Oh My Goddess! S1E11: "Heatvision and Urd"

This review was fast-lane comissioned by Aris Katsaris.


This month's fast lane review will be split into three parts, for each of the three episodes of OMG(WTFBBQ)! (S1E11, S1E21, and S2E2) included. I haven't seen all of them yet at the time of writing, but so far they seem to be chosen on account of breaking the show's slice-of-life format in one way or another.

The first of them, which I'll be reviewing today, S1E11 "A Demon Has Come and Created Calamity," introduces what appears to be a major recurring antagonist whose exploits promise to build and escalate in future appearances. It's a nice change of pace from most of what I've seen of this franchise at large, and it also gets into some metaphysical stuff that answers some questions I had about the goddess' natures and raises others.

As is so often the case in this series, Keiichi's life is made worse by the actions of his (ex?) senpais. This time they really didn't mean any harm, though. They just happened to buy a heavy metal album that found its way into a curio shop they frequent, and then fell under a telepathic influence from the disc that compelled them to paint it pure black and try to play it. Thus releasing the demon Marller from her long imprisonment and enabling her revenge against the goddesses who sealed her.

On the bright side, Marller got a terrible headache upon release, on account of brain genius senpais trying to play a CD with a record player. And then she gets an even worse one due to one of the senpais being on a major arts and crafts kick right now, and their clubhouse consequently being full of freshly-painted good luck charms, which Marller is allergic to.

Probably the best part of this scene, though, is when the demon begrudgingly tells the muscleheads that the laws of demonkind enable them to one granted wish as a reward for releasing her, and they tell her that they wish she would leave the building because they don't allow women in the clubhouse.

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I'm pretty sure the senpais' whole "thing" is a joke about some Japanese subculture or stereotype that I'm not familiar enough with to get. This callback though, just from the show's own context? It got me.

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Anyway, the plot kicks off when Marller comes looking for revenge against Belldandy and her sisters. One of whom (Urd, the past-themed one who I know from the OVA) has already moved in with her and Keiichi sometime in the last six episodes. Marller doesn't have the means to strike at the sisters directly, but she figures, but luckily for her their entire reason for being on Earth is contingent on a highly vulnerable human punching bag who at least one of them cares a lot about. So, getting rid of Keiichi both gets her some personal revenge, and advances the cause of hell by getting the goddesses to back off from the mortal world and stop causing so much ambient goodness to happen just by being there.

Marller can't just kill mortals willy-nilly, but she can freely inflict the same curse that was once used on herself. IE, imprison someone - body and soul - inside of an inanimate object. In this case, the most convenient item available at the time happens to be one of Keiichi's motorcycles.

Marller didn't exactly think this through very well (as you'll see shortly, this turns out to be an amusingly consistent character trait of hers). Keiichi is still here, and his unpleasant vespa-bound state is just going to make Belldandy even more insistent on sticking around to help him.

After some physical comedy at Keiichi's expense as Belldandy and Urd try to turn him back but succeed only at turning him into a succession of other vehicles and/or send him shooting into the walls by filling his fuel tank with potions, the sisters decide they really need to force Marller herself to turn him back. So, Belldandy goes off to chase Marller down while Urd searches for the CD she escaped from, so that they can threaten to stuff her back in it if she doesn't relent. I won't pretend to have not very much enjoyed watching Urd kick down the clubhouse door and physically beat the senpais' protestations out of them until they turn over the CD.

Also, in the interest of moving fast and keeping Keiichi safe from further demonic torment, Urd brings him with her. Prompting the senpais to add yet another rule to their bulging volume of club regulations, this one regarding the use of motorcycles within the dorm rooms and hallways.

The fact that Keiichi can't talk in this state and can only sort of move independently, being limited to just kind of pitifully gesturing with his handlebars, makes this whole setup funnier somehow. Crueler, yes, but also funnier.

Meanwhile, Belldandy's own subplot mostly has us following Marller's devilry until the former catches up to her, and Marller is comedy gold almost whenever she comes onscreen. I've seen her sort of gag before in other things (mostly comics and cartoons), but in this case it's just really well executed. Like when we see her "corrupt" a couple of squabbling four year olds by granting one's wish to make the other drop her ice cream cone.

The fact that she appears to have no recourse when the children kick her in the shins and run away a moment later just makes it better.

