents. For 22 volumes we knew his parents lived out of the city and sent him money every once in a while, but we finally get the pleasure of meeting both of them. His dad Keima is shy of women and his mother Takano wants to know the secret of Belldandy. I don' know what it was about these two books, while they were pleasant enough reading, these installments lacked the spontaneity and charming surprises that endear its predecessors to me. I understand that this is all just set up for the next volumes' huge battles, but to take two whole volumes and have so little happen in it was kind of unexpected of Fujishima. The character development of the parents is a little shallow; it is still a nice story and always fun watching the rest of the cast make fools of them. But I'm starting to miss Tamiya, Aoyama, and Sayoko; would be nice to see them again.

At the end of volume 24 is the set up for the next two volumes with the first appearance of the fifth Goddess, Lind. Someone has taken the angel eater and the story turns darker with the return of Mara and a chibi sized Hild, but don't let her size fool you. Behind those cute little eyes hides the most powerful demon to appear on earth. All of the angels are being taken away and Lind figures out that the Angel eater must be living inside of her. There is just so much greatness that happens in these two volumes; Skuld gets her little angel again, Lind's binary angels reunite, and Belldandy becomes possessed by a demon and now has the ability to summon her angel or an angel-infected demon. Keichi ends up taking the demon angel that was lingering in Belldandy, because it was making her magic act up. The cliffhanger ends with the demon taking off to who knows where.

This was such a fun story to read, I literally couldn't put these books down and read them all in one sitting and re-read them again to just awe at the beautiful artwork. Every time I read these books they always seem to take me away to a more innocent time. I have to say my favorite part about the books was Keichi's realization that one day he is going to die, but Belldandy is immortal. I guess I never really thought about that even though it makes sense it's really sad in away, but like Peorth told him that people will live forever in the hearts of the Goddesses that truly love them. My only gripe is that the books seem to read faster than they used to. They are definitely more story driven than character driven. With lots of grunts, interjections, and exclamations of powers in every battle, there leaves very little room for those more of the character driven stories from the past. I still think this is a must read series for any manga fan or anyone wanting to try something new. A-