Oh My Goddess! vol. 36

This series has been coasting on goodwill from me for quite some time.  With this volume, said goodwill has finally run out.  I mean, how am I supposed to get excited or interested in a story that involves one of the hoariest of plot devices — amnesia — and runs through it in exactly the way you’d expect.  

The hook here is that Skuld’s latest invention, a gun to erase selected memories, goes haywire and wipes the minds of Keiichi, his sister Megumi, and the Goddesses.  Now this would seem like an ideal time for creator Kosuke Fujishima to go hogwild and have some fun with the characters, mix up some relationships, have them draw erroneous conclusions about themselves from the stuff they own.  The last thing you’d want to do in this situation is have everyone act the exact same way that they do when they had their memories.  Otherwise, what’s the point of the whole thing?

BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES!  The characters go through the same motions that they’ve been doing for quite some time:  Keiichi spazzing out when he gets close to Belldandy, Skuld acting protective of her big sister, Urd ordering people around, the usual.  There’s a moment when it looks like Fujishima is going to have some fun with things when Velsper shows up and starts telling everyone how they’re related, but it doesn’t really amount to anything.  We don’t even get any new insights into the characters beyond what we’ve known for ages, except for Megumi’s admission that she hasn’t been able to get in a serious relationship because none of her boyfriends can measure up to Keiichi.  Gee, that’s original, and a way to pander to all the readers with a little sister complex.

Thinking back now, the last time I remember being excited about this series was back when it switched to the “unflipped” format and Urd’s mom showed up.  That was great, clever fun and we’re a long, long way from anything resembling that now.  I should’ve stopped buying this a while back, but… you know… there’s goodwill, and the hope that it’ll eventually get better again.  It hasn’t and I’m not going to bother sticking around to see if it does.