Pretty much her entire time rampaging free among mortalkind is like this. Like I said, I've seen this joke in supernatural comedies before, but Marller is a really well done and amusingly animated example.

In the end, Belldandy and Urd's plan works pretty much without a hitch. Once they corner the demon and threaten to seal her in the disc again, she grudgingly restores Keiichi before slinking away to come up with another - doubtlessly inane - revenge scheme. In keeping with his karmically cursed existence, Keiichi's restoration makes him eat shit one last time as the episode calls back to how his clothes were left on the floor next to the motorcycle when Marller first transformed him.

He might get a bit of an ego boost by Urd really seeming to like what she sees, at least. Not that much is likely to come of it, as I doubt Belldandy wants her sister riding her motorbike, but sometimes it's the thought that counts.

Speaking of what Belldandy does and doesn't want, though, there is one sort of serious scene toward the end of the episode that gets into her motivations for, well, everything. When she catches up with Marller and is distracting the demon until Urd and Keiichi can rendezvous, Marller asks why Belldandy is expending so much effort on fixing this random human anyway. It's not like she's literally BOUND to him, after all; the favors Belldandy grants via the goddess hotline thing are completely nonbinding and at the discretion of the goddess in question to grant.

Belldandy doesn't correct her on this point. So, thinking back to Belldandy's less-than-pleased reaction when Keiichi made his wish back at the beginning, I have to wonder how she really does feel about this whole thing.

One possibility is that while nothing is forcing her to go through with waifudom, her own personal sense of ethics won't allow her to deny someone's wish once she's offered them one. On one hand, that feels like an unhealthy lack of self-respect. On the other hand, maybe being some random guy's waifu for a few decades isn't that big of a sacrifice from the perspective of an immortal. From Belldandy's point of view, the difference between spending five minutes on a wish and spending fifty years on it is minor. The equivalent of a work project taking a little longer and making you stay in a little later that day than you'd anticipated.

The other possibility is that after the initial shock of Keiichi's wish, Belldandy thought things over and decided that she really has been wanting a vacation for a while, and that chilling out as a Japanese tradwife with an adorkable little human lover who really appreciates her hugs and cuddles for a while might be just what the doctor ordered.

The gender politics of OMG continue to be much harder to dissect than you'd think, going by the premise and surface-level characterization. Honestly, the fact that Urd is also hanging around and that she's so different from Belldandy kind of helps with this. Like, the show seems to want you to like Urd. I'd probably enjoy her company much more than Belldandy's, and I don't think the creators would be surprised or disapproving that part of their audience feels that way. I don't get the impression that her version of femininity is being demoted below Belldandy's, at least from this episode. At the same time, whatever other complicating factors there are, the entire show revolving around an idyllic relationship between an ultra-submissive domestic woman and a man who literally wins her as a prize is still a decision that was made, and that didn't have to be made. So, I can't just file the story under second wave feminism and call it a day. Like I said, it's not a simple work to appraise through a feminist lens.

Heh, the subject of Urd seeming fun to be around reminds me. There's a moment early in this episode, before the demon shows up, that seems to go against Urd's technophobic, past-centric characterization from the OVA.

In addition to riding a motorcycle as intuitively as her sister does, she apparently likes video games. And is very good at them. It's not an important detail, but it suggests that whatever this iteration of OMG is doing with the Norns concept, it's not being as straightforward with it as the OVA's take. I'll keep my eye out for future data points relating to this.

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As a less thematic and much sillier aside, that confrontation scene between Marller and Belldandy also reveals that the two used to be childhood friends who went to kami elementary school together before they grew up and joined opposing organizations.

Which...well, that's definitely a thing alright, lol.

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Anyway, the episode's stinger has Marller sulking at a bar in the wake of her defeat, and suddenly hearing something that gets her attention. Specifically, a recurring minor character - egotistical rich bitch Sayoko - whining into her cup about Belldandy getting more attention from their male classmates than her. And saying the exact right words at the exact right time.

So, that's a sequel hook nicely set up. Sayoko always kind of bored me (I don't think I ever even mentioned her previous minor appearances in my reviews), but Marller is easily entertaining enough to make up for it.


Next time, season 1 episode 21: "The One I Yearn For Is A White Winged Angel."