Token Asian’s Anime Blog

Deep in Marller’s… um, poorly-lit cellar hideout, our favorite demon is still mad about the humiliations she’s faced at the hands of our megami trio. Unfortunately, her latest attack run on the temple is foiled once again by AA from Banpei. So what’s the strategy now? Time to make him unlucky? You’ve got a plan that might work? She notes Megumi leaving the Morisato residence and decides she can use her. At Megumi’s place, Marller ambushes the young lady, who assumes that Marller is a (lesbian?) pervert. Anyway, Megumi’s now possessed and the earth spirit reveals itself, but Marller throws him aside easily… and is transformed into a stuffed toy.

“Megumi” then catches up to Keiichi and acts excessively cute. Marller realizes her mistake and corrects herself before running off to summon her ultimate weapon… a ramune bottle. The drink bottle contains Senbei, the “god of poverty,” the most feminine demon of all time. He proves his skills by causing Aoshima to bump into the Tamiya and Otaki, causing Aoshima to feel much pain. After some Senbei-style pelvic thrusts, he tells Marller that he can make people unlucky… his new target, Keiichi!

Meanwhile, our stuffed animal pal is trying to warn Belldandy, but is intercepted by a little girl. Back on campus, Bell and K-1 are drinking tea and Keiichi finds an upright stalk in the tea, which apparently means good luck.

And so Marller’s evil plan has been set into motion… She first uses Senbei to manipulate Keiichi into slamming himself into Sayoko. Belldandy has her first jealousy storm, bringing down thunder and lightning. This should have made Keiichi unlucky, but luckily for Keiichi, some random item falls off the room, nearly missing them. Keiichi’s a hero, yay.

This time, Senbei makes Keiichi pull up “Megumi’s” shirt. Oh dear goddess, there goes another jealousy storm from Belldandy. Once again, luck is on Keiichi’s side as a bug falls out of Megumi’s shirt. So Keiichi is a heroic bug exterminator, yay.

Belldandy doesn’t take much to go from angry to happy as both times, she’s recovered quite nicely. Elsewhere, the earth spirit is dodging through traffic… he’s doomed.

Keiichi and Bell arrive at the club room and there’s a sign indicating that Hasegawa is changing. This time, Senbei makes him walk in on the somewhat-unclothed Sora. No rain or storms from Bell this time around, her jealousy storm tears the club room apart! Actually, it’s Marller that has bad luck since the gas stove in the room was on, and it appears that Keiichi is the hero again, yay. I just want to say that each time Bell gets over her jealousy, she acts as if nothing had happened, even if Keiichi asks her about the “storms.” It really makes her look excessively ditzy… arrgh.

Anyway, on to a test drive with the Motor Club. Marller suppresses Belldandy’s power while Senbei interferes with the car, causing it to spin out of control and catch fire. Belldandy’s power has been sealed, so she can’t do anything. Our stuffed animal/earth spirit pal comes out of nowhere and reveals that Megumi has been possessed by Marller and sealed her powers. She hands Marller the tea with the tea stalk, demanding that Marller drink it. With that good luck charm in her face, Marller abandons Megumi’s body and unlocks the seal, letting her save Keiichi.

Later on, it’s apparent that Bell fainted from using her power on full. They share some tender words about how Bell almost lost him, despite the fact that Keiichi had the correct suspicions about Megumi. She fells that she has failed as a goddess, but Keiichi has the good sense to say that he’s happy since he’s with her. Awwww…

Back on the test drive track, Megumi has no idea about what has just happened. She picks up the stuffed animal and decides to take it home. Meanwhile, Marller and Senbei fly off into the sunset, their “brilliant” plan foiled.

However, my one critique is that I wish they had used the silly line from the manga when Keiichi busts in on Sora changing and Bell defends his honor with something along the lines of “Keiichi’s telling the truth, Megumi! He doesn’t have the guts to do something like that! Er… um, um… My Keiichi isn’t enough of a man to…”

Poor Keiichi.

Bell’s making some lunch in the kitchen while Skuld looks on. Keiichi calls for her to leave for school, causing Skuld to look rather disappointed. The two lovebirds drive off, leaving Urd and Skuld at home. Okay, Skuld’s looking kind of jealous for attention… this doesn’t bode well. In all of her divine genius, she decides to build Bell a… something, using a Playstation. What a waste of a perfectly good console.

In any case, Keiichi comes home and is hard at work on the computer and Urd’s watching TV… Skuld activates the robot she’s building and overloads the power in the house… royally pissing off both Keiichi and Urd. Okay, so she just built Banpei-kun. I forgot how much I hated the stupid robot… they HAD to put it in the series. Oh well, Skuld starts whining and crying when the two adults scold her. Bell accepts the robot as a friend… well, that’s Belldandy for you. And I suppose it does help around the house. But it’s still an appliance.

