Oh My Goddess Volume 38 Review

By Kyosuke Fujishima, released in English by Dark Horse

At 38 volumes Oh My Goddess is the longest running English manga in North America. By now the readers should have a good idea with what they are getting out of the series, and what the series should produce. It's the closest thing to comfort food the manga industry has out there. Sadly no matter how much you like the dish, sometimes the comfort food can end up being very bland. And volume 38 is very much a forgettable volume except for the final chapters at the end.

The bulk of this volume is spent finishing off the Chrono arc started in the last volume. She is almost finished gathering the remnants of the song program, but needs to get the last part which is stuck in Vesper. Sadly Chrono has a fear of cats and is unable to take the song out of him using normal means. Keiichi and Belldandy suggest tackling it from a different perspective, and Keiichi shows how Chrono can use rhythm in another fashion.

What follows is Chrono using martial art to dance and take the song fragment out from Vesper. It does lead to an amusing scene of Chrono using a Hadoken on Urd, but for the most part it's pretty paint by number for this series. Chrono and Belldandy work together to finish the task, Chrono learns an important lesson about herself and things continue on at the temple as they always do. Though Belldandy hugging Keiichi was cute.

The problem is not so much that we've seen this plot before in the series, if you've been following along for this long you should be used to it by now. No what makes the start of the volume drag is that Chrono is pretty uninteresting as a character. From her wearing a maid outfit to her fear of cats, Chrono feels like Fujishima stuck in a variety of moe tropes to form her character. It makes her a bland lead for an arc, especially compared against Lind and Peroth. The fact the arc was pretty uninteresting doesn't do her any favours either. It's not a bad read, but an easily skip-able chapter in the series all the same.

Luckily the final 3 chapters of the book pick up steam with what looks to be a better arc. We again focus on Hild, which is good as she is one of the better characters. It seems like she is the target

of a coupe from her second in command, Hagal. It actually works, and we are left with Chibi-Hild in the human world forced to go to Belldandy and Keiichi for help. All the while Hagal is starting her take over of Hell, including trying to bring her reign to Earth.

We haven't seen much of Hagal yet, but what we have seen already pegs her as a great character. Her design has just the right amount of sinister to it pegging her as a bad guy in the series, and she has a great comedic exchange with Hild's captain of the guard. We also get shown a glimpse of her power which does have some promise to provide some spice to the series. She almost steals the show here, but that honour goes to Sayoko again in this volume as she gets her wish granted in a hilarious way.

Oh My Goddess! Volume 38 shows the perils of a long running series, but it also shows why it is also still a good read. For as much as the first half drags the second half moves along briskly and sets up the potential for an interesting story arc. It won't win any new readers, but despite its faults it can still be one of the more pleasant reads if you are used to its pace.