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Oh My Goddess! (sometimes referred to as Ah! My Goddess) is based upon a popular Japanese manga. There has been an OVA series and a movie based on the story and characters. There has also been a series of shorts (known as the "Adventures of Mini-Goddess") based in the OMG universe.

Scroll down the page to find the following sections.

Characters/premise

OMG Trivia

DVD information

OMG Movie

The Adventures of Mini-Goddess
 
 

The Goddesses
 
 

Belldandy is a goddess first class.

One day, when college student Keiichi Morisato attempts to phone for some take-out food, he instead reaches the "Goddess Helpline", and Belldandy arrives to grant him a single wish. Keiichi decides that he would like to have a girlfriend exactly like her, and thus the two become inseparable, bound together by the "Ultimate Force System" that regulates all wish contracts.

Belldandy is the most powerful of the three goddesses, but, remarkably, she also enjoys some of the more mundane aspects of secular life, such as cooking and attending classes at the university with Keiichi.
 
 
 

Urd is Belldandy's older sister.

She arrives at the Morisato household when she decides that the relationship between Keiichi and Belldandy is progressing too slowly. She tries to help, but all her efforts to help Keiichi overcome his shyness (including various love-potions) go disastrously askew.

Urd is quite proficient in the use of magic, and she is able to summon powerful forces with the help of elaborate incantations.
 

Skuld is Belldandy's somewhat-temperamental younger sister.

Skuld is in charge of eliminating any bugs that crop up in the Ultimate Force System. She is quite intelligent, and she has a knack for inventing clever machines and devices.

She decides to come to earth because she misses having her two sisters around in Heaven. Although she initially seems to resent the fact that Keiichi and Belldandy are in love, she eventually comes to admire the relationship between the two.
 

Keiichi Morisato (here with his sister Megumi) is a seemingly normal college student until three goddesses enter his life.

He is a rather shy young man (much to the dismay of Urd), and he sometimes hesitates to assert himself. However, he wants more than anything to be with Belldandy forever. Keiichi is a student at Nekomi Technical College, and is a member of the college's Motor Club.

Megumi Morisato is Keiichi's younger sister. She is also a student at Nekomi Tech. She spends much time with her brother and the goddesses. However, she is unaware that Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld are actually goddesses. Rather, she thinks Belldandy is a foreign exchange student from America.
 
 

OMG Trivia

This is pretty much spoiler-free, but if not entirely, you've been warned.

---Each of the three goddesses is able to teleport, using different mediums, generally reflective surfaces. Belldandy always uses a mirror, Urd a TV screen, and Skuld a body of water.

---The goddesses are based upon figures from Norse mythology, and represent the goddesses of time/fate. Belldandy represents the present, Urd the past, and Skuld the future.

---Skuld is quite fond of ice cream; from the looks of the containers, it appears her brand of choice is 131 Flavors (known in America as Baskin-Robbins).

---It is never clearly established (in the OVA or movie, anyway) how old the characters are. However, during a snowball fight, Urd makes the comment that Skuld is "twelve years and four months too young" to seriously challenge her. Curiously, in the movie, Urd tells Skuld that she is "100 years too young" to think about finding the romance of her life. Also, in a flashback, we see that Keiichi and Belldandy are about the same age (as they were both apparently young children at the same point in time). You figure it out.

---The other main character seen in the OMG opening montage but never seen in the OVA is Marla, a childhood friend of the goddesses who has become a sorceress/demon.  This is seen in the OMG manga and in the Mini-Goddess series.

---Keiichi drives a BMW motorcycle, with a sidecar.

---Final Fantasy aficionados who watch the OMG movie may find the music somewhat familiar. This is because composer Nobuo Uematsu (composer of much of the music in the Final Fantasy games) contributed to the score of the film.

---Oddly enough, the telephone in the Morisato household often serves as a direct hotline from the Goddesses to Heaven.

---The feature is supposed to take place about 2 1/2 years after the beginning of the story in the OVA.

---In the Mini-Goddess series, Gan-Chan frequently refers to himself as "Mitsuo Iwata".  The in-joke here is that Mitsuo Iwata is the Japanese voice actor who does the role.

