SeattleOtaku

Faithfully following the art (if not the full story) in the original books by Kosuke Fujishima, the short video series Aa! Megami-sama (translated as both Ah! My Goddess and Oh My Goddess! here in the US), follows the romance and comedy involved when three goddesses become involved with an ordinary mortal and a college motor club — similar to an animated Bewitched mixed with a bit of Tenchi Muyo!. Fujishima also created two other favorites, both involving fast cars and pretty girls, You’re Under Arrest and eX-Driver.

(Updated from an earlier April 2003 version with recent anime titles.)

Story Intro

When dialing for take-out food, Keiichi misdialed and got himself a visit from a goddess to grant him any one wish he desired. Thinking this was all a joke put on by his college dorm-mates, he decided to call the goddess’s “bluff” and made his wish: for a girlfriend exactly like her.

The good news: it wasn’t a bluff, and his wish is granted; “Belldandy”, one of the three Norse goddeses of fate known as the Norns (“Verthandi” in the Norse original), is now his girlfriend. The bad news: he lives in an all-men dorm, and letting a woman in the building just got him thrown out! Add to the mix interference caused by a certain pair of other goddesses, Urd and Skuld, who want their sister to come back to Heaven.

Other Notes

The “Aa!” in the original title can be translated many ways, typically as either “Ah!” or “Oh!”. The original OVA episodes used a title logo that included an English couterpart, and they used “Ah!”. However, the creators later learned of the obvious play on the English exclamation, “Oh my God!”, and preferred to translate it as “Oh!” in later interviews. The result is that you can actually find this under both “A” and “O” in the stores that alphabetize their racks.

When the series didn’t get picked up for a regular television series (as Fujishima’s You’re Under Arrest did), Urd and Skuld, then later Belldandy as well, appeared in mid-afternoon short pieces as cute tiny-deformed versions of themselves with a rat sidekick named Gan-chan. A few regulars of the manga that didn’t appear in the OVAs make brief appearances in these shorts as well.

Since then, there have been full TV-series adaptations starting the story from scratch with a few continuity changes.

Manga

Aa! Megami-sama
US-distributed by Dark Horse Comics as Oh My Goddess!

Anime

Aa! Megami-sama (1993 OVAs, 5 total)
US-distributed by AnimEigo as Oh My Goddess!

Aa! Megami-sama: Chicchai tte Koto wa Benri da ne (Being Small is Convenient) (1998-99 TV, 48 8-minute shorts)
US-distributed by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon) as Adventures of Mini-Goddess

Aa! Megami-sama (2000 movie)
US-distributed by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon) as Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

Aa! Megami-sama (2005 TV, 26 episodes)
US-distributed by AnimeWorks as Ah! My Goddess

Aa! Megami-sama: Sorezore no Tsubasa (Everyone Has Wings) (2006-07 TV, 24 episodes)
US-distributed by Funimation as Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy

Aa! Megami-sama: Tatakau Tsubasa (Fighting Wings) (2007 TV special)