Viewing Journal

The other night I checked out the first two episodes of the new Aa! Megami-sama 『ああっ！女神さまっ』 TV series.

I'm a big fan of the old OAV series from 1993, I liked the 2000 motion picture pretty well, too; what little bit of the manga that I've read in both English and Japanese, I've enjoyed thoroughly as well.

I think I've covered that I really like this series.

So, with my majorally negative opinion concerning newer titles in anime, I was worried about where this series would go and if whether or not this single series could ruin the affection and special place in my hear that Aa! Megami-sama holds in my heart.

I must say, the first thing I saw when I began watching the episodes only re-enforced the above fear I had. I think this new series opening is poorly done, if I could sum it up into one idea. The music, I think, is seriouly lacking in motivation for hooking the viewer; it's slow, drab and whiney. Almost like the modern Emo movement and opera had some weird, fanciful bastard of a child in music. The animation, at times looks right around par - right where someone would expect a production made in 2004 and broadcast in 2005; but then someone decided that using a computer would be really neat! And so they did, and it (not surprisingly to me) dropped the picture and even the flow of the animation.

Fortunately, the episode was not ruined by the musical score for the opening sequence. Even though there was a droning speech about destiny (which is important, just boring), the episode was very interesting. It starts the story over again, but its a nice little refresher course for the Japanese viewers who, probably many of them, are seeing the beginning of the story and how our Goddesses happened upon lonley Morisato Keiichi. Over all, the animation wasn't completely horrible, though at times it does take on the lifelessness and flatness that many of the characters take on in other current anime series.

My biggest praise is that all of the characters are exactly as I remember them from the manga, OAV, and movie. I even think all of the voice actors are the same. Still, my favorite characters are Ohtaki and Tamiya (Morisato's sempai) because of thier weird habits and wild antics; not to mention thier lines are classic (literally, the same stuff right from an old, hokey martial arts movie).

The episode ended with a beautiful, yet, unmemorable song. The closing animation sequence is better than the opening, but the song just simply isn't worth remembering. It's like almost every other cliche, "I miss my lover" song I've ever heard, no matter the language. Honestly, I miss classic songs like the OAVs' opening (My Heart Iidasenai, Your Heart Tashikametai) 『My Heart 言出せないYour Heart確めたい』 or closing (Congratulations!) or even some of the more childish songs from the Mini-Goddesses TV series.

All in all, the beginning of this series has me excited about going through and seeing more of the story develop more thouroughly. Judging by the pacing, it will be just after the beginning of the third episode to compare with where the first OAV episode ended; which will put us around ten episodes to recap what the OAVs accomplished, leaving another sixteen episodes left in the season for further development. I have to say this series is incredibly promising.