Oh My Goddess! S2E2: "The Beleaguered Queen of Vengeance"

This episode tripped me up at first. It revolved heavily around Sayoko Mishima, the queen bee alpha bitch girl who's jealous of Belldandy, and who Marller sought out at the end of S1E11. There's no Marller in this one, though. So, I guess whatever partnership or pact the two of them formed, it was short lived and over and done with before the end of season one. Seemingly without having had any major character growth for Sayoko in the process, because as far as I can tell she's exactly the same person in exactly the same position as before that whole thing.

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I think this might be part of why I have trouble with slice-of-life series. Characters tend to be either static altogether, or to evolve at a glacial pace. Not all such series are like this, but many of them are. On one hand, this is a realistic consequence of showing human lives happening at their own pace instead of jumping between the most dramatic incidents; people don't usually change overnight, after all. On the other, well, just because it's realistic doesn't mean I enjoy watching it, heh.

Sitcoms can get around this by virtue of the main appeal being the gags rather than the characters, and from what (admittedly little) I've seen of it I think this applies to OMG. The episodes of this series (in any of its adaptations) that I enjoyed the most were either very humor-focused, or introduced major new facets of the characters that recontextualize them. Episodes like this one, which don't do either of those things, just sort of bore me.

Like I said at the end of my March Comes In Like a Lion review, this isn't me making a quality assessment about the genre, it's purely personal taste. So, while I'm not going to hold that against this episode, I also know that I'm probably not going to be able to appreciate it as much as an SoL enjoyer probably could.

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Anyway, part of the reason Aris Katsaris ordered this one in particular is because it's a Christmas episode and this is the December fast lane slot. Japanese Christmas isn't like most Christmases, though. For whatever set of socio-historical reasons, Christmas is much more popular in Japan than Christianity itself, and it somehow morphed into a heavily romantic holiday along the lines of how Valentine's Day gets practiced in the west.

The catalyst here is the holiday's approach making Sayoko even more hyper-aware than usual of her social status as men fawn over her for Christmas dates.

Of course, one man who isn't fawning over her is Keiichi, and Christmas season painfully reminds Sayoko that there's at least one exception to her "I could get any guy I want if I wanted him" status.

Meanwhile, Belldandy has decided to take the few days leading up to Christmas off from classes so she can knit a homemade sweater as a present for Keiichi. She wants it to be a surprise, so she won't tell him why she's staying home all day while he goes to work and classes. Which means that Sayoko is suddenly seeing Keiichi walking around alone all the time, leading her to suspect that he and Belldandy might be having relationship issues. So, perfect time to strike.

Heh, I don't know if the visual gag was intentional, but I love how this shot from near the beginning makes it ambiguous who Sayoko is referring to:

The fact that the senpais are so damned weird about women just makes the alternate interpretation more plausible, and therefore funny.

Sayoko starts out with a conventional approach. Approaching Keiichi outside of class, asking him what's up with his girlfriend not being around, and then asking him if he'd like to do something this Christmas Eve without explicitly calling it a date. Needless to say, Keiichi isn't having it. When Sayoko tries to imply implications about how Belldandy's mysterious sudden need for alone time might be cover for her cheating on him, Keiichi isn't even able to pick up what she's putting down much less entertain it.

Well, I think that's what happened? Some of these lines are confusing in a way that suggest something is being lost in translation. But I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it.

After being blithely rejected and her attempts to poison Keiichi against Belldandy go unnoticed rather than just unsuccessful, Sayoko does some angry drinking with some random rich boys that she isn't actually interested in either. For all her many faults, Sayoko can hold her liquor like no one else. Or at least, she can hold it like these two guys can't, heh.

The part that sticks in her craw the most is this one line Keiichi said to her about how he's sure that he and Sayoko would both rather spend their Christmas Eves with someone who they really care about and who appreciates them for who they are rather than what they look like or what exclusive venues they can book for each other. He didn't mean this as a dig at her. I'm pretty sure he's just honest to a fault and not so good at subtext, even when he's the one doing the writing. But she sure as hell took it as one, and the fact that she has zero relationships that aren't based entirely on wealth, lust, or glamour made it am extra stinging one.