Marller is still lurking in the background and has some potion that will turn K-1 into a hairy monster… and a variety of other bizarre concoctions. I want her to thrash Banpei… NOW. Danggit, Banpei locks onto Marller and activates his Bose sound system to “rock n’roll” mode, incapacitating our demon friend and then nuking her with a few missiles. Okay, so it does do something after all, though Urd still forces Skuld to turn it off…

Keiichi and Urd are back at work… oh no, Bell comes along and notices that Banpei is turned off, and of course, she turns it on. Zap! I hope Urd doesn’t mind missing another episode of “Big Z.” Keiichi needs a laptop… fast. Anyway, I guess the point of this episode is to show that Skuld has attention-whoring issues. Bell does have faith in Banpei that he does have a point in life. I’m glad Bell is nice like that, but I still say Banpei is a menace.

Skuld then modifies Banpei to use less power… oh great, now he’s a more power-efficient deathtrap. And it apparently now has a new Prime Directive… to keep K-1 away from Bell. Keiichi just can’t win. Banpei reprogrammed himself to be Belldandy’s guardian… and Urd isn’t an exception as a target either.

Thankfully, Bell instructs Banpei-deathtrap-RX-whatever to leave Keiichi and Urd alone. Later, probably in an attempt to lull Skuld into a sense of security before it assimilates her, it brings her some ice cream, to which Keiichi responds by asking if the robot is trying to get to know them better. Urd calmly sips her tea and says it’s fallen in love with Belldandy. Oh frakking great. Can we kill it already?

The next day, Bell has prepared lunch for Keiichi and tells Banpei she hopes he can eat someday too. While she goes to pick up the phone, Marller pops in to sneak some medicine into the food, but is foiled by Banpei once more, though she runs off with the lunch box. Skuld and Banpei begin battling Marller… while Bell has been on the phone for three minutes with nobody on the other end. Great, make my favorite goddess look like a moron. Nice writing there…

Anyway, after some lack of tactics and a giant good luck charm, they retrieve the lunch box, though his cables have detached and he’s now out of power. I hope he’s gone forever. Nope, oh well. His memory is gone, though he still trusts his goddess pals. Geez, I hated this episode.

Oh, and Skuld goes barefoot in this episode. Apparently Heaven doesn’t subsidize shoes for its employees. :p

I leave telling the story of last night’s fun up to her…

“Lured by the promise of free Taco Bell, I went with Token Asian last night to his weekly source of entertainment–Halo 2 LAN party. It was quite an experience watching such a fabulous display of testosterone… or was it estrogen? I sat on a sofa and watched several males of various ethnicities flounder around in Team Slayer (Turkish guy: 45 kills, Token Asian: 16 kills), get banned from Xbox Live, enact standup comedy, and insult each other’s manhood. And personally get subjected to a range of sex jokes. (”So, did you enjoy watching me plow your boyfriend more than you do?”) Token Asian warned me in advance about the porn and random drug paraphanalia that one often finds lying around the house they play at, but, thankfully, I was spared the surprise. The couch I sat on all evening, however, is purportedly going to get me pregnant.

Want to make Token Asian scream like a little girl? DON’T USE TURN SIGNALS.”

Anyway, I’m on a blogging marathon right now. I’ve written up my opinions on THREE episodes of AMG TV in the last two hours. History majors type real guud… lik dis.

Love a Riddle, you are one lucky guy. I finally got to the “Letters to the Enchantress” section of DH’s vol. 22. There you are, at the very end, for the entire world to see. You are one of the lucky few to have your letter printed in a volume of AMG manga.

Your name is now part of AMG history.

And as Carl Horn said, “don’t forget to cough up some of that fan art.”

If you want to see LAR’s “Letter to the Enchantress,” you can order Oh My Goddess! Vol. 22 through our affiliate links on the Animeblogger.net main page.

I don’t get spam via snail mail often… but when I do, it’s definitely worth… um, not reading?

To all AMG fans out there, BEWARE of people who try to scam you with fake AMG merchandise! This is a scourge that we must eliminate!

********

To: MR TOKEN ASIAN
Re: GODDESS ACTION

MR E R WILLIAMS, HOLDER

********

Nigerian goddess scammers?

(yes, I really did get this in my mailbox… a prank?)

Animeblogger.net’s Wiki for the 2006 Spring Anime Season

Of note:

-Ah! My Goddess Second Season
-HACK//GU
-Makai Senki Disgaea
-Prince of Tennis: National Championship Chapter
-XXXHOLiC

We’ve got a bit of a while to go… happy waiting!

Lee Tung-Hui was always sort of an oddball considering that he was a Taiwanese politician who openly proclaimed his pro-Japan opinions. With all the various atrocities and war crimes committed by Japan during the Second World War, this type of opinion is the exception, if not almost completely unheard of. Myself, I find myself in the pro-Japan camp as well, but I’m an American history major, and we prefer to forgive past mistakes and learn from them…

But I never knew that a retired Taiwanese president (from the Kuomintang “blue” party, no less) could be so pro-Japan that he’d engage in the most time-honored activity of anime nerds:

COSPLAY.

