That notwithstanding, I was pleasantly surprised. I was rather expecting a Tenchi Muyo-style movie, where lots of stuff happens, but no actual character development occurs. Avoiding spoilers, I can still say that such plot-centric (as opposed to character-centric) storytelling is avoided in favor of a very balanced, surprisingly moving story. The new characters of Celestin and his sidekick girl sort of stick out, as they're (AFIAK) the only non-Fujishima created character in the film. Happily, though, they both turned out to be deeper than I anticipated.

The film also benefits from more manga-derived character design; I wonder if Fujishima did the character design himself -- it's that good.

Lastly, they got ALL the original voice cast of the OAVs -- including the retired voice of Belldandy, Kikuko Inoue -- to return for the movie. As this was not true for the spinoff TV series, "Adventures of Mini-Goddess," I was highly relieved. It wouldn't have been the same without Kikuko.

Anyway, getting to the point: as Gryphon has stated, he's more influenced by the OMG anime than the manga, so will this new tale have any bearing on Gods Willing (I expect the next chapter sometime within the next sunspot cycle) or, for that matter, Undocumented Features? There was some excellent footage of Heaven that really jives with what I imagine the upper of the Nine Worlds must look like, for example. Also, the scenes with Peorth and her various subordinates, hacking the world system, were very cool.

There have got to be some fun story hooks in there somewhere.

>So! I just watched the AMG movie. Of course, I was vaguely annoyed
>that Bandai didn't see fit to comply with AnimEigo and Dark Horse's
>translation of "Aa! Megami-sama!" which IMHO is a perfect, elegant
>redering of Fujishima's intent.

Let me just get this out of the way right now.

You get this one free.

But, if anyone (including admins and authors) chimes in to this or any other thread name preferences or other comments regarding the AMG/OMG/AMS name, that thread gets locked. And I get very, very, very angry.

Consider it Rule 1-T.

--truss,
ceased to be at all interested in that discussion in 1992.

Where did you get that Kikuko Inoue was retired? She wasn't in Mini-Goddess because she was taking time off (about to give birth, or just had a baby, I don't remember which), but as far as I've heard, she isn't remotely retired. Semi-recently, she's been in Angelic Layer, Figure 17, Najica, Vandread Second Stage, and I'm sure lots of other stuff.

OTOH, there was a recent (late 2001) "retirement fuss" about Michie Tomizawa, when her announcement about retiring from playing Sumire in "Sakura Taisen" (read by a producer at a ST event she wasn't present for) was misunderstood and got mis-reported as a "retirement from everything" announcement. I gather that she, her voice actor friends, her production house, and anyone even remotely connected to her got bombarded by "tell me it ain't so" messages.

Regards,
Jeanne

http://www.jhedge.com
http://go.compuserve.com/Anime

>There have got to be some fun story hooks in there somewhere.

Like retro-actively renaming Skuld and henceforth calling her Scotty? ;-)

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
I'm sorry, but that is the FUNNIEST translation error I have ever witnessed. I think my DVD went from Japanese to (Chinese or Korean) and then to English. Don't even ask what they call Belldandy.
DarkBeast.com