The escalation...I THINK this was intentional on Sayoko's part? It might also just be a whacky coincidence, but that's way more of a stretch I think...comes when Keiichi is motorbiking home that evening, and finds a falling-over-drunk Sayoko wobbling around at the side of the road. Her alcohol tolerance does apparently have limits, even if they're more permissive than most people's. And, um...I think she arranged for him to rescue her here? I think?

Anyway, she overshoots the mark. Literally. A tad too much alcohol. She pukes all over him.

This bridges to the second act of the episode, as Keiichi brings the passed-out woman home to recover in a spare room of their converted temple-house. The next plot point kicks off the next day, on Christmas Eve Morning, when a humiliated Sayoko recovers, overhears Belldandy finishing work on the sweater she's been laboring over these last few days, and spitefully absconds with it.

Or, um. I think? There are sort of two different versions of what happened that both seem to get treated as true. According to some neighborhood fauna that Belldandy interviews on the subject, Sayoko just left the door open while starring at the sweater, and a dog came in - guided by the scent of maple syrup inadvertently left on the gift-wrapped sweater by Skuld when she wrapped it for her sister - and snatched it out from under her. Leading to Sayoko running away in shame at having let this happen and unintentionally incriminating herself.

Maybe Belldandy was just taking the reports too literally, and what the other local animals meant was that they saw a "bitch" steal the sweater. Maybe that's the intended joke here? Well, somehow or other Belldandy gets the idea that she needs to be tracking down a stray dog, while Sayoko does indeed turn out to have taken the sweater by the end of the episode.

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Not gonna lie, I think I would have preferred it if the dog version was actually true and the whole final conflict ended up being down to a silly misunderstanding. Would have revealed that Sayoko has limits to her bitchiness (thus turning her into a little less of a flat archetype) and also been funnier. Ah well.

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Ultimately, Sayoko gives it back after she fails to win Keiichi over with an expensive custom-tailored replacement.

I guess that does still count as a limit to her bitchiness, technically, but it falls much further short of making her more than a flat archetype. At least, imo.​

And, after a "kill 'em with kindness" interaction with Belldandy where the latter insists she isn't angry at Sayoko, and claims that the fact she ultimately gave it back instead of destroying it like she'd been half-intending to proves that she's really a good person at heart.

Sayoko responds by flipping out at her for condescending at her. And makes it clear after Belldandy has left that she most assuredly hasn't learned anything.

So, uh. Okay? Feels a little anticlimactic, but alright.

One of the things that stuck out to me the most about this episode was just how freaking weird Belldandy is as a person. I remember getting this impression from the back half of the OVA as well. Now as then, it's in large part the bewildered reactions of Belldandy's own sisters to her behavior that give me this impression. Amusingly, they completely misdiagnose exactly what is off about her, but they can tell that it's something.

It really comes home during that final exchange she has with Sayoko. The complete absence of any sort of resentment, or even irritation, that we see in Belldandy. It doesn't come across like she's putting up a front, or repressing her negative feelings, or anything like that. I'm pretty sure the episode wants you to think that what you see is what you get as far as Belldandy's feelings in this scene go.

For want of a better word, it feels like some part of her is missing. Like there's a whole spectrum of human emotions that she doesn't experience, and which her sisters and other divine beings do experience.

I mean, this basically makes Belldandy a superior being. Outright lacking the capacity for things like anger, pain, or resentment, while also having such boundless generosity and compassion. It's like an enlightened (in the Buddhist sense) ideal. But it also makes her one hell of a challenge to relate to. And, frankly, it makes anyone who thinks they could love her as a romantic partner kind of a challenge for me to relate to either.

...I just realized that what I'm basically trying to say is that Belldandy, uniquely within this series, is written as an actual god. The issue is, ironically, the exact opposite of what the very humanized Skuld and Urd claim it is.

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I feel like this is saying something or other in terms of the show's gender politics. I'm not sure what, though. It's mostly just really weird.

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Beyond that, eh...the scene where Belldandy is walking around interviewing every animal she comes across is kinda fun. Not much more to say.


Definitely the least interesting of the three Arg Marg Gardars commissioned in this order. Part of that is down to my disaffinity for slice-of-life stuff, but part of it is also how much this episode commits to Belldandy's Belldandy-ness and how that reflects on Keiichi in turn.