I know that “Heihachi Edajima” is from a Shonen Jump serial (I’ve yet to pick up an issue of that magazine) but any other details are unknown to me.

Edit: I looked it up on Wikipedia. The serial was “Sakigake Otokojuku” or something of that sort. Seems a bit like “Tenjho Tenge” where the students train in various types of martial arts… but in this series, they are actually encouraged to do so by the previously mentioned Principal Heihachi Edajima. Sounds like standard shounen fare.

Now, if we can get President Bush to cosplay, I’m sure our Pacific allies would react with utter… amusement? He’d get the American otaku vote, though.

Mwahaha, let’s put him in an Edward Elric costume!

Token Asian reviewing a manga for the teenage girl crowd? Weird enough, I suppose. Token Asian reviewing a manga about a girl from a broken family and the angst she experiences? Okay, maybe not TOO weird. Token Asian reading a Christian inspirational manga? No, I haven’t been drinking.

I suppose the point of “Serenity” is in one sense the typical Christian inspirational story about teenagers tackling life issues and using Biblical values, but all in the guise of a fun story in the comic book medium. The basic story is that a young lady from a broken family named Serenity Harper begins attending a high school, where her generally obnoxious attitude and anger towards everyone gets her into loads of trouble. But the school Prayer Club has other plans for Serenity and wants to break through her angsty shell.

You know what I was thinking when I picked this up? “Oh well, I’ll just skip out on buying that AMG thingie I wanted this month and get this for the pastor’s daughter.” What was I thinking (hey, Stan Lee is on the back of the cover, declaring it a “winner”)? Anyhow, on to the review…

Danggit, I was hoping for some really top-notch stuff here. You know being “America’s Premier Inspirational Manga.” Everyone that I’ve showed this to has dismissed the art as “above average webcomic” material. I’ll have to agree with that one… but that isn’t the important thing here, is it? Regardless, the art seems to be a combination of an American style and the manga style. While it doesn’t look terrible, I’ll have to say that this isn’t a very natural-feeling mix.

I’m really sick of Christian novels for children where the characters are “Good Guy A and Bad Guy B.” It’s good to see an attempt being made to show that Christians aren’t perfect people. It does take certain guts to stand up to the criticism that one might get, but it’s quite true that Christians are real people with real faults and they do their best to live up to their ideals like everyone else. None of the Christians depicted in this book are perfect and I enjoy that. In fact, quite a few of them behave in the opposite fashion of which their faith teaches them.

Initially, I saw Serenity as the typical kind of moronic female that ends up in the morgue on episodes of “Law & Order: SVU.” Inviting a Christian guy to come over for an evening of seduction? What a Jezebel… however, while she appears to be this powerful seductress in control, we clearly see after the rejection from her target that she is lonely, scared, and desperate for affection/attention, despite what she seems like on the outside. After all, we’ve all met those emotional and irrational teenagers (of both genders) that want sex and relationships with anyone (and I mean ANYONE). This humanized her and I thought that sort of internal revelation about her changed my opinion of Serenity.

A lot of “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” here. The main focus of the story seems to be the idea that a bunch of high school Christians are going to make the new troublemaker their “pet project.” Oh boy, well that is just GREAT. You come to a new place and immediately the people there tell you that their goal is to change you? Talk about being condescending and disrespectful. If I was Serenity, I’d probably plot my revenge against them and make sure they died slowly. On the other hand, it’s almost a cliché in Christian novels that silly things like this happen… you know, the “let’s all get together and help this person out in the most unrealistic way possible!” cliché.

However, volume 1 won’t end nicely as the cliché usually goes. Serenity doesn’t accept the attempts to change her. But who can blame her? She’s been through a rough life and that drives a lot of people to cynicism and a hardness of heart. So there’s no instant change that is often the norm in a lot of children’s books for Christians. However, she is gradually warming up to her Christian “friends” and is seeing how many of her actions are hurtful to others. Of course, how that develops is the entire last portion of the book and I’m not going to spoil that.

The story does portray well the development of the main character and it seems that this sort of slow character development where we see Serenity being changed by the Christians around her serves the purpose of an inspirational story such as this. And if I’m correct in thinking this, the series should get its message across. Just don’t expect to be… entertained.

I’m sure you realize that this “manga” is meant to target a younger audience. It really is kind of wooden and clichéd to older readers, but the idea of a Christian inspirational manga is just too intriguing to pass up. I don’t think I’ll pick up any further volumes (I’m up to vol. 2) unless the price drops ($10.95 gets me lunch for a looong time). However, if you’re looking for a tame manga gift to give to a younger Christian who happens to be an anime geek, look no further.

Oh, the hardcore liberal feminist teacher stereotype was probably meant to be funny, but just came off as a stock character that doesn’t elicit any laughs… except for the use of “womyn.”

Spot the other gems in the dialogue!

“I think ‘poopie’ sounds cute.” (this vapid line elicited groans from me)

“See, we don’t trash talk cuz it isn’t deck.” (who the heck talks like that?)