DVD information

The 5-episode OVA is available on two DVD's. For more information, the manufacturer's website is http://www.animeigo.com/ . The DVD's are quite nice; each are dual-language, and included with the first disc are some very interesting notes, including full lyrics (in both English and romanized Japanese) to the most prevalent songs in the series. The DVD's give the viewer several ways to watch, including "silent movie" mode, and "dub your own OMG" mode (with music and sound effects, but no dialogue). There is also a surprisingly entertaining "in the studio" track with some of the English voice actors. The second DVD also features several versions of the OMG songs "Congratulations!" and "My Heart...Iideasenai, Your Heart... Tashikametai" in sort of a "music video" mode.

Pioneer (website http://www.pioneeranimation.com/) distributes the movie, which they have, for whatever reason, chosen to title as Ah! My Goddess: The Movie. The DVD includes all the things one would expect (trailers, etc.), as well as the first episode of "The Adventures of Mini-Goddess".  Pioneer is currently releasing all 52 episodes of The Adventures of Mini-Goddess on DVD, as well.

OMG Movie

The feature primarily deals with the character Celestin, who was Belldandy's mentor when she was younger. It seems even Heaven has its radical element, and Celestin is it. He decides that the gods interfere for the worse in the lives of mortals, and that the current regime (if you will) in Heaven should be overthrown. In addition, Celestin erases Belldandy's memories of Keiichi; in his mind, he wants to give her the 'choice' of leaving earth and assisting him in his quest. As mentioned, the film is a superior work, with outstanding music and animation. It is worth mentioning that the overall tone of the movie is decidedly more serious than that of the OVA, and that the movie assumes the viewer knows who all the major characters are.

The Adventures of Mini-Goddess

This is a sequel of sorts to the OVA. This series primarily attempt to depict what Belldandy, Urd and Skuld do when Keiichi is not around. As the name suggests, the goddesses (especially Urd and Skuld) get a kick out of making themselves small and playing with their ever-suffering rat-friend Gan-Chan, who is essentially the male lead in the series. The characters have slightly different personalities than in the OVA (in particular, Urd seems more temperamental and Skuld seems less so) and Belldandy's role is typically quite small (this is because Kikuko Inoue, the Japanese voice actress who does Belldandy's voice, was pregnant and unavailable for much of the production).

Needless to say (and with episode titles like 'The Mysterious Can of Food" and "Let's Form a Band"), Mini-Goddess is quite silly at times, and the animation tends to be a bit on the cute side, so those who cannot stomach such things should avoid watching this. Personally, I like it a lot.  Also, there are a lot of parodies of popular films ("Gabira: The Giant Monster" is a Godzilla parody, "Chu Hard: Gan Chan's Desperate Situation" parodies the "Die Hard" franchise, "SOS in the Big Snowfield" makes reference to the Stallone film "Cliffhanger", and so forth), as well as a couple of interesting mood pieces, most notably the episode titled "Rainy Day", a silent piece in which a somewhat more-reserved-than-usual Urd wanders Nekomi town on a rainy day.

Commentary

Beware: once you watch the first episode of this series, you will be hooked. Some may say the overall tone is a bit sugary-sweet, but that's the way it's intended to be. However, things do get decidedly more serious in the last two installments. If you watch episode three, your reaction to the 'cake' exchange between Keiichi and Belldandy will almost certainly be the same as Skuld's. Needless to say, fans of ultra-violence and mayhem would be advised to find other animated entertainment.

The music and animation are top-rate, even more so in the movie. The movie's score is more classical, while the music in the OVA is Japanese-pop, by and in large. If you're not careful, you might even find yourself humming "The Egg Song" (that reference will make immediate sense if you've seen the series). Even the eyecatches between the acts of each episode arecreative and fun; in this case, the eyecatch is a slot machine featuring portraits of the characters which stops on a different combination in each episode.

Since animation appeals to a much wider audience in Japan, there's always a concern that potentially offensive things will show up in a given anime. However, other than an occasional bit of innuendo, there's really nothing offensive to be found here (unless you don't want to think of heaven as sort of a half paradise, half giant computer, anyway).

Overall recommendation: If you enjoy anime, watch this series. You won't be disappointed.

.  Skuld hard at work.