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Title: Sympathy for the Devil
Series: Oh My Goddess! #5
Author: Kosuke Fujishima
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 160
Format: Paperback
| Synopsis: |
Mara causes a lot of ruckus trying to divide up Belldandy and Kei and in the process it is revealed that Mara is a demoness.
Bell and Urd’s little sister Skuld comes to fix some bugs and Kei is almost sucked into another dimension while hijinks ensue.
Other hijinks, involving Megumi, the Motor Club, Sayoko and Aoshima, happen and laughs are called for by the audience.
| My Thoughts: |
It is really being brought home to me that this is a comedic, episodic manga. It is nothing like Eyeshield 21 and I need to stop expecting something inspiring. This is for laughs and 3 Stooges style of humor, ie, poking of eyes, hitting with hammers, etc.
One thing that did make me smile pretty good was the fact that Urd is put to sleep by Polka music and that’s used against her by Mara. At the same time, Mara has to dance if she hears Disco, and Urd uses that against her! Speaking of Mara, I don’t understand why the “mystery” of her gender until now? It was good for one gag, and that was it.
With the introduction of Skuld, we now have the 3 Norns and the author can play around with Norse mythology interwoven into modern Japanese culture all he wants. Urd and Skuld fight a lot and if that continues, it will get old very fast. Skuld is young and impetuous and very much a “little sister” figure, which makes me wonder just what part Megumi, Kei’s younger sister, is going to end up playing.
Most of the stories were much more focused on Bell, Urd and Kei this time around instead of having them mixing with all 72 other side characters.
The cuteness factor continues to ramp up, especially when you get multiple chibi versions of BOTH Belldandy and Urd!
This felt like a very busy volume yet beyond the introduction of Skuld, not much actually happens. Fujishima the author really doesn’t seem to have an overarching story and is just playing it by ear week to week ie, chapter by chapter. When that is done right, like with Yotsuba!&, it is fantastic. Here, it is walking the line of feeling frenetic and slightly directionless.
★★★★☆
This series seems quite strange to me.
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It IS a strange series 🙂
A comedy romance with just about everything thrown into the mix. Some of it works, and some of it doesn’t…
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Yes, the series definitely has problems with plotting, I remember there being some nice archs, but author often just throws some jokes at readers, and soon they get repetitive. It’s a problem of a medium I think, happens in manga way too often. IMO it would be much better cut in half and with a more coherent story.
I felt like things I liked perhaps most, like student life and bikes and especially interesting ideas about Norse Mythology – creative combination of Asgard and early computers! were giving way to more and more cheap jokes and finally OMG! became a parody of itself.
I wonder if you’ll manage to read it all, I don’t remember much from the last few volumes, I was just skimming in order to see how it ends…
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Didn’t OMG start out in one of those weekly or monthly magazines? That would definitely make the story arc’s lean toward being more self-contained and “joke of the week” kind of thing.
Even while I didn’t review these, I did read up through volume 34 and made a couple of comments at the last volume. More about how thin the volumes were than anything 🙂
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Yeah, one of the monthly ones. But, most of the XIX-cent novels started as serials and somehow managed…
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Well this does sound like fun and that cuteness factor is very high 😉
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HAHA Putting to sleep by Polka music 😂 I love reading your thoughts on this manga its hilarious !
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OMG certainly has its high points. I just keep on hoping it stays up there…
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Norse mythos + modern Jap culture? My mind is blown. 😮
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