Manga Review - Oh My Goddess! Colors by Kosuke Fujishima

What up anidorks? Long time no post from the old D-man here. Unfortunately, budget shortfalls at work have forced me to focus less on otaku-dom and more on the public library aspect of the job. Thus, I haven’t really had all that much to read/watch anything new or of enough interest to post about.

That having been said....I did recently come across a copy of Oh My Goddess! Colors, a large-sized retrospective of Kosuke Fujishima’s evergreen “magical girlfriend” manga/anime. Starting off with a lighted-hearted/mildly sarcastic intro (“devoid of any actual developments, it’s a sort of romance that sort of wanders aimlessly through 30 plus volumes, like a derelict.”…I couldn’t have put it better myself), OMG! Colors presents a detailed rundown on nearly every element of the series. Belldandy, Urd, Skuld, and Peorth all get individual character summaries, and each are the focus of a representative chapter that has been re-mastered in gorgeous watercolors. Throw in an exhaustive lexicon of OMG! terminology, ruminations on the origins of the goddesses and the physics of their world, exhaustive chapter summaries, in-jokes and translation notes, and a gallery and tech specs of the numerous vehicles owned by the characters and you’ve got a must-have for any OMG! obsessive.

Personally, I’ve been finding OMG! a little repetitive and dated as of late, but reading this reminded me of it’s huge influence on American Otaku, myself included; in fact, Fred Gallagher, creator of the awesome Megatokyo OEL manga, chimes in the series’ influence on him in a short afterword. OMG! detractors may continue to scratch their heads over this series’ unabated popularity, but OMG! Colors expertly captures all that’s good about it – its alluring character design, lush artwork, silly humor, and its ever-unrequited PG-rated romance.